So I'm going to go a big rant. I fell off the non smokin' and junk food wagon, so I'm full of nicotine and McDonalds.

For a big straight guy, the one, ONE thing that brings be great joy on this site is having @morgfair follow me on this site, so please don't be offended.

Everyone is super angry. How could the election be so close? Well... I had that long conversation with my friends today and am going to regurgitate the points I made then, here. This comes from many trips to the US and being a amateur anthropologist...

I've been on twitter for 6? years or so. So my amateur anthropology of Americans is based on that, and of course visits to the US of A.

So... where to begin? How did things come to this?
Well this is my take... like Johnny Rotten sang... I could be wrong... I could be right

Lets go back to Bush Sr. vs Clinton. Bush Sr. raised some taxes and the cranky right threw a fit. So Clinton sneaked in.

This is far too easy a simplification, but when you have government so damn hamstrung in trying to do stuff, you end up with low performance and high cost.

Clinton floated around the center, where God as my witness, most people float. Kinda arrogant, didn't read the room on healthcare and... well... Hillary. But overall kept the US from too many shenanigans, ignored stuff they shouldn't have ignored and...

Then crapped all over the institution of the presidency by getting a hummer in the oval office. The powers that be twisted logic to no small degree and he stayed there.

He should have left. That was some scuzzy crap, unbecoming of the president.

Then the debacle of 2000. Gore should have fought harder, and honestly there was enough grey in that storm to leave me with mild shrugs over W taking the reigns.

Considering Clinton and Ted Kennedy's driving record and the efforts to whitewash that, time for the GOP to shine.

Ah W. The one president I would love to go to a BBQ with. I figured it would be 4 to 8 years of cruise control.

Then 9/11 happened. Time for the U.S. to put on the shit kicking boots and deliver some well deserved justice.

We all figured the bad guys in afghanistan would look like a sand people village post Anakin. And the U.S. and a lot of their friends (Canada proudly included), went in and sent stacks of adherents to a personal meeting with Allah.

Oh, then Iraq got invaded and the Saudis...

got a skate. So while getting tar baby'd in Iraq, the Saudis were free to finance their strand of Islam throughout the globe.

Iraq was poorly handled by rumsfeld and everything turned to shit. Imagine dismissing an entire army the first couple of days.

What were they going to do, set up Subway franchises? And billions were paid to Pakistan, not counting the money they probably got for food n' lodging the taliban.

And Iran got to beta a slew of IED's there too. Too many soldiers paid too high a price for such things.

I've never fan boy'd harder over a take on those wars than this piece from @zenpundit I think it's a pretty solid take on where things went wrong.

https://zenpundit.com/?p=24935 

Anyhow, the Dems ran a boring guy who seemed to fall out of a country club, didn't fight against the

Swiftboat crap and Bush got 4 more years to thankfully put humpty back together a bit.

I remember being at Universal park in Florida and seeing a LOT of dudes with prosthetic legs and realizing this war's cost in money was nothing to the blood spent.

But now another thing popped up. I'm no internet savant, but I remember saying to my friends that if the comments section of websites allowed anyone to comment, not even say putting a flag next to their username to show where they're from..... this will lead to a bad end.

I remember all the far left people on HuffPo commenting on Cdn politics, and all I could think was 'f&*k off, stay in your lane'. The era of outside influence in a nation's internal squabbles was about to begin.

And so 2008 rolled around. The GOP was starting to pop up more cheap hustlers spun of from the gingrich era where screaming took precedence.

But then Obama came. Everyone thought he'd be a flaming socialist and turn the US into a well armed version of Norway. Nope...

That hippy was a business hippie. But after the great recession, the piper went unpaid. Also the media crapped on McCain, who wasn't the monster they made him out to be.

But change was afoot and Obama rolled in.

It would have been a great time for everyone to work together then. Especially on immigration. Hard left wants an open door, many on the right wanted cheap labour.

This was another factor. I have friends who emigrated to the US. It's hard, long and a complete pain in the...

Most got pretty conservative after they took the pledge. You don't spend years trying to join the pack and think lightly of people who sneak in.

Plus, let's be honest... some people are going to be in low level jobs for a while. How do you think they feel when every new...

employee speaks spanish and shuffle off like McLovin' when you as where they're from. I don't want to be a dick, but sooner or later that stuffs going to chaff people.

So there are two issues, the internet as an influencer and immigration. Obama did ok, but not great.

The presidency is a hard, shitty job so he did alright as things go. But Iraq and Afg continued to churn through blood and money and the internet started flat out killing the news.

This is a big one. I worked in the news industry for a bit, I watched a classified dept go...

from 30 people to 3. When you start losing your local news, people go to 'free' online news. The barriers to entry for that are... minimal, no million dollar press needed there.

Then twitter and facebook joined the fray big time.

Now the bullshit industrial complex was coming into play. You have 24 hour news full of talking heads cause there isn't enough news (EVER) to fill that time and the internet.

Oh internet, so much cool stuff, but so many new pundits, all screaming for some time.

Around 2010 most newspapers knew things were fubar, was just a question of how much to bleed. And now I'm going to off on another tangent.

Society has faltered. With the advent of social media, youtube, etc. people are herded into their own little echo chambers.

But it's worse than that. You can show a reasonable person the best propaganda and most will say 'Uh... that smells funny'.

But now you have a society with less marriage, less church.

A moment, again, sorry. I'm not super religious, but hanging out with other people with...

a shared moral interest is good. Even if you just fish the hymns, it's good to be around other people. I think this and bowling nights are some of the glue of society. If you start talking about some crazy stuff, someone will say "you, my friend, have to do less interweb"

I'm no social conservative, but I know a society where marriage is treated lightly, and people aren't socializing as much is not healthy.

When pornhub gets the traffic it gets, that's a bad reflection on a society. When I was going through the puberty, if I wanted to see...

a naked chick, I had to stay up late and see if French CBC was playing an unedited french movie. I saw a lot of great films during that time, sharpened my french and occasionally saw a flash of boob. Last time I checked an 'adult' site, I was disgusted.

So anyhow, family bonds were declining, internet and it's mind garbage rising. Obama had a beer summit, but did not impact race relations to a strong degree.

So by 2012, you had the common glue of society starting to fray. The internet killing news and many businesses.

I know this is a 10000 foot view. I'm big on free trade, and most people like their 600 60" tv, so a lot of production is long gone.

But things weren't getting better. People were getting more alienated. They had more stuff, but everyone who's had that 'aha' moment in life...

knows that more stuff does not equal happiness. Plus since Bush Sr, healthcare hadn't been fixed for the masses and even the most ardent capitalist with john galt tattoo on their ass saw the billionaires being minted, the finance people unpunished from 2008, etc.

So now it's 2016. Again I'm not an expert, but I liked Jim Webb. Moderate, knew the costs of war. But everyone got bulldozed by Hillary. Even Bernie, but not before leaving that ship listing hard to port.

By now the bullshit industrial complex of the internet was in full...

swing. I'm thinking somone, somewhere, thought it would be a great idea to broadcast the hell out of trump so hillary would have an easy ride to the white house.

Oops. I never realized how much people disliked her, and that was on the Dem side. She promised nothing new and...

by now the media, who people love to hate, was deeply annexed by the crazies on the internet. And many, IMHO who are paid be propagandists more than op ed people.

It was ripe from trump, a shameless gargoyle who would say anything to get elected. Unlike Hillary who avoided...

the press. Bluntly speaking the Dems ran a crap candidate with more skeletons in her closet that Gacy's basement, who seemed to expect the presidency to be handed to her.

That coupled with never ending, unedited internet b.s. and a society used to being entertained 24/7

and you see what happened. Even trump wasn't expecting to win. But people didn't see a threat. Despite even http://cracked.com  showing what a shit business guy he was, there was an assumption the grown ups would point him in the right direction.

But that didn't happen. The 4 year long sequel to 'Being There' didn't solve the deeper issues. The rich got waaaay richer, the middle class got nervous and edgy.

Not a lot got done, and the tone opened people, conditioned by their echo chambers, to be even worse.

I have no idea how to unfuck the U.S. I sincerely hope people realize the viking ship works better when both sides paddle, but I'm concerned.

That's the end of my rant. Enjoy my ted talk.

p.s. I think conservative rage at the arrogance of some Dems and whitewashing stuff started at Chappaquiddick, but the Rich pardon should have pissed everyone off, that was probably the big sign that white collar crime pays (with a decent donation)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Clinton_pardon_controversy