Good to see you have an ambition to keep you busy, Rizen. FWIW, I voted for Hillary, the person. I kinda see the Republicans and the Democrats (Republicrats/Demicans) as one party with two names and usually won't vote for either name. I vote for people over parties. I would have loved to see Hillary strut her stuff. Plus. . . Who better than a former president to be the country's first First Man?

How have you been on the more personal level? I've been wondering about you.

I am going to vote! Have you watched Trevor Noah?

FOr me... The main guilty party is American apathy. I was not raised to take this for granted. My family on one side is US military over 200 years. The other came from a fascist-controlled country. VOTE! Or you will end up kneeling before *someone*, and whining about how it happened. Um.... your vote only counts if you cast it! Now multiply that by a few million people ....

I am nonpartisan. Neither party thrills me. I am independent. I vote my conscience. I vote from intellect. My emotions can move me, but... Think first, y'know? Emotion gets us Hitlers. It may feel good for a moment, but in a decade, where are you? Yeah. Usually not too good. Emotion used to prompt people to think, fine. Emotion used to negate thinking? Nope, no thanks. My PTSD does enough of that. Politics doesn't get to do it, too!



Breathe deep, Rizen. Hope you're okay in yourself?

I am here with PTSD because I lived through a civil war as a missionary kid in Uruguay, a war that ended in a real fascist dictatorship. It joined with in 1973 Argentina's, Brazil's, Paraguay's, and Chile's to form a "bloc" behind a fascist Iron Curtain in South American's Southern Cone. That fascist "bloc" mirrored the Soviet bloc behind Eastern Europe's Iron Curtain that ended when the Berlin Wall fell in 1989.

Ours in South America went unnoticed by comparison because the US backed it from in the Nixon administration and Europe makes it into US news more than Latin America does. I wrote a book about it called Utopia Undone: The Fall of Uruguay in the Novels of Carlos Martinez Moreno published in the USA and England to do my part to bring attention to what history calls now the Dirty War of South American dictators. They imprisoned and tortured tens of thousands and killed 30,000 whose bodies disappeared and are still being sought by digging up military bases looking for mass graves now that we're in democracy.

I was detained 3 times in Uruguay's dictatorship before it fell after 12 years in 1985, I was tortured, and a friend of mine was dragged from his home and shot in the face and killed. I went back to visit his grave in 2016.

I'm concerned about the turn US leadership has taken because though raised in Uruguay I'm a Third Culture Kid, meaning the US is my passport country to which I fled for safety. It would help if everyday US citizens were as motivated to vote as Uruguayans are now that they recovered their democracy. 80% vote, whereas in the States voter participation is much less. I agree with Leo: apathy is a problem here, and as you say, Rizen, much is at stake. I a retiring back to Latin American from the USA in 2 years, and I hope I leave a US that has stabilized and strengthened its democracy again by then.

@Shy yeah I like Trevor Noah and others like Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, etc. Comedians are real heroes for getting the news out in a palatable way when things are so horrible.

Rizen,

I'm a Christian Conservative and more libertarian. I used to do political talk radio for more than 5 years. I urge you to be careful about what you read. Dig deeper. Don't see everything through a political lens. These things run in cycles.

Find a spiritual practice. I'm a Christian so you know where I draw strength. Be open to possibility that you may not be completely right.

From a former liberal,

JM

I'm an actual independent voter from having been raised overseas and coming to my passport country of the USA without any bias in my upbringing toward conservatism, liberalism, Republicanism, or the Democratic Party. Just first had objective experience in how a democracy fell in 1973 in Uruguay where I lived and then being part of the hard work of its comeback in 1985 and its survival since then.

The big lesson I'd offer from actual experience in a democracy's fall is that things went bad once partisanship took priority over patriotism in Uruguay. Then we descended into an actual officially declared shooting civil war. My experience of civil war is that it's probably the worst kind, something my visit to Gettysburg up here in the States let me know folks in the USA once experienced, too.

They seem to have forgotten, and I hope they remember in time that patriotism over partisanship is the cornerstone of democracy. Or folks can try that other way again like happened in Lincoln's time and see how that works out again, kind of like having to put your hand on a stove again because you forgot if it burned you when it was hot. Myself, I teach for a living because I'd rather listen and learn than get burned, speaking for myself from my civil war experience as a teenager overseas that brought me here with my PTSD.

I've been around a long time. For decades I have said that the US is no longer a democracy, and referred to Washington D.C. as the other Kremlin. Just my vantage point.

Sounds difficult. I'm responding to mujicaptsd -

We can't control world events. We can control OUR world. See a therapist and maybe talk thru this. Look for ways to cultivate peace within.

It is a weird time in the nation, I agree. Too much division. The people are not being represented. Maybe find an outlet to make an impact in a place you have passion.

Love.

I thought Bernie was the only real choice offered.

Now I agree...it's slowly not becoming a democracy.

I'm proud to say I voted for Sanders in the primaries and Clinton in the election.

Here's why I vote Democrat. I'm a realist and dems have a track record of getting stuff done. Obama passed the Affordable Care Act in a time when healthcare was collapsing. It was supported by the AARP and withstood Republican obstructionism. Even when they control the entire government they couldn't keep their "promise" of repealing it because their system was a train wreck.
Environment: you know how Trump backed out of the Paris Climate Accord? Obama helped establish it. We need a party that supports parks and rec, renewable energy and enforces regulations. You can see the difference in Obama and Trump era handling of these. Most except 10 dems and Obama opposed the Keystone pipeline but that's what you get when Republicans control congress.
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/jan/13/keystone-oil-pipeline-democrat-senators-republicans-bill
Obama created the world's largest marine sanctuary.
https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2014/06/140617-obama-ocean-protection-marine-reserves-seafood-environment/
While dems do fall short on some issues, like hydrolic fracking, they overall are good for the environment. Republicans are poison.

How about jobs and the deficit? Obama brought unemployment under 5% and lowered the national deficit.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2017/01/06/in-last-jobs-report-of-obamas-presidency-u-s-adds-156000-jobs-in-december/#a0ca850406a0
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/jan/20/barack-obama/barack-obama-claims-deficit-has-decreased-two-thir/
The recently passed republican tax bill is heavily skewed to benefit the wealthiest 1% and projected to increase the national deficit by 1.5 trillion dollars over the next decade.
http://www.businessinsider.com/trump-gop-tax-reform-bill-impact-economy-business-debt-income-2017-12

Democrats offer experienced candidates I never saw this as a bad thing. I want a leader to be experienced in dealing with foreign relationships, the economy etc. Trump had no political experience and ran his hotels to bankruptcy 4 times.

I could go on and on but you get the point. Democrats are professionals with results.

Yup, I voted for Bernie, too, in my passport country of the USA, and he didn't win. In the country of my upbringing, though, the Bernie candidate did win. Forgive me for repeating what I said before above, it's not meant to hijack this thread. I mention it again because it seems it might be helpful and worth noting again that Tabare Vazquez is the Uruguayan Bernie Sanders who is president in Uruguay now, so Bernie types do win sometimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tabar%C3%A9_V%C3%A1zquez

Again, I don't mean to offend by repeating myself, but it's just that there are lessons south of the border that may be sources of encouragement for US progressives. After winning election, folks in the USA might not know that Vazquez took on US corporations and won in that fight, too.

When the US tobacco companies finally lost their fight in the US and US bars and restaurants were made all non-smoking, they suddenly had a lot of surplus cigarette inventory they couldn't sell in the USA like before. They decided to dump their surplus cigarettes they could not longer sell in bars here in the USA on poorer and smaller countries like Uruguay. Vazquez made Uruguay fight back against US corporations.

Uruguay's Bernie, Tabare Vazquez, had campaigned on banning smoking in Uruguay's bars and restaurants just like had been done in the USA. Philip Morris and the tobacco lobby in the US sued Uruguay in international court to prevent that to make an example of it as an uppity small country who dared fight back. The wanted keep the non-US markets for their cigarettes open.

Uruguay's Pres. Vazquez, though, is not just a progressive Bernie Sanders politician, but he is also a career medical doctor and a cancer specialist. He meant it when he made his campaign promise, and he fought Philip Morris and the US tobacco companies for 6 years in international courts. And won.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_Morris_v._Uruguay

"Uruguay had received accolades from the World Health Organization and from anti-smoking activists for its anti-smoking campaign. On 8 July 2016, after 6 years, the ICSID ruled in favor of Uruguay, forcing the demandant to pay the expenses of the defendants and the court."

Again, I mean it when I say that I'm sorry for repeating myself about this, too, but as I said above another leader south of the border is fighting back, as well, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, or AMLO, as he's known in the press beyond the US media. He is Mexico's answer to the US president's pattern of references to Mexican. AMLO's message, though, is to clean up Mexico's long standing corruption by taking on its drug cartel problem.

That is a dangerous stand to take in Mexico and could get AMLO assassinated. His courageous stand is so popular among his people, though, that he is running 20 points ahead of all other candidates in the polls leading up to Mexico's July 1st presidential election coming up three weeks from now.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andr%C3%A9s_Manuel_L%C3%B3pez_Obrador

I hope it is ok to mention that there is political news going just a mile outside both of the US borders. That news is telling us that, if AMLO wins as predicted, that the US will be surrounded by progressive leaders. Prime Minister Trudeau is on the US northern border, and a President Lopez Obrador may be on the US southern border.

Then there are progressive allies like Uruguay's Vazquez further to the south. People all around the USA's borders are responding positively to progressive health-based messages like Uruguay's of ending tobacco cancer and Mexico's of ending the decades-long unwon drug war to turn to treatment for addiction instead.

Now the question is whether a positive progressive message can win inside the USA's borders. It's obvious enough to oppose the president on the inside of the USA these days. However, how that went at the ballot box was that it won the popular vote but not enough of it. It still wasn't enough to close the deal to win the presidency inside the USA in 2016. It seems the lesson to take away from that is what that a vision of a positive future from progressives in the US is needed to bring about the tipping point for that slim margin of victory.

Sorry if I'm beating a dead horse by talking about Latinos as examples here about how to reach that tipping. Despite my US passport, it's just that Latin America is where I'm from, so please me patient with me. Opposing the president is a given, obviously, but negative campaigning alone seems not to have been enough to persuade US voters in sufficient numbers for the apathy-busting turnout to bring about the actual win as of yet.

Maybe looking to Latino progressive winners like Vazquez and AMLO as examples for positive, winning, progressive messages might work for US candidates to find their positive winning vision. If you don't mind my asking, please consider rooting for AMLO to win in Mexico on July 1st as another step toward turning the positive tide.

If mentioning Latino progressive politics again is offensive to anyone here, my apologies, I mean that. I mean that for conservative friends, here, too, I don't usually reference politics in our PTSD discussions at all because politics is such a sensitive subject, like religion. Since the president's policies is the topic here and his first campaign speech referenced Latinos, I just meant to offer an update as to positive developments in response that may not be getting notice in the US media. It's not an attempt to hijack the thread, so I'm sorry if it looks that way, I truly am. I only mean to offer hope from unexpected quarters.

Women do NOT register for the draft.

https://www.sss.gov/Registration/Who-Must-Register/Chart

Takes about 3 minutes online. My son just turned 18 and registered.

NO ONE is currently being drafted.

I have both a son and daughter. I care about them equally.


As to why we're overseas...big business.

United Fruit Company
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Fruit_Company

As someone outside America, I think both parties fall short but yes there is something very wrong with the republicans.

Bernie Sanders said women want to be raped. Bill Clinton actually raped a woman as per reports. Trump too walked in on women as they dressed/undressed in his pageants and reportedly raped his first wife and was violent with her. "grab em by the ... they let me"

Obama was a friend of eintefada guy Abu Inamah and very anti Israel but at least he supported marriage equality and was pro choice unlike Trump.

So yeah both parties and their candidates fall short.