The Core

> prepper thread

I can see two types of Prepper threads:

1. Soft Prepper - breakdown in global trade, shortages that are not life threatening but change lifestyle. Breakdown in trust in financial institutions .  At it's worse the soft prepper scenario is a bit like what happened to the Russians after the fall of the USSR or the Great Depression.  Life and govt still clanks on but there are big disruptions in jobs, currency, finances, ownership, pensions etc.

2. Hard Prepper - real dramatic breakdown in govt and civil order.  Like giant solar electromagnetic pulse scenario that RC talked about previously. Food, fuel, water, services shortages that could threaten life and health.

>I dunno what to say.. a lot of folks here thinks that the whole US election and judicial system is a huge joke. Huge joke and we're appalled that the americans can even consider putting one of the two candidates in the white house. How the hell did it come that far?

I'm breaking a Core rule, but I'm 100% with you on this.  Trump is utter garage.  Hillary, well Trump is just about the only person she could defeat.

>US tv

At least very few people are actually watching it.

>Prep

This guys stuff is great:
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAL3JXZSzSm8AlZyD3nQdBA

But seriously, I think living as a soft prepper makes sense: keep debt low, own tangible assets. 

I can't watch American news. It's all listen to NPR, BBC or watch DW, France 24, or NHK for me.  I read the paper because local govt is important but for national news AP has gone downhill.

"what" you'll have overshadowing "where" you'll have it is a mistake.

TRUE, if you live in a metro area.

PS: As Y'all know, I have NO political views 
I'll WRITE IN this year.

>>I'm breaking a Core rule, but I'm 100% with you on this.

Good Lord save me! Now I can't stop my fingers from typing ;-)

Since this seems to be an anything goes thread now...

>>CGP Grey

I think you've recommended him before (maybe the "Humans Need Not Apply" vid in the Terminator thread?), but I just watched a few of his videos. He's a great explainer. The video you linked pretty much nails what happened in the Republican primaries this year and what almost happened in the Democratic primaries. Trump and Sanders peeled off disaffected "keys" and Trump got enough of them (largely because of the huge field) while Sanders didn't (because of the small field).

>>Water

I've got more water filters and portables stoves than I'll use this lifetime. I'm not worried about the one-week infrastructure failure. I just spent the last week with no electricity, plumbing or cell reception.

If there's full global collapse, no diversity of assets is going to help very much. So my question was in reference to long-term strategies assuming perturbation, but not collapse.

>>Most of us used to listen

Now that comes as a surprise. When I first went to France in the 1980s, I would still get picked up hitchhiking by people who would thank me for liberating their country in 1944 and so many cities had an Avenue Kennedy, Quai Wilson or a Boulevard Roosevelt. By the mid-1990s, I never encountered that again. I thought most Europeans had stopped listening by then. In any case, I don't see a Rue Reagan or a Chemin Obama coming any time soon. Certainly not Rue Bush (either one) and most Swiss I know always sound half-mocking when they speak of "Beel" (aka Mr Clinton) with an odd smile and wink. I haven't spent as much time there during the Obama years, so perhaps Euros started listening again for a while?

>>whole US election and judicial system is a huge joke

It was one thing to be in Switzerland during the Bush years and trying to explain my country to baffled Swiss people. I wouldn't even know where to start today.

I once swore that I would never vote for Hillary under any circumstances. I just could not foresee *these* circumstances. We have not been so close to losing the republic since 1864 IMO. In 1933, much of the country was strongly behind Roosevelt seizing dictatorial powers - Walter Lipmann, New York Papers, sitting senators, and countless letter writers suggested that the president seize dictatorial powers. Roosevelt demurred [links below]. I have no faith that Mr Trump would make the same choice in a crisis.

Democracy is fragile and people don't realize what they are flirting with when voting for an authoritarian who thinks that it's okay to threaten journalists, judges and political opponents with violence, jail and the wrath of government agencies sicked on his enemies (yes, Nixon and Roosevelt and perhaps others did so, but they had the good sense to try to keep it secret rather than campaigning on it as policy), that it's okay to incite supporters to violence, that it's a good strategy to call into question the integrity of elections before a vote is even cast. The latter is the scariest. It is the Big Lie strategy of this campaign - if he wins, he's the hero who overcame that corruption; if he loses, it's proof that he was right and the presidency must be seized by other means. This is so dangerous.

We were tremendously lucky in 1933 that we had a Roosevelt in power, someone who understood how fragile the republic really is. A man of authoritarian bent in those times would have taken the path of Mussolini.

A visitor — unidentified in the press — came to him not long after the Inauguration and told him, "Mr. President, if your program succeeds, you'll be the greatest president in American history. If it fails, you will be the worst one." "If it fails," the new president replied, "I'll be the last one." (quoted in The Defining Moment, by Jonathan Alter)
 

Links on Roosevelt and the day the US flirted with dictatorship
 - http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/pdfs/dictatorship.pdf
 - http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5525748

We need change in DC.

We need *improvement* in DC. Unfortunately, I don't see any signs of that on the horizon.

Those are good ones. I'm not sure about the one-term presidency (haven't thought about it really), but the others sound good.

I'll add three
 - take districting out of the hands of the parties (I think over a dozen states have done so already)
 - assign congressional offices and seating alphabetically rather than by party or seniority
 - general election is a face-off between top two vote getters in the primaries, regardless of party as California now does for state offices.

Those things would, I think, have a moderating influence on politics. Compromise has become a dirty word in Washington, but compromise and diplomacy are nice alternatives to intransigence and war. When a leader of one party says that under no circumstances will they approve a Supreme Court nominee from the other party, that's just broken beyond broken. And I'm not actually trying to blame one person there who is under great pressure from colleagues and constituents to take that stance, but just pointing to a broken system.