Sometimes, out of disaster comes historic opportunity. From the ashes of a failed enterprise arises the Phoenix of a more evolved and ideal reality – sometimes!

Whether you support(ed) Donald Trump or not, he is the presumptive Republican nominee. His christening has ushered in a deluge of apocalyptic predictions from the left, but also, more surprisingly from the right. It evidences far less a coronation than a coup by a populist faction led by an accidental revolutionary who has high jacked the GOP by becoming the personification of the frustration, fear, and anger of its party faithful and newcomers who feel abandoned by their Republican leaders.

Say what you will about them, what these Trump supporters lack in fidelity to traditional GOP principles and character litmus tests, they make up for in loyalty. They don’t care who or how many people Trump insults. They don’t care how often he exposes his breathtakingly narrow understanding of the issues―they are going to support him no matter what. As Trump so brazenly stated himself, “I could shoot someone in the street, and I wouldn’t lose any votes.” His supporters are “Trumplidites” to the core, and a very hard core it is.

But beyond his “cult of personality” followers, Trump is not so popular. In fact, he is roundly hated by large segments of the voting populations. His negative popularity ratings are record-breaking for a Presidential candidate, particularly among Independents (the only voting block that really matters since it is the only one really “in play”)

And while the Democratic nominee has her own serious popularity problems, conventional wisdom and historic voting patterns among independents and moderates in the middle eschew extremism and extremist candidates. They abhor loose cannons and cavalier characters―both of which are perfect descriptions of Donald Trump. No one, including Trump, knows what he is going to do or why since, by all indications, his policy making process is devoid of any discernable principles―let alone an actual guiding philosophy. In that sense, he is an unknowable enigma, completely unpredictable. Such capricious and erratic propensities make everyone, but particularly, the majority in the middle, nervous.

This may very well mean that many among the “undecided” will cast their voting in keeping with the old adage, “the devil you know is better than the devil you don’t.”

Clinton is the devil we know, while Trump is the devil we don’t.

This would seem to give the edge to Clinton. Either way, it is a Faustian choice at best. From the Liberty perspective it a choice of “picking your poison.” Do you go with woman who is peddling poison that offers you a slow death by economic strangulation or the many who is a political poison pill that could cause instant death by one careless misstep?


From the perspective of Libertarians, and more pointedly Objectivist Libertarians, it would appear that the election of either candidate is a nightmarish scenario of apocalyptic proportion. But as apocalyptic as this may seem in the short term, it just might be the harbinger of good news for Libertarians and other liberty-loving micro parties in the long term―as unlikely as this might seem.

So let’s play this out. Here is one possible, if not likely, scenario:

Trump secures the Republican nomination, riding a wave of unprecedented dissatisfaction of traditional Republican voters and new Trumplidite voters (the latter being independents and conservative Democrats and Republicans who are not able to formulate their own political philosophies beyond the sloganeering sound bites Trump spews―they are, by definition, anti-intellectual).

Second, we can assume virtually all Democrats will eventually hold their collective noses and vote for Hillary. Add to that the Independents that strongly dislike Trump, either personally or politically. Subtract from Trump’s total MOST Libertarians and recovering Republicans who dislike and mistrust Trump (and who will just stay at home), and the remaining support for Trump will be woefully insufficient to secure him the Presidency. In fact, his hard ceiling for support is probably in the 40s. Translation: Hillary wins by a landslide.

Trump at the top of the ticket proves to be a tremendous drag on the ticket for those Republicans running for the Senate and the House―such a drag, in fact, that it reverses the majority in both chambers.

Now the Democrats have a field day for four years. Hillary―the human, unprincipled, political wind sock―further adjusts her orientation to the far left, driven by the new Sanders Socialistic/Millennial gale force political winds blowing at her back. She and her Democratic Congress begin passing ultra-progressive legislation and regulations.

The unprecedented landslide of freebies and give-aways (i.e., enhanced Obamacare, free college education, LBJ-ist expansion of the welfare state), in addition to draconian regulations on banking and financial systems, will lead to the final financial meltdown of epic proportions―not hard to imagine given an economy that has tittered on the brink since 2008.

Desperate to address the record budget shortfalls, Hillary makes good on her threats to make up the difference out of the financial hides of both the “rich” and the “upper-middle-class” causing many to flee not only the labor market, but perhaps even the country (effectively bringing to pass “the producer strike” Rand foreshadowed in Atlas). The net effect of the hostile business climate causes a massive economic collapse of depression proportions.

As part and parcel of this demonic Democratic dictatorship, Hillary and her PC Police and newly appoint ultra-progressive Supreme Court Justices, begin to dramatically curtail individual rights (and private institutions) in an attempt to legislate THEIR morality―subjectivism and relativism―into existence, all based on the collectivist ideal.

But there might be a light at the end of Taggart Tunnel – that’s not another train. As has historically been the case in this country, when the political pendulum swings to the extreme left or right, principles of political physics usually dictate that it swing just as far back to the other side. In this case, back to the right, from its precipitous pinnacle on the left (per Einstein, “for each action there is an equal and opposite reaction”).

Now the splintered right might finally find the crucible they have been searching for to melt their disparate coalition back together again.

The atomized right―now made up of traditional Goldwater Republicans, Neocons, the Evangelical Usurpers (many forget the GOP has already lived through one high jacking), the Tea Party, and good portions of the “Liberty Party”―may suddenly realize that their “way of life” is in jeopardy and that their most dearly-held principles of personal freedom are under a withering assault from the Hillary/Sanders rising liberal tide. Maybe then they will see that their only hope of avoiding permanent political irrelevance in Hillary’s “Brave New World” of European-style Socialism is to… UNITE!

In the midst of an economic crisis (perhaps even a depression), the GOP will be looking for a rallying point―the only one that can cure the progressive-induced black plague―and that rallying point is around the only flag that can be planted on the common ground they truly share―the one with the “$” on it.
(For the rest of this article go to www.libertas.website)