US Presidential Election: Initial Thoughts

I wasn’t intending to write anything on the US Presidential Election because it is just a pantomime at this stage. An old celebrity billionaire (depending on who is counting) and another Clinton. Is that how bad things have become?

I lived in the US for five years and the one thing I never ventured too far into is discussions on politics. The partisan nature of every debate just becomes frustrating. People have these uncompromising engrained beliefs driven purely by what side of the Blue-Red divide they are aligned to.

I had a great time living in the US. I had a full scholarship to a top private University in one of American’s richest counties on the East Coast.  In San Diego, I worked with one of the leading financial firms in the country. I had a nice office on the top floor of the downtown building on 701 B Street. I lived in an apartment complex nearby with an outdoor swimming pool.

It was a good life. But my perspective is framed by the experiences I had. Just as is the case with Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump, something that is even more relevant given their vast wealth and power. Can either person, 69 years old and 70 years old respectively, relate to a large percentage of the population who don’t have it as good?

Every four years the US Presidential election brings the same characters with the same promises, just dressed up differently. The system is broken but it has been broken for years, poverty has become accepted.

In 1992, the legendary rapper Tupac Shakur gave an interview with MTV on the greed and inequality in America. (See link) It is five minutes long and I highly recommend you watch it. Over 20 years on nothing has changed in the world, if anything the situation has only got worse.

What politicians need to remember is that: “Everybody needs a little help on the way to being self-reliant”, and for the uber-wealthy, “even if you earned it, you still owe”.

I have shared some further thoughts on the US election in my blog “US Presidential Election: The Nuclear Option”.