American General Inheritance Life Plus: Fill & Download for Free

I read 100 s of articles/answers on this question, and I am very sorry, I could not find one answer which hits the nail on the head as they say.I also wrote a fair bit on this lingering question. Now due to new age restrictions, being extraordinarily polite and no one tells the truth, and most of the people dance around the issues. Unfortunately whatever you say: It ought to hurt someone, and being a writer is not easy these days.Let me try one more time to cut the chase.Nothing is free in Canada, YOU and ONLY YOU(either you or your next generation will pay for all the things, either now or later).Directly or indirectly you will pay close to 50 cents from every dollar you earn to the Government.Unless you are a bum and have no intentions of working, yes you may have free rides in shelters.No one is gentle/kind heart/and have spread a red carpet for you that is a total myth. When it comes to survival, everybody is for themselves, be it Canada/or any other country. The world, in general, is an incredibly mundane place to live.Good jobs are hard to come. People who are here for a long time are not happy about immigration. And they have coined a new term for all immigrants called: FOB, Fresh off the Boat. It is politically correct and sums up everyone. Just for refresher course following is the vocabulary from the past. For the Brown people it used to Paki, for Asians: Chink, for Italians: WOP, for Mexicans: West Backs, for French: Frogs, for British: Limy, so now it was too hard to remember all these names: One covers them all FOB, and it very politically correct. Please do not stress everyone had a name.Saying good morning, how is the weather is better than calling names and throwing a beer bottle at your wife and you on the street. It has mellowed down since we arrived here in the early 70, or our predecessors suffered. ( It happened to me, in the first 70 s, my wife and I was going to our friend’s house for lunch, one group of kids, pulled the car along the sidewalk, threw a beer bottle on my wife. And sped off. Fortunately, this half-filled bottle, it did not hit her, but new sari which she wore the first time was ruined.Yes, now they do not throw such object, but in private conversations, the story is different. It does not bother us anymore; we have played our innings; it does not matter.It is similar, did cast system go away from India, of course not, sure Government passed a lot of laws. Here also or for that matter around the world, one has to learn to live with it.These kind of problems are almost everywhere to some extent, get used to it.All this polite talk does not translate to a job opportunity, how do I know, close to fifty years here taught me almost every dialect of this land.Canadian society was very close and whites only, racial as much as it could be, Google it the suffering of Chinese and early east Indians and total cruelty to the First Nations. History books are full of these examples, also rest assured everyone regardless of color everyone paid the price to settle in this harsh land.This new Avatar is need of the time, this new hug and kiss, but the endpoint is more or less the same. Unless with sheer will power, outstanding performance and cut above the others, you may get a nod. And as the time progresses, this 2nd class citizenship dilutes with the very bright second generation, and sure they get better opportunities. And slowly, the third generation may fully integrate into the mainstream.Unless, you are Albert Einstein, but speak English/French with an accent, chances are eager to cut, in case there is a Canadian candidate.And let us face it not very many Einsteins leave their countries, they are worshiped there also.I was fortunate to attend one of the best schools of joint Punjab region of India, not very many “ stars” came to foreign lands. They were stars then/they are stars still in India. They did exceptionally well in their motherland.Well, let us face it most of us are not stars, we are trying to maximize our return, and the extreme hard fact is mediocre or below mediocre stay more or less same wherever they go. Of course, exceptions are there, but those are incredibly devoted, hardcore and do and die Karma Yogis/Yoginis.( In Punjab we had a saying: In case you were mediocre in Lahore, chances are you will be average in Peshawar too)Is it worth move to Canada from India: That is your personal decision.However,You do not have to advertise or tell anyone asks yourself the following questions?In case you or your spouse is used servants/gardener/ Kitty party/ and (X) Chef’s new Samosa recipe………Not a good idea (NAGI) means not to leave your country.In case you are looking for a: Cushy life at work. (NAGI)If your job gets you number 2 income under the table. (NAGI)In case you believe it is paradise on the earth of equal opportunities and warm and cushy slogans, of this and that, it is, in fact, Utopia (NAGI), Canada is not a paradise for most of the immigrants.In case your heart is sensitive to regret letters (NAGI)In case you want to discipline your kid by Indian methods(NAGI)In case your dreams of preserving your values/culture/religion are more relevant to you. (NAGI).In case you have an urge to take the law into your own hands such as honor killing and other anti-social activities. (NAGI)Now page 2 of Questions you should ask and answer to yourself.In case you are a paratrooper (Yes)In case you are sick of corruption(Yes).In case you want to come out of the environment where your own life/your wife/sister/any female is a target, and you are sick of wildland(Yes).In case you are sick of physical filth/dirt/stray dogs, cows and cats wandering around. (Yes)In case you are sick of the justice system, slow and corrupt. (Yes)In case you are sick of adulterated food/medicine/milk/(Yes)In case you are open to when your kids grow up and they marry interracial/religion/race, and you are okay (Yes)In case your kids join a gang and you are prepared to see the body in a morgue, (Yes)You are okay, your spouse has an affair. You kiss, hug and start life again with flowers(Yes)In case you are sick of the caste system, social systems, extreme injustice, (Yes)In case you are open to “ Gay relationship/marriage”(Yes).You are Okay with your five-year-old kid may call Child aid society that daddy/mom is bad. (Yes)In case you are okay, your father is a temple priest and well known religious leader and your daughter/son heads to other religion for conversion before the wedding. (Yes).In case you are okay, to hold your tongue when someone else daughter/son goes for conversion in mosque/Sikh/Hindu temples, you stand there and not criticize(Yes),Please wait when your turn comes. Your wife/husband may also say Bacho ki Khushi like liya sub karna parda ha. (Yes)With all the work, suffering and struggles when you sit down and do the math, It amounts to be nothing, you son did not finish high school, you are divorced now, daughter/son ran away with a bum, And you are okay with it. (Yes)Now son/daughter with two or three or maybe more kids wants to come back to live with you. Because the loving partner disappeared without a trace, he/she now misses you. Soon you mellowed and did not mind permanent freeloader. (Yes)Promptly you have answered all the questions: You may make up your mind.Now here is more data for your review to help you make a decision:Are there any success stories?Yes, there are success stories, those people are/were extremely smart, disciplined, and their teams were one of the very best. Their hard work could melt pure steel, and they are/were not complainers.Did not waste too much time on the phone/T.V./ Gossip/Parties/ and the list goes on.Rest danced around, hoping tomorrow be better. But nothing has changed in their lives, and a line just stayed a straight line on the graph.Well, ask yourself And :Why did the most significant land mass was more or less inhabited in the last?How come from extreme racial society it has become a polite society?We all had names “ Paki” “ Chinks” “ WOPS” now everyone is classified FOB, why?Has the white privilege gone now?Do we smell different than curry, now?Are you sure?Who is paying for all this health, high school education, and social programs? Is your friend is right when he/she tells you about this gravy train?My friend: You may be paying for education, even no one in your family goes to school. You may also be paying for the health care also may be indirect, one daddy came on a visitor visa and got his work done by a fake heart attack, and said goodbye to Canada, rest of the story is very long.Money does not grow on trees in Canada, or anywhere, at least we did not find anywhere.This is the most developed country in the world. Why are they recruiting immigrants?Why do “ educated” drive cabs/serve coffee and pump gas?Why do Canadians move to the USA?Why did the old pool of Europeans immigrants supply has become dry?Why did the doors to Asian immigrants become a bit more open?Why are taxes very high?Why now, a high percentage of Canadians cannot afford to retire and have a constant fear of survival?Why there are a few jobs with benefits, rest are contracted and mostly without benefits?Why more and more service are withdrawn and now you to have pay extra?Why more and more government services are contracted out?Now you must be burning inside to ask me, why did I move here?Because I had a death wish due to significant heartbreak, and the root cause was “ money,” I vowed I would turn a mountain upside down, to succeed or my body will go back.A word of caution:In my primary school in the Punjab region of India, my teacher told me this proverb:“A mouse found a small root of Turmeric, and he declared himself to a grocer.”I see so many nonqualified answers on Canada, some take a cake, for example, a person never lived a day here: But he/she dispensing advice on Canada.My person just got some paperwork done, maybe he came here once or not for a visit: He/she dispensing huge write up on Canadian living and above all this person announced and dare: Follow me next year I will write my success story.Seek advice from an excellent source.A little knowledge is a dangerous thing and so is too much knowledgeNow you have a tremendous amount of data; you can make your own decision.A footnote: There is hardly any manufacturing jobs are gone; most of the professions and excellent skilled jobs are protected.Now you are an educated guy/girl:Here is the formula:Nagi score assigns a weighted score to each item.Yes score do the same as aboveJuice in you score, do as same above, about your degree/papers, experience and family if you bring one.Fire in your belly score, do as same above.Now: Nagi score = Yes score+juice in you score+fire in your belly score.Be honest to yourself and assign correct scores and see the results.For me, fire in the belly was 100. Therefore, I did not worry about another factor. Our country at the time was impoverished, and for me, there was no hope for moving ahead in life plus I had another significant factor in my life to move here. I vowed either success or death, and I was ready to pay any price, even my life.May help you to make a decision.However, I could write another huge volume, when people from developing countries come here. There is a large set of issues in our lives from back home. In that case, this article will become huge.In case you do get the chance to come here.Welcome to Canada.Our family:Our family, two sons, two grandsons, Daadi ma, Daada, and our daughter(in law)My achievement in life: These two little monkeys, my best friends, and soul mates. I spend some quality times with them, and that the final reward for almost fifty years in this furnace or should we call deep freezer.A tiny footnote:I am known for brutal in honesty and telling the truth, and I know it hurts, that is why it could be both my success or failure factors. However, I did not sell snake oil and worried too much for views and upvotes if you do I appreciate it and thank you. BTW, these articles are in fact for my grandkids I intend to form as chapters in my book for them a gift of my life story so that they do not make same mistakes and suffer as my wife and I did.You want to see the real truth; all my friends did reasonably well back home because India exploded with growth for some time and I do wonder, was it worth it to pay a considerable price. Two of my childhood friends in India became one of the wealthiest two guys in a huge city, and when they walk into a posh clubs, most of the people stand up to greet them. Sure their parents were mega rich, and they inherited a lot, but they multiplied as if there is no tomorrow.Regards. Sam.People ask me in Canada, what is the biggest threat to India?I answer them: In modern times Indian trolls who are from small villages, most likely this may be the first generation who have completed high school in the dawn of history and aggravated a lot of general negativity towards India.No one can imagine the damage they have caused to India and also to extraordinarily high-quality and very bright, moderate, extremely knowledgeable, exceptionally articulate Indians.One Indian Quoran wrote to me in the personal note: How bad is the situation and to control this is everyone’s responsibility.FYI: I have gained a tremendous amount of respect for the Chinese and the Pakistani brothers and sisters right portion due to their outstanding communication skills.Some of their remarks/comment/criticism I will cherish even on the deathbed. They are unbelievably intelligent, smart, and they opened my eyes. In my writings, I have not come across yet one Pakistani who was vulgar, profane, out of control and writing utter nonsense unrelated to the discussion.Mr. Modi should control this filth of Indian trolls who are killing India and high-quality Indians. Well, physical garbage can wait, it is piling up, Swash Bharat from trolls.Take my word it will sink India deeper and faster. In private talks and personal communications with other writers, it is questionable behavior on the public forums.Also please try to keep American slang to yourself, these young kids are using this slang where it should not be used. For example, Dude, it is not the right word to address someone very senior to you in age. Even in the USA/Canada do not use these slang words in writing unless the person is your extreme friend.On a different topic:These are some of the most recent came from the Chinese brothers.Siau Liu10m ago · one upvote from Sam AroraThe writer is well versed in world history and also taking a non-Western interpretation of Chinese history and the rise of China. Being a keen student of a geopolitical and historical student, I congratulate with great respect the writer’s deep and profound understanding and appraisal of Chinese and world history.Sam Arora's answer to What will happen when China rules the world?Luli Kuokong1h ago ·Sam, write a book about contemporary China. With your first-hand experience and insights about China, your book will be very successful. You could as well be an ambassador of China.Sam Arora's answer to What will happen when China rules the world?Saira KhanDec 26 · 18 upvotes including Sam AroraThis was one of the best answers I read on Quora. Your story is so inspiring, sir! I am bookmarking it and I will always read it once in a while. I really want you to write a book on your journey to success and everything you went through, basically your life story, please! Please tell your wife to write a book too. I'll be the first one to buy both books. Thank you for writing this answer.Sam Arora's answer to How has your life changed after immigrating to Canada?Here is another helpful comment from a Canadian brother:Scott NewtonDec 26 · 4 upvotes including Sam AroraYou have enriched my country with your presence.Sam AroraDec 27thank you Mr. Newton, it is in my blood, to water the tree whose shade and food nourishes me. I am very thankful to Canada and senior Canadians for all the acceptance and opportunities. RegardssamReplyAbhijeet MishraDec 26 · 1 upvote from Sam AroraWow!, this can be the best compliment ever. I would be happiest if someday someone can say the same thing about it.Sam Arora's answer to How has your life changed after immigrating to Canada?

Solid marketing and Steve Bannon’s “Bottom Third Strategy.”Imagine you’re a decent white guy. Not necessarily valedictorian, but a smart guy, a good guy, and a hard worker. Absolutely not a racist. You’re not a political partisan—you’ve voted for some Republicans and some Democrats in your life—but you’re totally sick of corruption in Washington. You pay your dues, raise a family, and start looking forward to retirement.Then, in 2008, the bottom suddenly falls out of the economy. Your 401k crashes, you go underwater on your mortgage. You lose your job and your pension. You’re terrified. Somebody dropped the ball. Somebody has to pay.Meanwhile, there’s panic on Wall Street, and not just because Lehman Brothers collapsed. Many bankers are scared because if working-class and middle-class Americans figure out how the billionaire trust funders have been rigging the tax code, real estate fraudsters have been lying and manipulating the real estate markets and the casino bankers have been gambling with your pension and 401k money, they’ll want billionaire heads to roll.This was a crisis that the trust-funders and real estate fraudsters—oops, I mean “job creators”— absolutely had to prevent!And, with a little bit of razzle-dazzle, they could. They could get Joe Six-Pack back on their side.Along came Rick Santelli. One morning in January 2009, the CNBC bond and commodities analyst made a speech on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange that went viral. He ranted to the brand-new president, Barack Obama, that if he passes a proposed bailout of the “loser” taxpayers who were stupid enough to take out sub-prime loans, there would be a “Tea Party” revolt. (No, the Tea Party didn’t start as a grassroots protest by fed-up taxpayers, despite what Fox says. It was started in early 2009 by commodity traders at the top corporate financial news program on cable TV. The fed-up taxpayers were the dupes, as always.)Oh, and those sub-prime loans that so angered poor Rick Santelli? Banks were grotesquely incentivized by financial gamblers to strong-armed “losers” into taking out toxic mortgages, using a heck of a lot of fraud, so they could get huge commissions and the casino bankers could bundle the sub-primes into gold-plated turds called “asset-backed securities” that they could sell for big profits to your pension funds, gambling that home prices would keep going up forever, and fueling the 2007–2008 crash. Once everyone else started to see that these investments were shit, the Wall Street gamblers made billions more betting AGAINST them. Oh, you couldn’t get in on that bet? Darn.Heads they win, tails we lose.Of course, that’s not the story you heard on Fox Money. Their version is that losers on welfare (include tens of thousands of veterans) were swept up in nefarious Democrat plan to force poor old Citibank to give them all mortgages to buy six-bedroom houses they didn’t need.The real estate fraudsters couldn’t believe their luck. Everyone was buying Santelli’s rant! The corporate media played it over and over, from “leftist MSNBC” to “fair and balanced Fox News.” (Think Trump won “despite” the “leftist media”?)Now the big banks and mortgage scammers had a scapegoat: the “losers.”It turns out it’s super easy to make folks hate the “lesser haves.” Don’t worry about the guys at the top of the ladder—worry about the guys on the next rung down. They’re the socialists that are being paid by George Soros to take your job. They’re the real scammers who want something for nothing, not us! (It can’t possibly be that the guys on the next rung down are hard workers trying to provide for their families and who are just as disgusted as you are by the trust-funders who scam their way out of the army and into the Ivy League.)Lo and behold, the bankers got their bailouts and bonuses, and the “losers” got squat. All you had to do was make angry sounds on TV! The Tea Party was a huge success, and tons of corporate money poured in from bankers and billionaires who would like to continue writing their own laws (thanks Citizens United!). The “losers” didn’t have much of a Twitter presence, so they could hardly fight back.Santelli started it, but Trump campaign chairman Steve Bannon took anti-loserism up a notch with the “Bottom Third Strategy” that plowed through the 2016 election (or, as Bannon calls it publicly, “economic nationalism” or the “populist revolution”). Bannon’s target demographic was the 30–40% American voters who are A) white, and B) in the bottom two demographic categories of educational attainment: without a college degree and without a high school diploma.The message for this target group was simple: the bankers (like Bannon, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker, Hollywood producer, and Saudi Arabian agent) and real-estate developers (guess who) weren’t to blame. In fact, all the rigged games they’d been playing weren’t scams at all. They were what made America great! (Now show the people something shiny, like your supermodel wife and private airplane.) Success! Trump doesn’t dodge his taxes because the system is rigged for trust fund billionaires like him, he’s just way smarter than you losers!In fact, anyone trying to change the rules of the game—to make them even remotely fair—was not just a loser, but also a “leftist,” a “socialist,” and (believe it or not) a “globalist elite” of the “administrative Deep State.” (When you hear “Deep State,” think “competent professionals who might hold corrupt insiders accountable.” Precisely the opposite of what they tell the Bottom Third.)Bannon knew that, for decades, politicians on both the left and the right had been expecting way too much of the American people. He knew that what his Russian friends had been telling him for decades was true: Americans are lazy, stupid, and extremely easy to manipulate if you can just distract and entertain them. Then they’ll happily let you steal them blind.Conservatives said: if things aren’t going your way, it’s because you’re not working hard enough and taking advantage of America’s great opportunities. Take responsibility for yourself. Liberals said: if things aren’t going your way, it’s because the system is rigged for the lazy rich who inherit all their wealth instead of building it. Take responsibility for building a better system.Bannon and Trump had a better idea. Let’s stop expecting Americans to take responsibility for stuff. If thing’s aren’t going your way, it must be because of dirty refugees without any money or connections who barely speak the language.A lazy, entitled, emotionally immature, semi-literate, draft and tax-dodging rich boy couldn’t be the poster boy for hard work or intelligent reform, so why not dazzle them with scapegoats and beauty queens? We already know how much America loves idiotic reality shows like “The Bachelor” and “The Apprentice,” so how can we lose?They were right.And don’t think the liberals were all heroes in this scheme. They had a toxic, shouty minority of their own, without whom Bannon’s “anti-loserism” message could never have worked.Smug “social justice warrior” liberals added insult to injury by telling the white working class—whose wages had been stagnating or declining for decades—that they were losing a game that was actually rigged in their favor. It’s not hard to understand why so many working Americans might prefer a sleazy, tax- and draft-dodging sociopath who at least tells them they’re winners to a party that makes them feel like both losers AND cheaters.Now, not everyone bought Donny Bullshit’s gold spray-painted garbage. The vast majority of Americans with college degrees (whether they’re conservative, libertarian, or liberal) saw through the messaging, because they know how a strong capitalist economy actually works. It is a powerful system of rules-based competition, trust, transparency, and controlled risk that rewards smart, hard-working entrepreneurs and drives real market-based innovation. It is NOT a coke-fueled game of Russian Roulette run by trust-fund brats and slimy, self-promoting frauds who pay off their team of lawyers, lobbyists, and politicians to write the rules for them.But Steve Bannon didn’t need them. He realized that, to win elections, all you need is the “unified bottom third.” Over-educated liberals and conservatives have a tendency to overthink things, overfeel things, and tear their own movements apart (usually by acting like smug assholes). The bottom third, though, were steady, and they rarely look beyond the messaging they see on TV.Even though folks like Bannon, Trump, and Mnuchin were not in the Bottom Third (Bannon and Mnuchin are in the globalist ultra-elite of both Wall Street AND Hollywood), they could easily connect with their targets based on flimsiest thread that tied them together: their “patriotism.” The guys who want to take away the tax breaks for Ivanka’s inheritance? America-hating, success-hating socialists.The Bottom Third strategy was perfected by Internet scammers over a decade ago. Know why those e-mails from billionaire Nigerian princes contain so many spelling errors? It’s not because the scammers are semi-literate, it’s because their targets are. Misspelled subject lines, like misspelled MAGA memes, are great filters. They are quickly dismissed by educated people, so those folks won’t stick around to expose the scam. The scam doesn’t actually work if you use reason, evidence, and grammatical sentences. You just have to dazzle the folks who are easy to dazzle.Through Cambridge Analytica, Bannon targeted those Americans who are particularly open to authoritarian messaging, such as the religious right. This strategy was essential to diverting anger away from the powers that be, or—even better—persuading them that obeying billionaire bankers and real-estate barons was actually heroic. (BTW, since his victory in the US, Bannon has now turned his attention to a new fun project: reviving the authoritarian nationalistic Catholic right wing in Europe that formed the ideological and political foundation of 20th century fascism in Italy and national socialism in Germany. As you might recall, that didn’t turn out so well for anyone the last time it was tried.)If the Bottom Third is feeling scared and their lives are feeling more and more desperate, it’s easy to convince them it’s because of the black leftist (probably secretly Muslim and not even American) in the Oval Office who probably only got elected because of—Chicago thuggery? Yeah, that’ll work. And if it’s not because of him, it must be because of the dirty immigrants who have no tax accountants or rich daddies. THEY’RE the folks the system is totally rigged for. Or it’s because of some insane criminal Deep State conspiracy (Vince Foster? Uranium One? Benghazi? Emails?) that Hillary is masterminding. (Evidence of existence, let alone criminality, is not necessary. They won’t even question it.)This fact-free “up-is-down” marketing worked like a charm as long as it was entertaining, and today the Bottom Third outrage media machine is running at full tilt. The most popular cable news channel and national newspaper chains are fully on board. (You can watch it yourself. Next time a lazy rich Trump crony is caught self-dealing, stealing, sex-trafficking, defrauding, or rigging the game, turn on Fox News to watch the focus shift to nameless, penniless foreigners or smug college liberals.) Twitter is Trump’s bitch. The Russian troll farms supply steady income to Putin’s nihilist millennials. (You might be able to see some of their handiwork in this thread if you look for it.)If Rick Santelli is the Paul Revere of the Bottom Third Revolution and Steve Bannon is its Thomas Paine, Donald Trump is its George Washington. The spokesman for the bankrupt Trump Mortgage, LLC is the master of all the skills the Bottom Third Strategy requires: turd-gilding, TV grandstanding, punching down, cheating the little guy, race baiting, scamming, bullying “losers,” taking credit for the work of others, and lying as easily as he breathes. (And, contrary to popular belief, he actually did hold a very important elective office prior to the presidency.)He’s the only one brave enough to say, “None of your problems are your fault, and they are certainly not the fault of our beautiful bankers or real estate developers. They’re the fault of the Mexicans, the Muslims, the dirty asylum seekers, and, of course, those “globalist socialist elites” in Washington, whoever they are. (It doesn’t matter; they won’t check.) Plus, he’s got tons of awesome real estate advice! Did your property values crash in 2008? Well then you’re just a loser, because you didn’t have a pipeline to Putin’s kleptocrats who need to offshore their stolen money. (The technical term is money laundering, and for losers like you and me, it would be a felony.)Apparently, Steve Bannon was right, and his Bottom Third has absolutely no problem buying into this insane narrative. (Especially with the helpful propaganda from Fox and conspiracy radio.) As we all learned in high school, we can always count on a third of the kids not to do the homework. The folks who tried to rein in the out-of-control financial industry and who saved the collapsing American automobile industry and its 7.25 million jobs (Barack Obama, Elizabeth Warren, Barney Frank, Bernie Sanders, Steve Rattner, et al) are really “loony lefties” in the “administrative state.” (Remember how Obama nationalized all of the hospitals under Obamacare and turned General Motors into a state-run communist collective? Yeah, me neither.)But that guy from TV who cheats on his taxes, hides behind American bankruptcy courts (6 times now and counting), started receiving his $480 million inheritance when he was 3 years old, steals money from his own family “charity” to buy a giant portrait of himself, hides his tax returns, and has never done a hard day’s work in his life? Yeah, that guy’s totally got your back.Don’t believe the Trump administration is in the pocket of the predatory banks? Just Google Mick Mulvaney. Don’t think the legal system is rigged for rich frauds like Trump? Try doing subcontractor work for TrumpCo. See if the legal system helps you recover your money when Trump only pays you 1/3 of what he owes you and tells you to sue for the rest.The success of Bannon’s “Bottom Third” Strategy is indisputable. His company, Cambridge Analytica “microtargeted” this group relentlessly on social media (by harvesting and weaponizing personal Facebook data without asking permission), and the results speak for themselves:The importance of Cambridge Analytica’s manipulation campaign can hardly be overstated. Trump won the 2016 election by 70,000 swing votes in a few swing states. Cambridge Analytica harvested 30 MILLION certified voters through Facebook, and targeted them with fake news tailored to their individually profiled fears and trigger points. Even if these fake stories worked only one time out of every 300, that was enough. For the Bottom Third, it was The Truman Show times 30,000,000. (Think “Lock Her Up (TM),” “Crooked Hillary (TM),” “Deep State (TM)” and “Drain the Swamp (TM)” were spontaneous memes from the brilliant mind of DJT? Think again.) The Trump campaign fed them exactly what it wanted them to hear, whether it was true or not. If you were an NRA member, it was how Hillary wants to eliminate the Second Amendment. If you were an elderly Catholic, it was how she wants to rip third trimester babies from their mothers’ wombs. If you were libertarian, it was wild exaggerations about “big government” under Hillary. If you were a millennial liberal, it was how she stabbed Bernie in the back. Trump, the master of cheap labor trafficking, did it again: people from across the political spectrum happily shared his memes in their own personal outrage-amplifying social media echo chambers. For free. (Just wakin’ up the sheeple.) Putin’s pathetic cyber campaign investigated by Mueller was a drop in the bucket by comparison.As H. L. Mencken said, “No one has ever gone broke underestimating the intelligence of the American public.” Donald Trump and the American kleptocracy needed another bailout, and the Bottom Third gave it to them from their own pockets as they cheered in their red hats. Trump and the Republicans then promptly turned around and gave the casino bankers and trust funders (not to mention the Trump Family and Trump’s “Golden Cabinet”) the biggest handout in history, with top-tier tax cuts and the doubling of the Estate Tax exemption. And the Bottom Third didn’t even squeal. Big cuts to my Social Security and health care? Bring ’em on, as long as it hurts the guy on the next rung down. Apparently, that’s how you “stick it to Hillary and the elites.”Trump loyalists love that he is “a great businessman.” It’s part of the act. I just happen to live in the town where Ivanka and her brothers grew up. Coincidentally, it’s also the town where George H. W. Bush was born and raised. (Oddly enough, it’s also just 10 miles from where Bill and Hillary currently live.) It’s also the CEO capital of the world. By all accounts, it’s where American blue-blood conservatism and business leadership is manufactured.But it also just happens to be the world headquarters for the WWE. Of the dozens of Fortune 500 CEOs he could have chosen among my neighbors, guess which one Trump chose for his cabinet? (Hint: she also was the biggest contributor to the Trump Foundation, which was recently exposed as a corrupt family slush fund and consequently shut down. Gotta pay to play, I guess.) None of it makes any sense until you realize it’s all a razzle-dazzle show to exploit Steve Bannon’s target audience.Most of the CEOs I know are smart, honest, decent, hard-working people, and genuinely good parents. They have no tolerance for the Wall Street gamblers (because they’re careless) and trust funders (because they’re lazy). They mistrust Trump because he’s both. They care about the people on the lower rungs and want to lift them up, not just find new ways to rip them off. They know the difference between building a business and mere self-promotion. They are disgusted by Trump’s efforts to hide his taxes and keep his finances above the law. A strong company doesn’t hide its numbers.They also care about the American brand, and know that it takes more to maintain it than wearing red caps with slogans. Since Trump took office, we’ve dropped below all of our chief competitors on the gold standard of international reputation, the Anholt-GfK Roper Nation Brands Index, for the first time since George W. Bush left office. This means less influence, less investment, less credibility, and less power. (See What do business people think of Donald Trump?)If you are sickened by how Trump and Bannon have degraded the American brand, poisoned our conversations, and normalized self-dealing and corruption, don’t take it out on the people they exploit, or even those who support the Republican Party for other reasons. Calling Trump supporters racist or stupid, or referring to them as a “cult,” only hurts the country and further divides us. Don’t just laugh when they say that the reality TV trust fund billionaire on his third wife is “just a regular guy who gets me.” Don’t just roll your eyes when they repeat his idiotic and cruel rally memes. And don’t fall into the “Who’s a bigger liar, Hillary or Donald?” trap.Talk to them about the things that bind us as Americans—a love of justice, competence, fairness, strength, decency, prosperity, and freedom. I’ll bet most Trump supporters value those things as highly as you do. Convince them that you’re on the same team trying to really make America great.

The United States is a diverse country of approximately 320 million people. While there are certain traits shared by many Americans—e.g., a strong pride in one’s country, a belief in the superiority of the American system, support for individual liberty, and more negatively, perhaps a lack of interest in other parts of the world—there is no such thing as a typical American. You might be able to speak generally about certain parts of the US, e.g., a typical New Yorker, a typical Californian, a typical Texan, but even then, those states have populations as large as many nations and are themselves very diverse.Certainly, while there is racism and violent crime such as rape in the United States, all that also happens in other parts of the world. I’ve traveled pretty widely, and would not regard the US as anywhere near the most racist or rape-prone societies in the world (Australia and Belgium, for example, both have higher rates of rape than the United States). Are some Americans selfish and arrogant? Absolutely, but many more are humble and generous—no nation is more charitable as a percentage of GDP, see These are the world's most generous countries. Finally, America is a competitive society compared to most other countries, but more because people tend to work very hard to get ahead and pursue the “American Dream,” not because people are bashing others. America is not perfect, and your question hits upon some of the negative aspects of our society, but for most people, the positives outweigh the negatives, as otherwise, 1,000,000+ people wouldn’t be immigrating legally (plus an unknown amount of illegal immigrants) each year.Now, to Trump. Trump is not a typical American in any sense of the word. He was born richer than all but a few thousand people on earth, inherited a fortune, and built a real estate empire. He has been married three times, filed multiple bankruptcies, and has built a media persona based on being a larger-than-life loudmouth business genius. These are not standard American experiences. Trump provides entertainment because he lives a life that even Americans view as outlandish. He is, at most, an extreme caricature of a certain type of American wealth (what some people call “new money,” as opposed to stereotypical snooty “old money), but he is not someone who normal people look at and say “he’s just like me.”Trump’s campaign has been successful because (1) Trump is a master of getting himself attention and (2) he has hit upon a nerve in American society. On the first point, the right-wing Republican Party has tended to nominate grandfatherly, boring candidates who are easily characterized as out of touch. Boring candidates don’t make news, especially in the largely left-wing-oriented media. But Trump has been in the public eye more or less for the last 35 years, and knows how to manipulate the media better than just about anyone. He knows that by saying outrageous things, he can get people talking about him. He’s applied this approach masterfully, and has dominated the news for the past year; even people who hate Trump can’t stop talking about him, essentially giving him hundreds of millions of dollars in free advertising that his opponents could not compete with.And on the second point, right now, a lot of Americans are angry: if you’re someone like me with an advanced degree and a good job, life’s never been better. But a lot of people without college education and/or working in blue-collar industries have seen jobs eliminated, and those who are working are often seeing their incomes flat or declining, rather than increasing. Right now, nearly 40% of the country over the age of 16 is not in the workforce: many of those people are elderly/retired, some are disabled, and some are parents staying home to raise children, but too many are people who want to work, but haven’t been able to find employment for extended periods of time. These same people see that Washington, D.C has somehow become the richest part of the country, and that there is a whole class of government workers/leaders and business elites who have their own set of rules and a vision for the country that is often radically different than what average people want. In sum, they see a United States that is increasingly corrupt and not even attempting to hide this fact. Trump detected this mood better than anyone else, and that’s why he is the Republican nominee for president. As another poster rightly noted, he is offering simple—and often incorrect—themes, such as blaming immigrants and Muslims for the problems affecting the country, and claiming that he has easy fixes at his disposal. There are some Americans who are racist/dislike foreigners, and this message appeals to them. But there are many more Americans that like Trump for the simple fact that rather than offering more platitudes and promises of more government, he is calling out the corruption of the Washington elite.