IF YOU'RE HAPPY, YOU'RE NOT CRAZY

We are reminded that Trump is “white” (though the evidence is that he is a victim of fake tanning and some suggest it is to hide jaundice), heterosexual (though evidently not mainstream since most men don’t go around grabbing women between their legs), wealthy (though many experts insist he has only converted his inherited fortune into a legal tangle that is impenetrable in terms of profit and never reported publicly), and Christian.  There is no evidence that he is Christian.  Except that he is an enemy of Islam in a medieval sense.

He does not attend church, speak of God, pray in public, pledge to the support of a church, or show values and practices praised by Jesus.  Trump’s father’s middle name was “Christ” (not “Christian”), but it doesn’t seem to have any more significance than the fact that one of Obama’s names was Hussein.  The Billy Graham dynasty has avoided Trump.

Trump’s true god is Mammon, and it appears that it is also the true god of America.  This is not a subsistence culture, except for those who can’t help it.  In a subsistence or hardship culture Christianity is meant to be a counterweight to despair , a brake and limit on those who pursue Mammon at the expense of others.  When the going gets good, the Christians get corrupt, selfish, and sequestered in enclaves.  Their sacred cow is the Golden Calf.

Remnant Christianity in America supports “simple living,” small houses, “slow food,” and closet cleaning.  But the last of the Shakers is gone.  People who value these life-ways are likely to turn to Buddhism if they can figure out what it is.

America is very clever at converting the simple into the profitable.  For instance, plain food — uncontaminated as it would be naturally — is now labeled “organic” at a steep markup.  “Writing” is such a swamp of promises that a whole class of writing teachers, marketers, ghosts, and mock-publications that only print online for no pay, that writers have been converted from a class of wealth makers for the bourgeois into a class of parasites and panderers.  Saddest of all is the descent of universities from places of learning to corporate dependents and athletic gladiators.  What is a co-ed dorm but another way to grab people between their legs?

Accusations of wickedness (not convictions as our laws require) allow those in power to incarcerate without evidence or conviction, seize assets, and delay trials in the way we used to reserve for our enemies when at war.  We herd together poor people and “detain” them in camps, even when they are children.  Adult poor people must sleep in the streets as they always have done in subsistence countries.  If the “Christians” try to feed these people, they are arrested for making a mess and too much noise.  

It has always been true that those in power can claim that up is down and black is white and in is out, but it has never been so blatantly unprovable now that video records exist and the means of broadcasting are literally in everyone’s pockets.  (That’s hyperbole — not everyone has a smart phone with which to monitor cops and presidents.)  But plainly obvious evidence doesn't seem to matter.  If you have a clever and powerful lawyer, as all the zombies called corporations do, then the contradictions can be suppressed — at least removed from Google, Facebook, et al.

But now that Big Data is cleverly used as a marketing tool, there’s no use in trying to hide in the crowd.  The claim is that the number crunchers only deal in anonymous totals, but the truth is that identities can be discovered by reverse engineering.  Also, by face recognition, though Google image presents every old woman with big glasses and frizzy hair as “Mary Scriver.”  She buys books instead of shoes, very suspicious behavior.  She is not on Facebook or Medium, cancelled both, though Medium failed to take down one post because it was about sex and religion, and thus pulls readers.

People who read my blog are generally not aware that I can see their location and the moment they are reading by consulting monitors on my computer.  The problem is that there are at least three sources of statistics I can read without having to pay (paying means accuracy and detail) and none of them agree.  On any given day (which is an interval that can be challenged on a turning planet) the number of “hits” range from 80 to several thousand.  I’ve never made an attempt to reconcile them in terms of whether they at least go up and down in tandem.  

They say that if numbers are consistently high, one can turn them into profit, but I haven’t tried.  Once I signed up for ads, but after my careful efforts at accuracy and integrity, the ads would be for crackpot stuff that directly contradicted what I wrote.  Since I often write about “religion,” I suddenly discovered how much fake “religion” is actively pushed at people.

The marketing of wealth is rather subtle but always based on the European competitive notion of cultures against each other.  Until the wave of books explaining historical climaxes and their subsequent collapses, I had not understood — for instance — about the long bloody confrontation between England and Holland when great sailing ships were plying the seas to bring home "wealth", like blue and white porcelain, silk or tulip bulbs — none of them necessary for a full and comfortable life.  

More blatant was the capture of other people, who DID provide ease and comfort for their owners — not just wealth.  They even provided descendants as in the case of Thomas Jefferson.  If we don’t criticize him for that particular aspect of wealth, are we justified in frowning at Trump et al for paying subsistence wages for menial work?  How else would we define “menial”?  What is sufficient compensation for scrubbing public toilets?  At least we’ve given up — for the most part — pay toilets, because they are an incentive for shoppers who have to drive long distances to big box shopping centers, which causes them to fortify themselves with all sorts of beverages to occupy the cup-holders built into the better cars, though the holders have nothing to do with making the car operate better.

The capture of cars is a heavy penalty for those dependent on them in a place like Montana.  My principle is that if the vehicle is sufficiently old and moldy, it becomes invisible.  This is a heresy when the most dedicated American ceremony is washing the car.

My greatest wealth is my education.  Even if I were slammed into solitary confinement, even if I had barely enough money to eat, even if all my books were seized (Why would they be?  They’re not worth anything anymore.),  I would still know what I know.  And it would make me happy.

Those who have been asked to decide whether Trump is insane or simply a bad man, (formal associations of psychiatrists) say that insanity is defined ultimately by how happy the person is.  Otherwise, why would they employ a shrink.  This is a monetary definition.  

If you’re happy, you’re not crazy, the shrinks say.  So there.  I’m as sane as Trump — just not as greedy.  I’m white (do freckles count?), “het“ (does celibacy count?), and poor.  The issue of Christian is open since I eschew institutions and am rather indiscriminate about practice.  I mean, I don’t pray, but I smudge.  (Incense is Catholic.)