It's OK to be dumb, as long as it is natural. Just like with Donald Stump. He's so endearing in his stupidity that I occasionally feel pity for the guy.
But this message is for you, not for Dozy Don.
When you have anger, when you're feeling constantly disgruntled, and the world doesn't seem to be going your way, the first thing to do is admit your problem, then break it down into smaller problems that are easier to fix than dealing with the whole caboodle.
Start be admitting you are angry that you can't have the fancy life that Hollywood keeps telling you you should have, that you should strive to be like all these famous actors and actresses. You can't afford that kind of life, or you don't have the smarts or the looks, or that you are too old to learn new tricks....Abandon these illusions, come down to earth, and take a good look at your life. Are you happy? Probably not, otherwise you wouldn't be angry at everything around you. Stop checking your social media accounts - I don't have any - because they are likely to raise your blood pressure and get you angrier. Again, take a good look at your life: Are you content? Are you generally satisfied? Happy? and try to divorce your immediate life from everything going on.
I have always believed that one's happiness is like the shell of a tortoise: You carry it with you all the time. Moving, changing spouses, winning the lottery, evicting all the foreigners you're told are bad people, hating all the time.... none of that will bring you happiness. "Stretch your legs to the size of your carpet" is one of my favorite sayings. It underlines the need to be satisfied with what you have and never believe that your life will somehow be better because of changes to the outside environment. Only a change inside will affect your sense of happiness, and that change requires accepting who you are and accepting your life as it is.
By admitting your anger problem, you are half way into a solution.
Then admit that you are dumb. MAGA is really for dumb ignorant people with little education. Education, unfortunately in the US, is meant to be a tool to get a job. That is fine. But that is not real education, it's more like training to do something. Real education has a broader scope: it means to teach you about yourself, your history, where you come from, your environment, your country, other countries, the material world (science and technology)... How can we live a full live if we don't know what we are made of? This kind of education means to be enlightened, informed, knowing, learned, and yes, civilized.
You are probably religious. That's your prerogative. You have the right to believe in anything you wish. But know that religion puts you in one box - there are thousands of boxes out there - and tells you all the other boxes are wrong and only yours is correct. This is really silly because religions cannot all be right, and who the hell knows which one is THE correct one. In fact, none of them is correct. All of them are bullshit stories and myths from our primitive past, and it saddens me deeply that some people are still trying to create new religions, when we know from thousands of years of recorded history that they have all failed at improving humanity's lot: The human species is the most violent species that has ever walked the surface of the earth, and thousands of religions over thousands of years have not changed one iota in our violence and cruelty.
So if you are religious, start by admitting that you are drifting into an illusory world where you are promised happiness AFTER you die, in some heaven or paradise. Why not search for happiness right here and now? By promising you eternal happiness AFTER you die, religion sedates you into a state of conformism and inaction... it tells you "there is no point trying since you'll get everything you want AFTER you die. Religion also tells you that your religion is the best, while all the others suck. It draws lines and borders between communities, the us versus them mentality that spirals down into hatred. This is exactly what Donald Dumb and MAGA have done to you.
If you are not religious, then you are well on your way to happiness.
Because you are angry and dumb, you are an easy target for the streety elites like Donald Hump, the MAGA-GOP establishment, Fochs Ewes, the religious establishment and other criminal-minded thugs posing as altruistic humanistic intellectuals who appeal to your most basic primitive impulses: Hate others, hate people who look different, hate immigrants, etc. They are so good at exploiting your stupidity and anger that they manage with extreme ease to channel xenophobia and racism into your ignorant closed mind.
Finally, a word on conservatism. Conservative people are infected with fear. Fear of change. They like things the way they were handed down to them, and never question them. But questioning and doubting is the essence of being human. That is what differentiates us from all other living organisms: Trees, bugs, viruses, worms, cats, dogs..... never reflect and question their existence. Only humans do. So when religion and its twin sister political ideology tell you to have "faith", they are basically asking you to suspend your reason, stop asking questions (since they have all the answers, albeit fake, for you) and follow them blindly. But life and the universe are in a constant state of change. Anyone who tells you that things as created by some creator - or are imposed by some dictator - to stay the way they are forever is either more stupid than you or is trying to fool you, because those who like the status quo are benefiting from it, and that is why they don't want to change. Change carries the potential - only a potential - to disrupt. But we cannot escape it. It is ongoing as we breathe. So, it is much more advantageous to be mentally ready for change, and not always react to it as if it were the plague. That ties up with my earlier advice to be accepting, to be content, to go with the flow of change.
Alllow me to quote in full what John Stuart Mill to once said abut Conservatism:
“I never meant to say that the Conservatives are generally stupid. I meant to say that stupid people are generally Conservative. I believe that is so obviously and universally admitted a principle that I hardly think any gentleman will deny it. Suppose any party, in addition to whatever share it may possess of the ability of the community, has nearly the whole of its stupidity, that party must, by the law of its constitution, be the stupidest party; and I do not see why honorable gentlemen should see that position at all offensive to them, for it ensures their being always an extremely powerful party. I know that I am liable to a retort, and an obvious one enough; and as I do not wish to allow any honorable gentleman the credit of making it, I make it myself. It may be said that if stupidity has a tendency to Conservatism, sciolism, or half-knowledge, has a tendency to Liberalism. Something might be said for that, but it is not at all so clear as the other. There is an uncertainty about sciolists; we cannot count upon them; and therefore they are a less dangerous class. But there is so much dense, solid force in sheer stupidity, that any body of able men with that force pressing behind them may ensure victory in many a struggle, and many a victory the Conservative party has gained through that power”.
I can't help but see Donald Trump's conservative movement in that light: His force stems from his inflexible stupidity and pretense to know everything, while the lesser force, the tentativeness of the liberals comes from their humility at admitting that they don't know everything. In other words, to be conservative is to have no knowledge, to be stiff in one's ideas and be stupid because there is no room for nuance, change or difference. But to be liberal is a little, not by much, better, because to be half-knowledgeable, uncertain (never dogmatic), unreliable is a humble admission that they are not sure about things, AND that is what makes them less dangerous. While conservatives are so sure of themselves, so dense, so inflexible in their stupidity. Nature shows us over and over that to be imprisoned in one inflexible configuration (conservative) is the surest way to extinction. In contrary, diversity of configurations ensures survival when things change.
If you've never studied biology, know that sexual reproduction emerged to force diversity. In asexual reproduction, the organism and the parent are virtually identical: They are clones of one another. So if the environment changes and that configuration happens to be incompatible with it, both the parent and the progeny die off. In sexual reproduction, the organism is forced to seek another organism or configuration with which to hybridize its own and create a new configuration that never existed before. This constant search for difference and change in sexual reproduction ensures some probability of compatibility with a changing environment, and hence a better chance at success and permanence.
Therefore, conservatives are intellectually asexual reproducers, while liberals are intellectually sexual reproducers. And please, do not, in you brainwashed intellectual wasteland, confound the scientific meaning of "sexual" with the common meaning we attribute to it in culture.
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