What amazes me, beyond all reason, is how often people who ought to think rationally can consistently see four fingers and call them five.

You know, I’m not all that good with math. Certainly never good enough to manage Trig in any useful way. There’s some amount of magic in making long formulae play together in complex methods that explain the universe (or at least try).

That said, there’s some basic math I consider easy to understand. Bistro math, geometry, statistical analysis (in its basic form). These numbers make sense to me because they define real-world aspects of life.

I understand the mathematics required to fill a stage with scenery and (except for cases of wishful thinking) the rooms in my house.

I can calculate a paycheck and figure out my taxes, even with all the arcane roadblocks the IRS has thrown in my way. And at the moment I’m solidly on the way to being debt free, with the exception of my mortgage, car and student loans. I don’t have much fun, while I’m paying down the debts, but I’m getting to the theatre I want to see and I’m going to a big name concert this summer to see two bucket list artists, for which I paid cash to cover the cost of the tickets. Heck, I just bought a serious in-window AC unit using my debit card, and I can still feed myself this week.

Overall, I’m in pretty good shape, thanks to my own personal math ability.

In 1984, a book that ought to be required reading instead of a frequently banned book, Orwell says “War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.” (Read more at: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/quotes/g/georgeorwe141783.html) How this cautionary tale got to be considered an instruction manual to manipulate our own people is beyond my understanding, but it’s all right there, in doublethink and torture:

1.
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
2.
Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.
3.
In the end the Party would announce that two and two made five, and you would have to believe it. It was inevitable that they should make that claim sooner or later: the logic of their position demanded it. Not merely the validity of experience, but the very existence of external reality was tacitly denied by their philosophy.
4.
And when memory failed and written records were falsified—when that happened, the claim of the Party to have improved the conditions of human life had got to be accepted, because there did not exist, and never again could exist, any standard against which it could be tested.
5.
And perhaps you might pretend, afterwards, that it was only a trick and that you just said it to make them stop and didn’t really mean it. But that isn’t true. At the time when it happens you do mean it. You think there’s no other way of saving yourself and you’re quite ready to save yourself that way. You want it to happen to the other person. You don’t give a damn what they suffer. All you care about is yourself.

http://www.sparknotes.com/lit/1984/quotes.html.

It is this core belief that the average voter is too stupid to notice the truth that drives Trump’s rise to power. How he came to be this close to the highest single office in this country is a work of absolute intent and the fault of every voter who ever believed a lie based in misdirection and greed.

The Seven Broken Guardrails of Democracy The American republic was long safeguarded by settled norms, now shattered by the rise of Donald Trump.

Note that I have a bunch of problems with the Atlantic article, but it comes close enough that it’s worth the read.

When we are fed daily on the importance of the latest football win or the current Survivor, when cooking shows and vacuously clean, expurgated music become the manna of the masses, we have already succumbed to the goals. Even the outrageously conspiratorial sites that urge us to reject medicine and science as somehow suspicious, play into the hands of men who give a damn only for their own personal economy, and to hell with everyone else.

It’s how Romney got close (if only that darned hidden camera hadn’t caught him in the lies), and how Trump will win.

Now we hear that we have to reject, utterly, the Media, because they offer nothing but lies. Nobody messes with Big Brother, nobody messes with Trump. Nobody messed with Hitler or Mussolini either.

Is this what people really, truly want for this country? Are we so very broken that the only way to fix us is to take the country over Trump’s knee so we can be spanked back into submission like good little worker bees?

Those of us who see this campaign for what it truly is are simply amazed that it got this far, because we’ve seen it coming for years. Those of us who can’t imagine never thought for one minute that it might happen here, because this is AMERICA!!! Land of the Free, Home of the Brave.

I dearly love this country, but if Trump wins I will have to leave it, because it won’t be my country anymore. The fascists will have won. If you’re not looking for a way out, you’re still in denial. If not this year, then maybe we’ve gotten a four-year reprieve. I don’t think so, though. The GOP have until 2020 to fix the laws so that no matter what the census says, their gerrymandered majorities will be unbeatable, fixed in place, and with the SCOTUS under their firm control, that will be it for the Constitution as well.

If you don’t believe that’s the end game, you’re part of the problem. Be part of the solution instead.