Fake You All!

It's everywhere you look. You wanted to change your life so you decided to become vegan. No problem. You don't have to give up eggs, meat, or cheese because there are smart people out there willing to give you eggs, meat, and cheese that will not conflict with your becoming vegan. Add some chemicals, take some vegan food, tart it up a bit, and voila! eggs, meat, and cheese -- as much as you want without cheating or giving up being vegan. You've been faked. The world has been faked and lines up to play the vegan game with faked eggs, meat, and cheese.

The same goes for the gluten free crowd. A little almond meal, ground up flax seeds, and a touch of gluten-free flour made from grains that do not contain gluten stirred together and mashed up with chemicals and substitutions that do not contain gluten and you have bread. The bread is mealy and gritty and doesn't taste all that good since you left out all the spices and chemicals or other substitutes and dyes made of foods that also do not contain gluten to maintain your gluten free status, and you will get used to the off flavor or the hint of chemicals that comes through when all the ingredients are baked up together at sufficient heat. After all, you don't want to look like you've gone back on your pledge to go gluten free or pretend that changing your whole lifestyle isn't worth the struggle to appear to being going along. What does it matter that you look like you're still going along with the majority of the pack while giving up gluten for your health and to prolong your life?

It's popular to go along with the rest of the world who have decided it is best to fake it until you make it. Food is just one area where faking it is acceptable. Nothing is worth the struggle to give up whatever you grew up with and nothing is worth giving up the appearance of going with the crowd. You are strong. You are ingenious. You are adaptable. You can fake it until you make it.

There is no part of life that is immune to the philosophy that faking it is acceptable until what you look like you're doing will finally catch up with doing what you were faking all along. After all, the ends justify the means.

Doesn't it?

We lie on our resumes, padding the facts with half truths and outright lies to fake it until we make it. Who's going to know? You're new at the job, fresh out of training or school, and it takes time to get up to speed. You are willing to fake it until you make it, or at least until your manic study habits catch up with the person you're replacing has clued you in on what to watch out for and whom you need to avoid until you're up to speed. You pray every morning, noon, and night that you will be able to cram years of study into reading the stack of books that educate you on what you need to do. The universe owes you a favor -- or at least the person who hired you for the position owe you for that gift or favor you did for them to get hired in the first place. The same goes for promotions and newly created positions that you maneuvered yourself into because you need the money, need the prestige, or simply need to get away from the hole you dug for yourself with your attitudes and/or lip. You faked it until you made it this far, so why not fake it until you make it wherever you go or whatever you do?

It's not a crime (yet until you've been caught) and it's certainly not going to cost a person their life because you haven't faked it as a nurse until you felt confident you could fake it as a doctor. Okay, the diplomas on your new office wall were created in a computer, but you have at least a decade of working under some egotistic doctor and making the doctor look good while you did all the heavy lifting and closed his operations. No one could leave the patient with a fine scar that disappears with time the way you did. After all, you turned your sewing skills from cloth to people and the results have garnered the doctor kudos and awards for the fine stitchery. He never told anyone he couldn't sew a straight seam if it killed him and you saved him from criticism far too many times for him to fess up now. How would it look if his patients knew a nurse had finished his surgery and left a fine, nearly invisible scar? The doctor couldn't justify his high fee and there is no way the doctor is going to give up the awards and professional kudos you earned, so there is no way the doctor is going to refund the fees or give you a rise in salary. The doctor faked it and you made it happen. It's a win-win situation and no one willing gives that up, certainly not you.

There is no part of life where someone isn't faking it until they have made it. No position, office, restaurant, cafe, or arena is free of the fakes, especially when the faking ended with success. When faking didn't end with making it, there are plenty of other paths to take. Some end in death from too many drugs or tangling with the wrong person that ended with tears and death. After all, faking it until you make it is not without cost. To everything there is a cost -- not only with magic but with every single venture undertaken in the name of faking it until you've made it. With life -- and with faking it -- there is risk. It's a gamble and sometimes gambles pay off. Ever hear of junk bonds? Horse races? The first gender reassignment surgeries? Prospecting? Divorce? Life? Money market trades? Bad reviews? Blind dates? Arranged marriages?

When we get down to it, life is about risk. Life is a gamble. There are people who have power and are willing to exercise that power to fake it until they make it . . . no matter who or what it costs. In the end, when all else fails, fake the data, fudge the truth, cite an anonymous source, set someone else up for the frame so you can get away with whatever you want when the fake is discovered or when it fails. Humanity is wired to look for the brighter side of things, to be positive, to make the best of a bad situation -- or a bad fake -- and to keep going. Sure, there will be suicides and deaths, but who will miss a few people, except for the ones who knew them best. Nothing is guaranteed except for death and taxes; everyone knows that.

If nothing else, faking it until you make it can be chalked up to sacrifice in the name of a greater good or some god or famous person, and wars are good vehicles for sacrifice in the name of the greater good. It doesn't matter which side you chose as long as you died for a cause. Even if you didn't believe in the cause and were drafted, none of it matters because your death will be numbered among the other clueless and numberless dead where someone will be ready to fake a reason until the people believe it. When the people who know the truth are gone, history will remember. So what if history is made up by your enemies as long as there are gullible people who remain and will spew the slogans they read or were taught until the truth is no longer relevant.  It doesn't matter if history is written by the winners because the historian with the best story will be read and repeated drowning out the truth and those who wrote and knew about the truth. The weight of evidence is in the loudness and prevalence of the voices. The voices of truth that remain will either give up or they will be criticized, reviled, and buried when their positions are taken away and their truth called into question by the loudest voices and the strongest bullying or at least by whoever has enough money and power to destroy the evidence of the truth until only the false history remains and has passed into the realm of fairy tales and deluded scholars.

All that remains will be those faking it until they make it -- or at least convince those who have been paid and derailed with some bright new toy. Truth doesn't matter as long as faking it until you make it is the first long step into the abyss of ignorance and popularity. Everyone remembers the famous, especially those who die while faking it. In the end, they faked it until they made it -- posthumously -- and history will write it so.

That is all. Disperse.

Does Love Trump Hate?

Throughout the latter part of the campaign season just past as Hillary and Trump stumped for votes, Hillary's Stronger Together message took on another slogan: Love Trumps Hate.

Hillary lost and the message that Love Trumps Hate continues as tens of thousands of people, many who never voted for Hillary or Trump, continue to carry signs and chant the slogan: Love trumps Hate.

These activists protested up to December 19, 2016, begged electors to change their votes to Hillary and declare her the new President of the United States (POTUS), abandoning their sworn oaths as electors to do their duty to their country by declaring Hillary the winner. There were claims that electors were offered money to offset the fines in those states that impose fines for faithless electors. I watched video of two electors already pledged to Donald Trump state they would not cast their electoral votes for Trump because of the claims that Trump was a hateful person who disrespected women, threatened them with grabbing their pussies, and in general was a reprehensible demagogue who was unfit for the office of President and unable to steer a straight course for the American ship of state.

Out of the 306 electoral votes Trump won during the election he ended up with 304 after the electors in all states had cast their votes, clearly well over the 270 votes Trump needed to win the election fair and square. When the Electoral College votes were tabulated, 7 electors voted against their pledge candidate: 2 against Trump and 5 against Hillary. According to Wikipedia,"A further three electors attempted to vote against Clinton but were replaced or forced to vote again. Ultimately, Trump received 304 electoral votes and Clinton garnered 227, while Colin Powell won three, and John Kasich, Ron Paul, Bernie Sanders, and Faith Spotted Eagle each received one."  Though Trump did not win the popular vote, it was the Electoral College votes that handily resulted in declaring Trump President, which is the way the United State Constitution set up the voting process because, as Thomas Jefferson stated, pure democracies are doomed to failure. 

The Founding Fathers chose a democratic republic for the their brand new country and set up the Electoral College to ensure the USA would not end up at the mercy of the mob -- the popular vote. As Hillary ably showed, Trump won most of the country's votes while Hillary cleaned up in New York, California, and Wisconsin, states with the largest population centers in the country. Had Hillary won, the future of this country would have been determined by the majority, the mob. The Electoral College votes, even with 7 faithless electors, was determined by 538 electoral votes that spread the deciding vote across all the states and not just the states with the highest population. The 227 electoral votes Hillary won wasn't even close to the 270 electoral votes needed to win. 

The anguished cries of "Hillary won the popular vote" crashed against the solid bulwark of the Founding Fathers' foresight in instituting the Electoral College. It is the same mistake when Hillary campaigned against Obama in 2008, failing to garner sufficient numbers of delegate votes to win the nomination at the Democratic National Convention. She won the popular vote, but in the end lost the delegates to Obama in the same fashion that Bernie Sanders won the popular vote and failed to get enough of the delegate votes to capture the Democratic Party nomination.  

Disgruntled Hillary supporters, as well as disenfranchised Bernie Sanders's supporters still smarting after being summarily handed over to Hillary in a demonstration of Democratic Party solidarity, howled and screamed their rage when it became clear Trump had won by a narrow margin. Trump was not their president they declared, shouting "Love trumps Hate" as they marched, demonstrated, rioted, looted, burned, and impeded even emergency vehicle traffic. Holding their placards and banners high, "Love trumps Hate," these supporters assaulted everyone they believed had betrayed the country by voting for Trump, often without listening when their victims declared they had voted for Johnson or Stein or abstained from voting. The "Love trumps Hates" gangs took their rage out on everyone and anyone they believed had allowed Trump to triumph over the people's choice, Hillary Clinton. 

The violent mob mentality continued until Thursday, January 19, 2017 when Donald J. Trump took the oath of office and was sworn in as President of the United States in spite of boycotts, marches, demonstrations, burnings, looting, violence, and assaults on civilians and police still chanting "Love trumps Hate"! Many members of the mob admittedly never voted for Hillary or Trump during the election. They didn't vote for Gov. Gary Johnson or Dr. Jill Stein either. They chose not to make their choices known at the ballot box, but they were determined to make their voices heard loudly and clearly right up to and beyond Inauguration Day. "Love trumps Hate"!

The "Love trumps Hate" crowd have made it plain that President Donald J. Trump is not their representative and have vowed to make sure the next 4 years they will obstruct, impede, and refuse to obey whatever President Trump does and says during his tenure in the White House the same way that those voters who declared President Barack Obama was not their representative when he entered the White House after he was inaugurated in January 2009. The difference is President Obama's opposition created the Tea Party Movement to voice their opposition to Obama's tenure and held Obama's feet to the fire on every issue. The fact that the Republican Party candidates took control of both houses of Congress (House of Representatives and the Senate) in the autumn of 2009 is proof of their opposition to Obama. Even though Trump failed to win the popular vote during the 2016 campaign, the Republican Party candidates won at every level of government: local, state, and federal, a resounding defeat for the Democratic Party across the board. Both houses of Congress picked up more Republicans during 2016 delivering a stunning defeat to Democrats throughout the country, not only to Hillary but to outgoing President Obama.  

Amid unsubstantiated claims that the Russians and President Vladimir Putin tampered with the presidential race, disaffected voters (and nonvoters protesting Trump's election) cling to that hope that some shred of evidence will prove that Trump cheated to win in the same what opposition to Obama claimed that Obama was not born in the United States and was not an eligible candidate for President of the United States. The fact that Obama's much publicized State of Hawaii birth certificate posted on the WhiteHouse.gov website was proven to be a fake has been lost in the claims that Trump has never held public office and is therefore unsuited to hold the highest office in the land. It does not matter that Obama's experience in public office is in a term as an Illinois state senator and an uncompleted sophomore term in the U.S. Senate are not much more experience than the 40 years Trump spent as a businessman and real estate mogul. 

We, the people, tend to forget the men who first took office in the United States of America's fledgling government were not politicians but printers, publishers, ministers, soldiers, silversmiths, farmers, and business owners, men who had no experience in politics other than what they learned as they broke away from England and set up their own government, sending farmers and lawyers and publishers as ambassadors to European countries to make treaties, make loans, and make peace or ready for war, the same farmers, ministers, and businessmen who took their muskets and fought the trained soldiers, the Red Coats, sent by King George (mad King George) to put down the colonists' rebellion and restore British order. 

We all start from somewhere, often choosing a path different than the one we originally set out on, learning as we go. The future is a not set in stone and often seems to be set in water beginning down the mountains as snow melts into rivulets, creeks, and streams, joining the rushing rivers and cascading in torrents, picking up stones, pecking away at mountains, eating the sand and soil along its path until it ends in the sea, frequently widening river banks, cutting new streams, and changing the course of rivers along the way. Nothing stands in the way for long and few things remain unchanged by the relentless headlong dash to the sea. 

We have seen frontiersmen like Daniel Boone, and soldiers like Andrew Jackson and Ulysses Grant, slaves like Fredrick Douglass, and men and women of different backgrounds take their place in the U.S. government to contribute their time and talents in service to the people. Not until more recent times have we seen men and women graduate from school to take their seats in government, not for a term or two, but for 30, 40, and 50 years, no longer serving the people, but serving themselves at the expense of the people. Maybe it is time for a change, a chance to go back to the roots out of which this country, the United States of America, grew and give the people the chance to speak through their elected representatives, men and women who have worked in the world and are not merely the latest generation of a long line of lawyers and politicians who work for themselves. 

We may see disaster over the next 4 years or we may see a brighter future. The only thing we will know is by keeping our eyes, the peoples' eyes, on what proceeds from President Trump's policies. Only that way will we, the people, know for sure whether this President, like so many others before him, are speaking for the country or are merely a mouthpiece for the Powers That Be. Only then will we be able to decide whether to love or hate Trump. 

That is all. Disperse.