TERRY MOSHER
TOP OF THE TOWN – It was Descartes who first said, “I think therefore I am.” And it was the great C.S. Lewis, an admitted atheist, while in a long search to prove to Tolkien that God did not exist, finally came to the surprising conclusion He did. His path to that is complicated but also simple. Lewis reasoned that all humans at birth can distinguish right from wrong through our sub-conscious, and that can only be because of the presence of God. Now I want to take that one step further. It was Dr. Norman Vincent Peale in 1952 who published his self-help book, “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Peale’s book is based on the human condition as opposed to the Bible, which was written by men, but is based on the spiritual and power of God. There is power in both Descartes and Peale, if used for good. If you can only see your life in positive beams it’s probable you life will shine bright. Used in conjunction with Descartes, “I think therefore I am” the power of you will result in absolute power over your path in life. I helped coach high school basketball for one year and I shortened Descartes’ words to, “You are what you think you are.” You think you are dumb because that is what others tell you, you are dumb. You think you are smart no matter what others think, you are smart. You own your own power. I have seen in 50-plus years of writing about sports many athletes who failed not because they didn’t have the ability, but because they didn’t have the confidence, or positive beams, in their ability. We can call that character, or more precisely, the lack of character. Conversely, I have seen countless athletes that didn’t have the most athletic talent have more success than you would guess by looking at them. Why? Because they thought they were good, or “You are what you think you are.” They had belief in their ability to be successful. There were no barriers too large not to overcome. Now there is a dark side to all of this. Donald Trump has said the one book he has liked over all others (You have to suspend belief that he reads at all) and that is Peale’s book, “The Power of Positive Thinking.” Trump has taken that positive appeal in Peale’s book and turned it on his head. Because of, most likely, vast insecurities about his own ability, Trump has created for himself another reality in which he exists as the sole authority and power. My guess is that he has done this to save himself from himself. He has convinced himself that he’s all-powerful, all positive. He is, “You are what you think you are” even if in the real word he is nowhere close to what he has created for himself. If you listen close he projects himself on to others. So when he says Biden is dumb, Trump is dumb. When he says Biden has done nothing in 47 years of public service, Trump has done nothing in 47 years. What is chilling is that Donald Trump has the ability to project his false world, his fake reality, onto others. We know he lies all the time, but in his world they aren’t lies but reality as he sees it. People that go to his rallies, absorb his reality as their own. He’s invited them in and they have accepted that it’s the world that they all live in. We outsiders call that a cult, and to us it is, but to Trump it’s the real world. I heard a blip on one of his theaters of the absurd rallies last night where he repeated the false claim about Biden’s 47 years of do-nothing public service and, yep, that is Trump projecting his false reality to thousands of endearing supporters. It may be amazing to us to believe he can get away with that, but Trump is living in a false reality where he can’t be challenged because he is the all-powerful being. He’s imposed his false reality into our government, making agencies like the CDC fit his world and doing incredible harm to the real population, us, because now it is projecting on us Trump’s false reality. Biden, or anybody, can’t tell Trump there is no such organization as Antifa because in his world there is. Trump knows he will lost a fair election, so to continue to live in his false reality he has to make sure the election bends to his will. So he has his stooges – Republicans in high places in state governments – do crazy stuff like getting rid of ballot drop-of boxes, take out and destroy sorting machines in the postal service and getting states to change ballot-counting hours, sending his militia out to polling places to intimate voters. That’s just a partial list of what he is doing to bend reality to his world. The end result is that if he remains in office another four years the general population – us – will not know right from wrong despite what C.W. Lewis discovered.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there
Have a great day.
You are loved.