It’s said that many of the Great Explorers of the new World, back in the fifteenth century, were hunting for mythical cities where a Fountain of Youth and the Mines of King Solomon were said to be exist. Several hundred years have passed and while the world has changed in many important ways, what with mass-marketing, social media, computers, cell phones, moon landings, nuclear weapons and GPS navigation, we have not. We’re still obsessed with personal security, youth and longevity, Americans more than most. These obsessions are irrational and now we’ve acquired a leader, a president, whose close identification with those fundamental insecurities is the basis of his popularity.

When we put engines on the horse carts we reversed the roles of horse and cart. The cart took the horse to the glue factory and horsepower became one word, that had nothing to do with horses. Mass production produced a new way of life. The train left the station that day and you don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand how mass marketing and its agents in the advertising industry have influenced American values since then. Truth was the first casualty (Somewhere in a dusty corner of somebody’s Law Library is an old tome on Truth In Advertising ).

Now politicians lie, routinely. They are expected to lie. That’s what they do to win elections and we should understand that.

No.

I think there was a time in this country when honor meant something. When we showed respect for our ancestors and for each other. If we want to Make America Great Again then we need to go back to the great values the country once stood for.

Oh I know that it was never quite like that, I know that it was really a dream, an ideal. I’ve read enough American history to understand that, but that’s just it, you see. It was the Dream, the Ideal, and we all aspired to its attainment.

Now it’s every man for himself. Women if they’re sexy and children if they’re mine. More than ever, we fear the future and our personal extinction. We’re sold on our helplessness, our victimhood, our nothingness. We’re sold on our essential worthlessness, redeemable only if we can make more money than the next man, buy more, drive the latest, be hip, be cool, be sexy. And it’s all fueled by the fear with no name that’s pushed into our consciousness by the Advertisers and Propagandists.

We forget ourselves, our people, our ancestors. We never stop to think of who we are, why we’re here, or how fortunate we are to have life.

It doesn’t matter if you’re religious or not; whether you’re Muslim, Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Atheist, or Agnostic. You’re alive, with me, on this glorious planet. Look at the sun; feel the snow on your skin. Love somebody.

Tomorrow you can be afraid, but today, today is a good day to die.