I’m beginning to wonder about the nation’s health. I listen a lot to late night talk radio. It helps me sleep oddly enough. I listen to very conservative or very religious broadcasters because generally they are so completely stupid and frustrated at the state of the world, it makes me feel better.  If they weren’t so frustrated, I’d feel the world was in much worse shape. Also I wouldn’t feel like I was winning.

My brother has made the point that politics these days is too much about winning. It’s a contest not a debate of ideas. Of course you have to win before you can do anything else, but you can’t do anything once you’ve won because it’s impossible to reason with the people you just beat. They still want to beat you and will do whatever they can to stop your agenda. So nothing gets done.

But I still like feeling the world is mine, my place with my rules because, let’s be honest, my rules are right. They’re sane. Religion and ultra conservative politics are not. They simply are not. I will not debate that. See? I want to win.

I especially like the religious evangelical preacher who comes on at night insisting the world is 6,000 years old and only one specific type of religion is Godly enough to keep you out of hell. He’s great because he’s so crazy and the people who talk to him are also so crazy and (here’s the most important part) so UNHAPPY that I feel way, way better about myself for hearing them. I’m raising myself up over their battered souls. I feel better because they feel worse. Yeah, baby!

What does that make me? Well, I’ve always heard it’s not good to raise yourself by stepping on the bodies of others. Still, I do it. I guess I do it because I grew up feeling powerless. Not completely powerless but pretty damned powerless. So I enjoy feeling more powerful in little ways like this. I enjoy listening to crackpots because, well, I guess in a way I am one, too.

See ultimately I have no idea what’s up or down. I know what science is and I respect it and believe it. Evolution? I’m with you. Big Bang? 4.5 billion year old planet earth? Makes sense to me! Yet, these are facts that I know and they don’t resonate beyond that. I won’t fight for them because they’re not about me. I need to fight for me and only me because me didn’t get fought for enough when I was little me. You see?

There are crazy people in the world. True nut jobs. I’m one of them. But I’m a smart and sophisticated one. I can probably be super successful as this person because I’m also a bit of a genius. I know this because being crazy is also being a genius. Or the other way around. I talk to God, or God to me. I know this because it’s happened. I’ve been talking since I was little me. I didn’t realize that’s what I was doing but it was. Or else I went crazy and that’s how I ended up defining it.

In either case, it’s fun to win.