Contributing

IN EVERY COMMUNITY, members want to seem valuable, to ensure their social status and enhance their survival chances through contributing to the community and gaining the respect of other members. A young attractive woman gives birth, a young healthy man provides labor and builds wealth. leadership and advice giving are left to the elderly. The various professions provide essential services. Others add communal value by providing new knowledge to the community. Entertainers entertain with narratives and stories, shaping cultural heritage. President Trump, says president Trump, has done more for African-Americans than any other president or anyone else in American history, with the possible but highly improbable exception of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, like Trump, was a racist, but, arguably, did a bit more than trump to assist black folk. In our age of alternative realities and conspiracy theories, if our president can invent his, we can invent ours.What better way to achieve self esteem, social status, and influence than to construct, from disparate sources, a comprehensive alternative cosmic paradigm, and to present it to as many willing acolytes as possible, as gospel. Thus one can seek status as the leader of a cult, with or without the cult.The most dangerous cult leader with the largest cult became president of the United States, with his narrative of hatred of immigrants, of the media of all things progressive; a right wing wish list of fabricated enemies of the people. The multi dimensional, extraterrestrial conspiratorial, hollow earth hidden civilization crowd is emboldened by, and embraces Trump,a fellow purveyor of false but alluring narratives and realities. In this ilk, whatever is most obviously real and extant is denied, whatever is pure fantasy is embraced as gospel fact, and the fun house becomes the best of all places to which to escape the world.