Tioga Herald

I sit down at my computer this morning, in happiness. My happiness is disturbed when pressconnects.com keeps sending me email so as to force my face into reading their digital copies of a daily newspaper. I know they are not trying to do this, but the timing of it – while in happiness – are they attempting to rub my face in the fact that I cannot have a print copy delivered to my home?

In order to do the digital, the Gannett Press & Sun-Bulletin, they have turned it, as well as their other newspapers, into something for which they are not unique, deliberately ridding us of one source on paper: local news AND INFORMATION. We are FORCED to use Google where the ones with money-loving intentions can have THEIR websites come up first in the result list. The ones first on the list are usually not what we are trying to locate in information.

We are FORCED to sit at a computer desk reading a newspaper with a computer product which is gray lettering and harder to read than black lettering, regardless of the size (zooming). And the difficulties with zooming in and out are impractical and imprudent given to us by impotent men.

Our happiness for sitting and reading a newspaper in an easy chair is removed. Life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, especially when we are those who DO NOT put love of money first in our lives, is being removed from us.

Our happiness was about walking across a busy state road to retrieve our newspaper and walking right back so as to sit in an easy chair to read the local news AND INFORMATION (what there is of it) and do puzzles and so forth, rather than do lousy violent video games. At one time, we had the newspaper delivered right to our door. But hey. We can take the change to walking across a busy state road. It is preferable to reading online.

Even when there is an article in the newspaper to save, it is easier to clip and copy on a printer than it is to try to print a digital copy of a newspaper on a printer.

With technology, total lack of using tools which are intuitive. That is, unless one spends 24/7 doing computers and technology – maintaining it and tweaking the settings.

For those who get their jollies from spending most of their time with technology and missing out on human life itself, with its civilization consisting of culture, history, arts, sciences, wellness, they then go on to block those of us who DO wish to pursue knowledge to fill the human brain. With lousy groupthink like those who make a joke of the pursuit of happiness, we are faced with groupthink dictatorship, otherwise known as peer pressure. Peer pressure which benefits the ones who put first priority on money-loving attitudes. Such people are a joke as they push these dictatorial ways upon those of us who want life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Oh, that’s right! But most people are that way in America today! Apparently they are. Like lemmings being led to destruction off a cliff. They dictate to people like me who seek happiness – “come along because you will enjoy the ride [off a cliff]!”

And it is not government at fault. It is the predominance of money-loving attitudes in the supply-side Reaganomics people in the business oligarchs who CONTROL the government. Government is NOT the problem.

Make America great again? OK. Make America great again in the method done during the period of time called the Enlightenment. you know. Mozart and Haydn were two composers of Western Europe during that period of time. It also was the time of Deists and proposals for a democracy with checks and balances. It was the period when Adam Smith (who had contact with Ben Franklin during that time period) proposed we move away from a style of economics we NOW call supply-side economics. Smith proposed hecks and balances in economics, similar to the concepts of checks and balances in democratic government.

In the 20th Century, Teddy Roosevelt saw the robber barons had twisted the ideas of Adam Smith to THEIR liking and to THEIR benefit only. So, he became the trust buster and made America great again in that fashion.

Screw the ideas of charismatic Reagan with his opioid for America: supply-side economics. Reagan set off a path in which followers like Trump, Rick Scott, Ron DeSantis, Giuliani, and other narcissistic crap in America followed so as to NOT make America great again.

Now corporations are dictated by the oligarchic fools with a love of money as being the FIRST PRIORITY. Not money. I said, LOVE OF MONEY. Not best practices for making a better picture for profits, but LOVE OF MONEY.

This goes for newspapers with local news, too. Run by the foolish fat pigs of the oligarchs and in a dictatorial way by telling readers of newspapers what makes us happy. Telling the demand side of the market what makes us happy. Supply and demand means the supply-siders should be discovering the happiness in the demand side, not just one age or group of people and the happiness among a group of people only.

Reminds me of the scene in Star Wars with young Anakin Skywalker (ultimately Darth Vader). Anakin Skywalker used the power of the jedi to convince a person that such person “does not want to do that.” The point of Darth Vader as a young lad was to say, “you won’t be happy if you do that.” Dictating happiness so that one can achieve the love of money which, in scriptures says, is the root of all evil.

An adult student of mine once told me, “professor, you have a great deal of patience in dealing with my classmates..” The student said, “I am not sure I can go into teaching because I would have to have that patience and I am not sure I can achieve it.”

I then told the student that one needs to come to know oneself and make the decision as to the path to take. One might feel they are unable to achieve the necessary patience and that might be true. But at the same time, it is POSSIBLE to learn patience over time. If one wishes to pursue a path to teaching, then do it, keeping in mind what has to be done to overcome obstacles in that path and be willing to LEARN how to overcome the obstacles.

In other words. We don’t have to live our lives by having someone TELL us and DICTATE to us what makes us happy. We need to recognize who we are and decide what is the best path to make us happy. And ignoring the evil sides (Darth Vader type telling us how to be happy – i.e., love of money) as taught to us as a means for happiness is important.

As with the student thinking he could not be patient enough may be a reasonable assessment of what that student can do. On the other hand, as taught by Captain Kangaroo and the little engine which said, “can’t,” we can also turn to thinking, “I think I can, I think I can, I think I can.” But we need to come to know our self better and happiest and stop allowing others tell us what makes us happy.

Stop allowing those who throw the “sin book” (Romans) at us for human beings are not here to judge, but to coexist. Notice the “sin book” was given to a population of barbarians, one of the most barbaric ones in history – the Romans and their fascism. It was designed for that population, but not all are like that nor have to be like that – like people who call themselves “leaders” – Mussolini and others.

What makes America great is a return to the ideas of our American Founding Fathers. The Founding Fathers made America great, in spite of its imperfections.

Before Britain had a mentally ill king (George III) and lost the colonies due to George III’s lousy mental capacities as a leader, it was more deserving of a Statue of Liberty. In the late 16th Century, Queen Elizabeth I opened the English arms to Jews and Protestant Huguenots who sought to be happy, rather than face the genocide of the Roman Catholic Church. “Give me your tired, your poor…” was once what made England a super power. Too bad Americans are so stupid that they might not deserve having that Statue of Liberty at all.

To make a joke out of those of us who wish to have life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, is as barbaric as the Holy Roman Empire and the Roman Empire before it. Whether we attain happiness by sitting in an easy chair reading a print copy of a newspaper or with other civilized ways, we should not be mocked for standing up and saying, this is what we want which is necessary to our happiness. We are not chopped liver portions of the demand side of the marketplace. All examples of barbaric and dictatorial means. Peer pressure and groupthink. Don’t tell us to just accept it because we won’t.