1.
Happiness is confidence in your ability to keep a good state of mind.
It is a relation between good state of mind, hope and confidence, and knowledge of how to do things. It is a relation between rest, and action.
The Republican running for President this year is supporting his party's policies which are contrary to the policies he supported when in office as a state governor.The party itself has a history of its elected officials not putting into effect the policies they say they support.
About half the American electorate don't notice or don't care about these things.
One way to look at this is to say people are making their choice about how things are done in politics only in relation to how things are done in their personal lives.
They do not make a connection between how things are done, and a good state of mind. The way things are done in public life is related to the way things are done in private life, and state of mind left to itself.
2.
When you begin with a calm, meditative appreciation of the beauty of people and the world, it is said you act then on a deeper knowledge of reality than when you begin from practical expertise and then, as a recreation, attempt to recover intervals of peaceful idleness.
This attempt to begin from the practical and then get serious fails because connecting how things are done to how other things are done leaves large gaps in our knowledge of ourselves and the world.
Voters like certain stories politicians tell, like to tell similar stories about themselves. They like their own jobs and families. They don't ask what kinds of stories, kinds of lives, help them do better in recovering peace and resting from their exertions.
They don't know even what ought to be obvious: we are in for trouble if we elect an obvious liar.
We are not in the habit of taking truth seriously. Truth is valued in doing one's work, but not in effecting the transition from work to rest.
If you don't consider the consequences of your actions on your ability to return to peace, then in each circumstance you search for, find, and adjust yourself to the rules of conduct to get the most of what you want. Those rules for yourself in one situation have no connection to rules for yourself you set to be applied to another situation. The rules in the same situation can change from one moment to another.
When it comes time to rest, see the beauty of the world, you can't see the world. What you see are the bits and pieces of the world that have become associated with your rules for yourself. You see bits of pieces of yourself, you see bits of pieces of the world.
The politician who openly lies and the electorate that doesn't care are not looking for ways to keep themselves happy. They are living in ways making knowledge of this kind impossible.
Voters are impoverishing themselves, letting themselves be robbed. But that hardly matters in the face of making themselves happy. They can't even be happy about their money. Poor America.
