Usually, some cable or boredcast news program is on in the background in my office. Originally I had planned to do a scathing review of the state of the state of the state of journalism in our state. For example, Blitz Wolfer was talking to some legal official about the charges being brought against Trumps campaign mangler, Corey Lewd'n'nasty. The official clearly stated, "Charges have been brought but the Defendant has not been arrested."

Cue Clueless Blitz: "So, you are telling me that he was not arrested. . . . Was he arrested?"

Sigh.

So instead, I am trying for something far less frustrating and easier to handle. How our brains work and how to explain the Trumpenstein phenomena.

As I was driving in a relatively uninhabited area at the outskirts (what is an inskirt?) of Cook County, there was a large flock of birds that had landed on a grassy knoll. (I ALWAYS wanted to use that term in a sentence). For reasons unknown, they decided to take flight, and several hundred beautiful birds took to the air. They slowly circled, as one big cloud, then pealed off in pairs, threes, and more, until they began forming perfect Vees on their way north.

Again I wondered just how their brains and eyes work, and what causes such beautiful designs to form so readily and naturally.

And after daydreaming about being able to take flight myself, I thought again about humanity's many limitations.

Our bodies? Weak, ill-equipped to deal with the depths of oceans, or the vacuum of space, or even being hit by the flotsam and jetsam spewing out from a common solar storm. If the oxygen levels are off, we die, if it is too cold or too hot, we die, if it is too bright, we go blind, and if there is too much radiation, we fry. Unless we hydrate our weak bodies regularly, or stuff foodstuffs down our gullets at least daily, expiration is nearby. Our "Use By" date is typically 50-85 solar orbits around our flat earth. Less, if you run into local predators like ISIS, US drones, or tribal warfare (often involving the extraction of nasty black fluids from the depths of our flat earth, access to clean water, or adequate food supplies).

Our visual system is easily bested by avian critters, cats, even man's beast friend, something we call a dog. We can barely see anything, and even those limitations are worsened by seeing only the tiniest bit of the existing spectrum. No infrared, no x-ray images are available to our naked eye.

Our sense of touch cannot sense mountains or atoms. Our senses of smell and taste try to warn us of poisons and dangers, but they fail miserably outside a small subset of what really makes up reality.

To make matters worse, we turn off various senses to keep from overloading our pathetically limited craniums. Ever feel your clothes without concentrating on it? Ever try to figure out how you breathe without planning each breath? Ever try to hear one instrument in an orchestra, while tuning out all others? Face it, we are a pathetic collection of mostly water, and barely functioning grey matter.

It gets worse. While some of us are blessed/cursed with curiosity, (a great way to rid ourselves of excess felines, by the way) our knowledge base and abilities are so simple (ahem) minded, that we cannot readily imagine or comprehend things like negative square roots, infinity, Pi, E, or the US military budget. These limitations, combined with curiosity, and one other factor inherent in humans, has led to the development of religion.

Take your average caveboy and cavegirl. Imagine their reaction when the skies turn black and great flashes of light smash trees around you, making the most hideous sound you could imagine. Imagine a volcano, an earthquake, a flood, or an attack of locusts. Unexplained, unexplainable, and unwanted.

Along the way, they ended up believing in powers that hid in the sky (quite possibly connected to that huge ball of fire that crossed this flat earth in what seemed to be some sort of pattern). Other powers hid underground, or in the depths of those big bodies of water. Eventually, they called them god.

Then, as they tried to appease another angry god, or at least explain it, they noticed that the earthquake stopped the instant that a young virgin girl was killed. Eventually, that led to the organized stealing of young virgins from neighboring tribes, and sacrificing them for the good of the tribe.

Things that they tried to understand, but had no capacity to do so, or even worse, no systemic way of testing their creative ideas, they left to the province of god, as well as in the hand of the elders who understood god best. In their infantile way, they did learn some things, things that led to rules. These rules were made, again, for the good of the tribe - No eating of pork, no blood transfusions, no shellfish, no mixing of crops. Women who "bled" were being consumed by evil and could not be touched until they cleaned up their act.

It was a small step from these rules being created as an effort to preserve life and health, to making them the unbending Law Of God that had to be followed under all circumstances. Questioning these laws or trying to explain the reasons behind them was deemed anti-religious, and therefore it was banned. Thinkers who grasped just one truth outside of their measly goat-herding lives were banished, attacked, tortured, or killed. Often all of the above.

When thinkers still persisted, like that Italian sky watcher who made such heretical claims, like

a. the earth was globular,
b. it revolved around the sun,
c. those funny lights that crossed the night sky were planets just like ours,
d. some of those planets even had their own companions floating around them,
e.The universe was quite large, and unbelievably old.

As religion became more and more powerful, it sought to kill off the competition, often by force, more often by farce, and in almost all circumstances, fueled by the ridiculous belief that only their god was right, and all other gods were bullshit.

Worst of all, our pathetically underpowered and under-exercised brains made shit up. Not just connections between virginal sacrifices and an appeased god, but pretty much everything. Over time, our technology began to inch forward, until we discovered things like the wheel. Iron. Bronze. Water power. Sowing and reaping techniques.

And then came one of the biggest inventions of all. It was so huge, that in its early stages, very few could accomplish it. Today, its use is so commonplace, that we studiously ignore just how important it was to the growth of society. What is this magical invention that changed society permanently?

The written word.

It is little more than a code, one based on a set of rules, agreements, and practices to be used by those wishing to take advantage of that code. With this skill, history was written, messages were sent, accounting, billing, trade, and education became widespread. Writing made today's society possible.

Sad to say, the underlying human aspect of society remains as ignorant, as curious, as skeptical, and as fearful as our four fathers who created religion out of fear. The same bad attributes that led to religion not only co-exist with a rational universe, they continue to do great harm to society, pushing out and replacing thinking with belief, knowledge with fear, and science with faith. One look at congress, or at any of the state legislators who are again trying to make only their version of religious based morality the law for all, and it is obvious that religions have a corrosive, destructive, even evil impact on a civilized society.

Such was the state of humanity when our ancestors crawled out of the fetid swamps from which life first sprung, and such is the state of humanity today. Fear, raw emotions, anger, hatred, greed, - all of these caused religion to occur, it reinforced its strength and destructive nature during our planet's Dark Ages, and it continues to rear its ugly head here and now.

Trump innately understands this. He preys on it. He uses it. He relies on it almost exclusively. He lies, cheats, and riles people up, because he knows that emotions still rule humans far powerfully more than knowledge or logic. If you were to put Trump on a stage, and have him debate a well-educated, well-spoken scientist, Trump would win the debate 8,9 out of 10 times. Not because he was correct, but because he would find the emotional appeal, the fear buttons, and other emotional drivers that move people to act in certain ways. Damn the truth, that stuff is hard to figure. Emotions rule! And that in a nutshell is why Trump is winning.

The problem with such emotional gamesmanship is that on occasion, you trip up on one emotion, and cause an unforeseen reaction and contrary emotions in your target audience. Like Trump and abortion. Pissing off both extremes on that issue? Amazing.

Like a shiny fishing lure left in salt water for too long, the attraction of trump will fade. It probably reached its zenith last week. We shall see a slow, but steady loss of support for him. Unfortunately, it might be replaced by another shiny object, an ignorant, emotionally-driven moron, a Palin-like creature who steps in to replace Teh Don. Why? Because emotions are far more important to our decision making than facts.