My forbidden fantasy Voting for Trump

My forbidden fantasy Voting for Trump I am not voting for Trump. And I think Hillary is a liar and Im voting for her anyway. Also, I love Ivanka so much I cant stop Googling to find more tidbits about her. And I read in many places that Chelsea is a brat and neither she nor her husband can figure out a real job to do. And, I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that Trump is like a car crash and I love looking.  I love watching him squirm out of every disgusting thing he does. I love watching him say he pays no taxes. I love the drama. American  politics is boring, the two-party system is BS and everyone is pretty much the same candidate, and its fun to watch him shake things up. Part of me wants to vote for Trump because I want to see everything shaken up. After all, Robespierre  had to terrorize  France before we  saw the benefits of  the French Revolution. Im sick of Denmark. And Norway. And Sweden. Im sick of all the research that says they are happy. People in those countries are always reporting how happy they are. Why cant they be more like New Yorkers who are the most unhappy people in the world  and wear that like a badge of honor? Its not just the grown ups. The kids score higher on tests, and they bike to school, or whatever. The research about happiness that comes out of these three countries is sickening to me  because Ive always been convinced that the happiness is a result of homogeneity. Its the same as in companies. When you read about how important diversity is to a company, you never read that it makes people happy. For example, corporate governance is more effective with  women: companies that have female board members make more money. But you never read that corporate governance is more fun to do with a female mucking up the boys club. In fact, research shows that most startups cant even function properly with diversity because its such a time suck to deal with. So those tall blond  Northern Europeans are happier because they keep their gene pool so pure. Not kidding. Homogeneity promotes happiness. I consider  my move to rural America as proof of this  hypothesis. Because I did all the research to discover that people in big cities are not happy and people in small  communities are happy and I moved to one. And you know what? People are happy because they are all the same and have nothing to do but keep doing the same thing. Its a microcosm of the Danes and the Swedes and the Norwegians. The Economist confirms my hunch. Just like the Eskimos have a billion words for ice, the Danes have a billion words for happiness. Hygge (pronounced hew-geh) means something like the art of creating intimacy or cosiness of the soul or cocoa by candlelight. The Economist says the Danes consider this concept  a quintessential element of their national character. But Denmark, Sweden and Norway are known for something besides hygge/happiness. Exclusion. Even if they are trying hard to be inclusive, those countries are among the most difficult in the world for expatriates. Because making new friends, and adapting to new people is hard. And  seeing your own culture  reflected back to you in another persons culture is especially hard because it reveals new ways of looking at tightly held beliefs. So expatriates are excluded from the happiest communities. If you are voting for Trump, I dont need to tell you that. You know it intuitively. Which is why I dont want to be like you. I want to be someone who strives to see myself in new ways  and puts myself in new, difficult scenarios so that I can grow. I want to grow from doing something brave and challenging more than I want the security of homogeneity and happiness. That said, I have a fantasy that I tell everyone Im voting for Hillary but when I get to the poll I secretly vote for Trump. And so do enough people because really, its so uncool to admit publicly that youre voting for him and then he gets into office and that forces the Democrats and Republicans to come together in Congress to keep Trump from doing anything, which means we will finally admit what has been true all along, that theres no difference between Democrats and Republicans, and that will open things up for other, real choices for political parties. Maybe this is what happens when you get older: wild sex fantasies retreat to make way for  wild political fantasies. But really what happens is that when you get older you get happier, and people who are more insular are happier: Its messed up (and tricky which is why Im doing the  upcoming course on happiness). Happiness, the way most people define it, makes you do crappy things like keep  immigrants out and vote for Trump. Happiness is most powerful when its fueled by interestingness diversity, unmet but engaging goals and real, meaningful choices. Thats why Im happy to live in a  country where our schools are  a mess  due to the fact that  we have so many different types of families. And we cant even have cosiness with cocoa because we cant agree on how cocoa should be made. I like the diversity. I like that its difficult. The easy way is not the path to happiness.