I have been in rural Louisiana the last few days spending time with family. This is the first time my children have been old enough to see and experience life where I grew up in the United States. Maybe one day they can go to Dubai, but it will be far different. Jackson, LA, in rural East Feliciana Parish, changes little.

My parents now live in my grandparents’ home. The roads are still crumbling in the area, though the major roads are much improved. There is still poverty, but signs of commerce that were not around when I was growing up. As much as I get a bit sad sometimes, the area is still home. Every side road has a story. Most of the creeks too.

I stepped away from the internet for a while. Hopping on I see sniping and fights between allies and friends. On twitter, I see conservatives enraged over this prisoner swap and more. There is a lot of anger and that is just the conservatives.

The liberals are always in a state of anger. When you’ve decided boy and girl are options, it’s rather a normal thing to define deviance as normal and normal as deviance and anger as good.

For conservatives though, it sometimes surprises me that there is so much anger — at each other, at the other side, etc. People, life is not fair. This several billion year old ball of hot magma, water, and rock is hurtling around a giant radioactive ball of burning plasma as it circles a cell crushing black hole through a vacuum of space. We are, in the whole expanse of space, a speck smaller than the smaller grain of sand on a beach. The slightest tilt in our orbit could kill us. Life is not fair. The universe is not fair. It all rather sucks if you think about too much.

And we are surrounded by people who are like us save for their faith in creation instead of the Creator. When left to their own devices they are “filled with all manner of unrighteousness, evil, covetousness, malice. They are full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, maliciousness. They are gossips, slanderers, haters of God, insolent, haughty, boastful, inventors of evil, disobedient to parents, foolish, faithless, heartless, ruthless.”

That we are not left to our own devices and consequently not like those who are should make us smile, not scowl. Conservatives, particularly those with faith, read 2 Chronicles 7:14,

if my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land

and they get all bent out of shape. “This is about America. The nation must repent,” they think. Bull. That passage is not about America. That passage is about us. We should be humble and pray, and see God’s face. We should not be angry. We should not turn the country into an idol. I get the frustration. I do. And I understand why there is anger. I do. It is hard not to be angry sometimes. But stewing in the anger like so many on our own side are doing is neither healthy nor productive.

I think we should laugh. Because otherwise a lot of you are going to want to cry or make the unforced errors that come from feeding anger. America has elected the first President intent on making the world safe by making America less safe. We should laugh at that. Cling to our religion, cling to our guns, and laugh. Because a well armed faithful people can ride it out a hell of a lot better than the electric car driving population controlled peacenik with no family to turn, no gun with which to defend himself, and no God to turn to for comfort and strength.

And all the people who’ve been sitting on the sidelines are having a W. T. F. moment looking at the clown in the White House climbing a clown ladder while his staff drives the clown car into it. They are waking up hung over and looking for a smiling face, not a scowl, to reassure them that this nightmare of an administration will end.

Good grief people, be happy. Your anger is beneath you. The outrage you feel toward the President makes you less able to mock him. Be happy. Show grace to one another. Happy warriors win. There’s no sense trying to beat the other side at the anger and outrage game anyway. You’ll never win that game against someone who thinks gender is a choice, humor is not funny, everybody is a victim, and America is the enemy.