Posted on 02/08/2022 5:10:24 AM PST by Kaslin
I'm the kind of guy Who never used to cry The world is treatin' me bad Misery
-- The Beatles
Replacing former President Donald Trump with resident Joe Biden was supposed to bring joy to the land from sea to sea. We were going to be a united people at last. Every problem known to man would get solved by cradle-to-grave government. Biden was even going to save us from the rise of the oceans.
But just the opposite: A survey by the University of Chicago found that record percentages of people in 2021 described themselves as "unhappy."
For most of the past 50 years, about 1 in 10 people have described themselves as unhappy. In 2021, 1 in 4 say they are unhappy. Typically, almost 1 in 3 say they are "very happy," and now less than 1 in 5 do. The happiness index is falling like a stone. People are depressed.
Gee, I wonder why the public is so glum all of a sudden.
Let me count the ways. First, there is isolation and loneliness from lockdowns, stay-at-home orders and travel restrictions. Then there is out-of-control crime and a significant rise in business failures (from lockdowns), both clearly associated with depression. People are still worried about their health two years into the pandemic that Biden promised to shut down. The border is out of control.
Then there is the financial stress on families from everything being more expensive. Children are depressed because schools are still doing remote learning or they are stuck wearing masks for eight hours a day. The "woke" movement has people feeling like they are tied inside a social straitjacket. Nothing is funny anymore. Don't you dare say an off-color joke or you will be banished.
People are afraid to laugh at anything for fear of offending someone somewhere. When was the last time you saw a funny movie?
But here's what's most interesting about the results of the happiness survey. The people with the most significant happiness deficiencies are Democratic voters. Liberals are miserable. Only 1 in 6 Democratic voters say they are "very happy." Almost twice as many Republicans say they are "very happy."
Why is that? I have several admittedly unproven hypotheses. I will toss them out, and readers can decide for themselves if they agree or disagree.
First, liberals are much less religious, patriotic and interested in getting married and having children than conservatives. It's a Grand Canyon-sized division between liberals and conservatives. I'd venture to say that the love of country, God and family make people happy.
If you don't believe in these things, you will likely believe in false idols, such as big government, as your savior. That's hardly a path to happiness.
Liberals are less likely to be working and more likely to be on government assistance. But every study shows that work is highly associated with happiness. Giving a person a fish rather than teaching a person to fish leads to very different life satisfaction outcomes.
Liberals also live their lives in fear. Liberals are much more likely to believe that global warming will doom us than are conservatives. To listen to some of the more fanatical climate change worriers, they seem almost to want global warming to happen so we can pay penance for our sins to the planet. Similarly, from the start of the pandemic until recently, liberals were twice as likely to be "very worried" about COVID-19 than conservatives. There is something sociologically different about how liberals view risks than conservatives.
Finally, there is the geographical separation between conservatives camped in red states and liberals camped in blue states -- the two Americas. Blue states shut down their economies. They shut down restaurants, schools, parks, theaters, tennis and basketball courts, playgrounds, beaches, bars and any other place where people could, God forbid, have fun.
Amid the dark days of the pandemic, I traveled to New York, California and Florida. New York and California were zombie zones. If people saw you on the street walking toward you, they would lift their masks and swerve so as not to get anywhere near you. They would scowl or look away.
In Florida, people got on with their lives. They took reasonable health precautions, but they got out. You could tell that Floridians were happier than New Yorkers and Californians. It made New Yorkers and Californians all the more miserable and indignant when they saw pictures and videos of the Floridians who were not planted in their living rooms in the fetal position. Some were even partying on the beaches -- swimming, laughing, drinking, mingling. How dare they? And the final insult for the triply depressed liberals was that the Floridians had death rates from the virus that were no different from those living in the liberal states that outlawed fun and most human activity.
Not so long ago, those on the left of the political spectrum were the partiers -- the wild and crazy crowd: sex, drugs and rock 'n' roll. Live and let live. Now leftists are a bunch of judgmental prudes like nuns in a convent.
And they suffer from a severe happiness deficit. They got Biden in office, and now they're still miserable. Given the damage that Biden has done to our country in just one year in office, one could conclude that it serves them right.
Or perhaps they just miss hating Trump.
They have rejected God. They attempt to fill the void with things like worship of the Earth / global warming activism, worship of the self through virtue signaling, etc.
Point being is that they are rebelling against God and because of that they will never be happy and they will continue to try to make others suffer with them.
Oh, they stil hate Trump. They just can’t blame him for their misery now.
The government, narcotics and mother nature...
They think their feelings take precedence over reality. And every time reality proves them wrong.
They were miserable before they became leftist.
Why are libs so miserable? It’s because they have embraced a belief system that sets them at odds with God, man, nature, justice and reason. There is no happiness to be found in that.
They Miss Hating Trump!
.
It’s got my Vote.
To answer the question in the headline directly: Because they believe they are smart and worry about all the ills of the world and how to fix them, and then their utter lack of smarts and even worse ability to reason things through instead of reacting to them emotionally bites them in the ass and they utterly fail at fixing the world. Run-on sentences run-on, but the point is pretty clear.
You hit the nail squarely on the head and sank the shank below the top line with that post. ‘Nuff said.
Chicken and egg.
I posit miserable people are liberal.
My great uncle is a sour puss, and, according to my grandpa (who survived a camp while his brother partied in Canada) was always a sourpuss from birth.
Great uncle is a full fledged red diaper doper baby such that we openly mocked him the once a year we saw him at Passover.
Yep. See my post above this one.
I wish I could upvote here. I’d give you four stars.
God bless you.
Then they see spreading this unhappiness as a sort of missionary endeavor to make the world smarter and sadder, as they envision themselves.
Liberals accuse conservatives of committing sins for which they are most guilty. Projection is a mental defect.
*** When was the last time you saw a funny movie?***
Actually, we’ve been watching a lot of movies lately, but only those from the 70s, 80s, and 90s lately before Hollywood “got woke.” You know, before they had their panties in a twist over every little thing.
Can’t beat Blazing Saddles for funny and impropriety.
I don’t think many people under 30 knows anything about what this country once was...not the truth anyway.
We’re in a bad way.
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