WHY ARE LIBERALS SO UNHAPPY?

I have noticed that liberals don’t laugh as much as conservatives.  Sure, most comedians are avowed lefties, and their humor is funny, but there is a sardonic veil over most acts, well unless it’s a comedian who relates to rural America, the get-her-done sort.  As to the non-comedic liberals, they are energy vampires, typically dour and cynical, lacking in good spirt and optimism.  The democratic national convention was proof of this, a total downer.  If you want more proof, turn on the nightly news and watch BLM and Antifa protesters.  I assure you, the words, now there’s a happy bunch of folks, will not cross your mind.  Let’s be honest, they’re just not that fun to be around.  They seem averse to a hardy laugh, as if there’s a demon on their shoulders, warning them to knock it off if they even think of letting loose with a gut-buster.  They seem less unhappy, even pleasantly amused, when somebody announces a new species of transgression or inequality or injustice.  I swear, this is my read on liberals.  Hell on earth for me would be to attend a cocktail party with Hillary Clinton, Obama, Biden, Harris, Schumer and Adam Schiff.  As for Bill Clinton, I have the sense he’s a closet conservative.  Mostly, because I’ve seen him laugh and I can picture him as a teenager trying to pick up a girl at a Dog and Suds Drive-in.  Actually, I can picture him at any age doing that.  Another thing, I can’t picture him driving a Volvo, so there’s another reason for my suspicions of his hidden political bent.   Anyway, back to my point.  Laughter is a tell.

Conservatives, libertarians too, unlike liberals, crave laughter.  It’s pretty good medicine I’m told.  I’m also told that pain is subdued when you laugh.  If you ask a true conservative, not Mitt Romney, William Crystal or George Will or any of their ilk, but a true conservative, “what would improve your life?”  I assure you that their answers, all of them will begin with the pronoun I.  I need to work out more.  I need to work smarter.  I need to work harder.  I need to be a better husband, wife or parent.  A conservative, looks within for his or her solutions.  A liberal looks away, outside of their selves.    

So, when you ask a liberal, “what would improve your life?  You get a different sort of answer.  It usually involves that ethereal enemy that is responsible for all ills and malfeasance in the world, the infamous they.  They need to change this.  If they would just stop doing this.  If they would just pass this law or that law. They, they, they.   I don’t know who they are, but whoever they are, they are apparently a bunch of sons-of-a-bitches extraordinaire.   Anyway, they are always the reason that liberals are unhappy. 

Here’s what’s going on.  The liberal looks for solutions to their lives that are outside of their control.  Sure, and this may happen if Biden becomes president, the liberals’ wishes might come true.  They might come through for the liberals.  Liberals might get their open borders, abortion on demand, repeal of the Second Amendment, the end of fossil fuels, one payer health care, tax increases, the new green deal, mandatory political correctness, the erasure of God and Christ, critical race theory, social justice, reparations, and statehood for Puerto Rico and D.C.  They might get it all.  And as an added bonus, they’d never have to worry about losing another presidential election, well, until after the revolution anyway. 

And none of it would make them any happier because true happiness comes from within.  Just Google it and you’ll find about a thousand pieces saying as much.  True happiness comes from hard work, achievement, self-actualization and personal responsibility.  It can’t be taxed and redistributed. It can’t be legislated into a person’s being.  It can’t be fueled by punishing others.  It must come from within and there lies the rub for liberals.  Because they delegate responsibility for their personal happiness to the ubiquitous they, the liberals have tied their hopes of being happy on something or somebody they have no control over.  Liberals have effectively enslaved their well-being to a political master.  Now, think about it.  Can a person really be happy if their happiness depends on things for which they have little or no control over?  Is a prisoner happy when the prison serves steak?  Maybe on a relative basis, but true happiness?  No way. 

So then, why are liberals so insistent that their lives would be better if politicians passed the right laws and made the right changes.  Why do they delegate responsibility for their happiness to others?  Here’s why?  It goes with the territory.  Liberals are against rugged individualism and personal responsibility.  They love collectives, socialism and are manifest with schadenfreude (pleasure derived by someone from another person’s misfortune).  They seek wealth and status by suppressing others rather than by aspiring on their own.  They believe income inequality (a dog whistle for communism) is only attainable by lowering the wages of those earning more and redistributing the wealth.  I am uncertain if being a liberal makes a person unhappy or if being unhappy makes a person liberal.  I am certain that the two qualities, liberalism and unhappiness are kissing cousins, though.  I am also certain that a person cannot be truly happy if they tie their happiness to something outside their control. 

Now, I know there will be liberals who read this that will take great offense.  They will claim that I’m full of bull manure.  They will claim that they truly want to aspire to greatness or already have done so.  But mostly, they will claim, angrily, which, forgive me, is exceedingly funny, that they are happy.  But they’re not.  They can’t be given that they have relinquished psychological control over their sense of being.  They have delegated responsibility for their personal well-being to somebody else.  It is akin to a man imposing the responsibility for his happiness on his wife, which is pathetic.  A conservative, on the other hand, well, we do bitch up a storm about politics, that’s for sure.  And we sound angry and unhappy at times, too.  And we probably are all of that.  But, despite are carping and fear that the American experiment is coming to an end, we hold ourselves personally responsible for our lives no matter what happens in Washington, no matter who wins an election, no matter what laws are passed or repealed.  We do so because we understand that if we are going to fix our lives, that’s our job and not somebody else’s.  And you can see this in our political philosophies.  We seek more freedom to pursue our self-actualization.  We want less government, not more.  We want to rise or fall on our own.  We want to take as much responsibility for our lives as we can.  We resent those who claim to know better than we do what is good for us, whether it be a twenty-ounce soft drink or wearing a mask.  We willingly accept responsibility for ourselves and don’t blame others if our lives aren’t going as expected or planned.  We go to Church and recognize that our salvation comes from taking personal responsibility and not some “collective salvation” as comrade Obama suggested.  As an aside, when Obama said that, that he believes in a “collective salvation” for our nation, I wondered if Charles Manson might get averaged into heaven and if John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy already had.  Manson was still alive when Obama said it.  Gacy and Bundy were already dead.  Who knows?  Maybe they died in a year where a lot of really sinless people died and the grading system at the pearly gates got curved in their favor?  I guess that depends on whether the collective salvation is judged on an annual basis.  Maybe it’s daily average which would really swing things and cause inconsistency as to who got in and who didn’t.  But I digress.  I was writing about how conservatives think and the world we desire, how we are happier.  

 Which could change, not the happier part but the world we desire part.  There could come a time when the change liberals so desperately seek actually occurs.  There could come a time when our freedoms and liberty are so restricted that it is impossible to self-actualize, to achieve, to succeed, well, unless you’ve got the proper government permits issued by some useless bureaucrat in some even more useless department.  When that time arrives, and it will, it always does just before a nation collapses, liberals will still be unhappy because they will still be believing that their happiness is something out there for the taking, rather than inside them for the nurturing.  And surprise, surprise, when all the wealth has been redistributed, when all income is equalized, when all misery is shared equally, when all the positive energy has been vamped out of existence, even then, the liberals will still be unhappy.  Because when it comes to happiness, you just can’t get it from out there, you’ve got to get it from in here, inside yourself.

The truth of the matter is that we are likely at the beginning of that point in time.   Be forewarned, when it does come, when the liberals get their way, the Conservatives will not go quietly in the night.  At that point, taking personal responsibility will include fighting for the right to take personal responsibility.  We’re doing it now in fact.  I’m doing it by writing this piece.  I’m hoping (praying) that enough folks believe like I do and want to keep America strong, resilient and governed according to its fundamental God given principles.  And what is wrong with that?  I mean, you want to see a plethora of misery, hang your hat in a liberal run city or state.  So much unhappiness, strife and despair.  So much want from others and so little want from one’s self, a bonified prescription for enduring unhappiness is what you find there.  I don’t recommend it for anybody. 

Folks, especially liberals, get to a mirror and take a look. That’s the real enemy, mine too.  I have a personal mantra that I repeat quite a bit.  It goes like this:  When I want to find the culprit that is messing up my life, I look in the mirror.  That’s the culprit, the enemy.  He’s not that scary of an enemy.  I know this because I know the guy and sometimes, he listens to me and gives me what I want, even lets me control him every now and again.  I’m happier for that and it makes me laugh.  The enemy hates it when I laugh.  So, of course, I do it as much as possible.    

That’s my Reetzality for the day.

Thanks for the read.

Brett Reetz