A subtitle for this article could be “psycho-Fascism propaganda at work”. A lot of study has for some reason gone in to the comparative happiness of conservatives and liberals. The overall verdict is that conservatives are happier. Nothing of the slightest use to anyone but archaeologists has been discovered, but, meh… What would you expect? The more relevant question is why make this absurd comparison?
The problem with this grotesque perspective is that it equates political ideologies with happiness. Politics has systematically destroyed America and American democracy, bit by bit, for the last few decades. National polarization has been an unmitigated disaster.
…So now we have academics digging among the whimpering ruins for comparative happiness? To achieve what, one may ask?
The New York Times has a virtual shopping list of treatises and what seem to be “Bingo!” based papers on the subject. This article, to be fair, has to deal with sententious drivel aimed at proving opaque ideological values as equating to happiness or unhappiness. It’s a pretty damn thankless position from which to write an actual shopping list, let alone evaluate the minds of others.
It turns out to be a study in relative insularity. The conservative formula for happiness as expressed in the NYT article is a bland mix of values, “disgust sensitivity” (what an expression!” and rationalizations. Hmm… Rationalizations… Who’d have thunk it? Humans rationalizing something? …And conservatives are happiest? Hm, you may well say.
Want some perspective? You may need it in this half-ass Disneyland.
The United States staggered in as the 19th happiest country in the world in 2021. Above the US were small-time peer countries. Bigger countries didn’t do so well, but Germany was 13th, and the woefully lost, self-besieged UK in Brexit meltdown was 17th.
Think about that. This is the country that produced the fun and fabulous lifestyle of the Boom times, the Golden Age of Happy in the mid-20th century. It was The Land of Actual Opportunity, not this current tedious collection of social failures and psychoses.
Meanwhile, (and the intervening years have been very mean indeed to the US), “conservatives are happy?” Do tell. A crime-soaked, money-mad, unfocused, directionless, hate-manufacturing, hideously corrupt, overpriced slum is something to be happy about?
Interesting? No, it isn’t. It’s delusional at best.
The fact is that there’s not a lot to be happy about. Only a highly qualified ignoramus could be anything like “happy” in the current human environment.
The US is now way behind so many other countries, even in context with its own recent history, and still going backward. Health, education, affordability, you name it; the US is the world leader in regression. In terms of life expectancy, the US was 46th in the world in 2018. That ain’t good. Infant mortality in the US is 65% higher than in Europe. You can see the full story for yourself on this link, and it’s not “happy” information.
Which raises the question – What in the name of any sort of credible reality or even hallucination are conservatives happy about?
Excuse me if I’m not too impressed. You can use expressions like “relativist moral code” until the cows sing opera. I can’t see any indication of awareness of anything outside the inbuilt smugness.
One of the classics of this trail of useless, stale breadcrumbs is this: Conservatives Report Greater Meaning in Life than Liberals. According to this mighty premise, this mindlessly vague finding is based on “a single assessment of life in general”.
The survey is conducting an audit, or perhaps a market survey of the meaning of life? The best way to do this is to ask any passing ignoramus for a personal generalization? Leave out the factual world, just get a Good or Bad response? Categorize, and pump out a statement like that?
To quote American folklore – Yeesh. Perhaps more informative would be a supplementary question:
What is this unmitigated garbage trying to prove, and to whom?
It’s well known that constant affirmation is the glue of the internet. People congregate and share a space where everyone agrees how wonderful they are. This sycophantic view of conservative “happiness” is almost literally two-dimensional.
One of the bases of populism is that elusive and normally totally misleading word, “We”. It’s all-inclusive. You nail yourself to whatever demographic and that’s “We”. That’s exactly what this tripe is all about. How right “We” are. “We” are therefore happier.
In case you’re wondering what psycho-Fascism looks like, this is pretty much it. “We” are superior; “We” are (insert any simplistic expression that sounds good). “Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Survey Finding” pretty much covers it.
You’ll be happy to know that the people this is pointed at will never see the cosmic, karmic levels of cynicism.
