Recently another poll revealed America’s most known political fact: Liberals are miserable. The samplings change but the conclusions don’t. Yet as confirmed as leftist misery is, its cause is missed: cognitive dissonance.
The latest polling by the Institute for Family Studies found that only 12 percent of young liberal women were completely satisfied with life. Contrastingly, young conservative women were three times more likely to be completely satisfied. Further, IFS observed: “And consistent with previous research, the effect of ideology on young women’s happiness held up to controls for age, education, race, and income.” (LISTEN FOR MORE: The Spectator P.M. Ep. 114: Conservative Women Are Happier Than Liberal Women)
IFS’s findings are hardly new. Just do a quick search of depression, pessimism, or unhappiness based on ideology, and a plethora of articles appear, all detailing the same thing. Being left means being unhappier than your counterparts on the right.
The theories are many. As the IFS article states:
Many of the most thoughtful interpreters — like Jonathan Haidt, Jean Twenge, and Matthew Yglesias — of this ideological divide in the emotional well-being of young women have pointed to the role that “catastrophizing” thinking has played in dragging down the spirits of liberal women. The idea is that taking an overly negative view of the world, and minimizing your own agency to navigate life, often inspired by social media, has taken a serious toll on young liberal women’s emotional health. That’s because, as Yglesias put it: “Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin is just what depression is.”
The article goes on to cite Aristotle and the French sociologist, Emile Durkheim in its search for “why?” However, rather than looking inward in search of the obscure, the outward provides an answer both far more obvious and far more likely. Liberals are wrong — over and over again and almost 100 percent of the time. It is as though in life’s game of finding the pea under the three cups the liberals’ sole focus is on the cups without the pea.
As any fan of a losing sports team can tell you, losing isn’t fun. While some proclaim that losing builds character, it assuredly doesn’t build happiness. Game after game, season after season, unhappiness builds until it reaches downtrodden misery; the fans seemingly hanging on for no other reason than to see how their team can blow it this time.
To see the same in politics is to see the Left. Nowhere is the lie of happiness more proclaimed than on the left. Kamala Harris’s campaign of joy was only happy when it attacked Trump. How many of their political commentators have upbeat names — “Joy” and “Sunny.” Yet when are they ever not just happy, but simply not angry? How often is Bernie Sanders not pictured with his fist in the air? Elizabeth Warren without her expression a perpetual pinch-faced pucker of petulance?
Right after Trump’s November victory, Democrat governors fell over themselves racing to proclaim defiance of an administration that would not be in office for months. Now with the Trump administration in office, they are demonstrating, calling for taking the fight to the streets, and even urging that weapons be brought. (READ MORE: Taking It to the Streets … Democrats Finally Revert to Vindictive Form)
This is what the Left does. It is what they know best and love most: protest, civil disobedience, marching. They are not a happy lot.
Theirs is a burden of unrelenting cognitive dissonance. Because everything they believe is wrong, the Left is forever pressed by the dissonance of belief and sight. For the Left seeing is not believing, because what they believe is not what they see.
So, they must constantly suppress the inconsistencies of their policies: Defund the Police (that reducing crime’s deterrence won’t increase crime), DEI (that overt racism is the route for ending racism), illegal immigration (that ignoring the law won’t have negative consequences), transgender radicalism (that self-declaration equals reality), excessive government spending (that over-spending doesn’t equate to higher deficits and debt and adverse economic effects), a welfare state (that giving people benefits without work requirements prepares them for anything but receiving more benefits), and radical environmentalism (that it has no meaningful effect beyond reducing competitiveness and energy security while increasing prices).
The Left therefore resort to blinders to shut out the disturbing dissonance. Their cancel culture, woke religion, and labeling of opponents (racists, fascists, etc.), all are simply shortcuts to short-circuiting real discussion. Their lumping of the population into identity groups serves the same purpose: because individuals refuse to act as the Left believes they should, they facilely categorize them and attribute behaviors to the group.
The Left is under perpetual strain from the conflict between belief and sight. Their strain only mounts as the disconnect’s evidence grows. And they become increasingly miserable.
It is said that “misery loves company.” America’s Left goes further: their misery demands company. And they will not be happy until everyone is as miserable as they are.
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READ MORE from J.T. Young:
The True Depths of Democrats’ Bankruptcy
How to Stop Sanctuary City Insanity
Taking It to the Streets … Democrats Finally Revert to Vindictive Form
J.T. Young is the author of the recent book, Unprecedented Assault: How Big Government Unleashed America’s Socialist Left from RealClear Publishing and has over three decades’ experience working in Congress, the Department of Treasury, the Office of Management, and Budget, and representing a Fortune 20 company.
