Posts Tagged → leftists
Does your happiness determine your politics?
Having grown up with leftists, and been surrounded by leftists, and worked primarily if not almost exclusively with leftists for the first 2/3 of my career, I have developed a loose theory of political orientation: Our happiness determines our politics.
Americans holding leftist political views tend to be less happy, dis-satisfied, or just generally unhappy.
“If you are not angry, you are not paying attention” went one popular leftist bumper sticker in the 1990s. Anger seems to be a self-recognized trait among leftists, a bond uniting them.
Given that what seems like 98% of political violence or culturally-based violence in America is committed by Democrats or leftists, it would follow that anger and unhappiness are driving traits in the left. Anger and hate are precursors to violence.
Karl Marx, the 1850s father of Marxism/ socialism/communism and the ends-justify-the-means political tyranny, was a notoriously dis-satisfied guy. One famous letter from his father to him excoriates Marx for never being happy and always looking to blame others for his own failures. To think that Karl Marx’s political descendants would fall far from his ideological tree is really stretching the truth of natural human character.
I could go on and on and really develop this theory, like Ten Commandments level envy is the core of evil “equity”/ thieving redistributive politics, but if you doubt this, look around yourself. Look at the people around you, and ask yourself, Who is angry, and who is optimistic and positive?
And then figure out the politics of the angry, dis-satisfied people and the politics of the happy, optimistic people. In my experience, with a few exceptions, the unhappy people are almost always on the political left. And the optimistic people are almost always on the political center-right. The few exceptions to this rule have all been rural Democrats from around Central PA. Maxine, Robb, a few others I know from rural backgrounds, all seem to be happy people and also liberal-left.
And of course we all know some gruff, jaded, grumpy old conservative curmudgeons…
So it just made me wonder if our life experience, family background and upbringing, etc determine our happiness, and then our politics naturally follow that. It seems to be the case, much more often then not the case.
My two cents.
Your experience may differ, but I doubt it will by much.