The Absence of Happiness in America

We no longer have optimism, and the place it was kept is gone

Photo by Jonathan Rados on Unsplash

by Mike Meyer ~ Honolulu ~ March 23, 2021

It is becoming tough to be optimistic about America. There is not much happiness to be had. Even when things should be looking up, the urge to self-destruction overwhelms us even if we are not agents of that urge.

Any shred of happiness or hope is quickly gunned down to produce a media event affecting millions. The malignancy of racism, misogyny, and fear of losing what little security we have gained over the last forty years is used to turn ordinary people into monsters and killers. Those responsible for this condition celebrate and flaunt their own effectiveness at creating hatred, horror, and suffering.

People’s security has little or nothing to do with these acts and this condition. The problems facing America are problems that we can solve by recognizing common needs, not creating barriers of ignorance and fear. Our greatest threats come from domestic terrorism, irrational sales of military weapons, institutionalized racism, and maintaining greed as the only acceptable virtue.

Before the pandemic, only a small percentage of the population was without food through communal support from SNAP or foodbanks. They had little or no medical care and no security beyond their ability to maintain payments on the debt that kept them going. But expectations in the US have been driven down to fast food, pointless consumerism, and someone to hate. One month’s survival is good enough. Just don’t fall over the edge.

The pandemic pushed millions over the edge. There is little happiness to be found when you are in economic freefall, and Capitalist Realism denies not only any hope of change but erases all alternatives labeling them evil. The levels of sociopolitical and economic ignorance must be maintained so that there is no place that future alternatives to greed, planetary destruction, and undeserved suffering can exist.

That is the reason insanity spreads and horrors grow around us. Hence, we all know growing anxiety and hopelessness in the face of outrage and evil perpetrated by those controlled by opportunists. The steady increase in insanity and suicide, suicide is 3.7 times…