When we were at the RNC last week, one of the main things I noticed was that Republicans were very much trying to push this meme that they are happy and we are miserable and why would anyone want to be miserable, huh?! They love these videos of “former liberals” more or less doing “How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Trump” monologues. They’ve always loved the idea of “the happiness gap” — the statistical fact that conservatives report being happier than liberals do.
It’s not terribly surprising that this is the case — after all, the saying “ignorance is bliss” didn’t come out of nowhere. We have far more serious things to be concerned about — actual oppression, actual censorship, the loss of our reproductive rights, etc, — while everything they’re mad at is imaginary. Of course we’re a little less perky!
The more aware you are, the more you think about things, the less “happy” you’re going to be. This is just a fact. The person sitting around reading Dostoevsky is gonna be a little less cheery than the person reading Family Circus, but who would you rather be?
AND YET!
Cheerful though they may be, the Right has been going hard this week, declaring war on everything that is good and joyful in this world. I mean, they hate nice things in general, but ever since Biden stepped down and it was clear Vice President Kamala Harris was taking over, they’ve been on a real tear.
For instance, one of their biggest criticisms of Harris? She laughs! She laughs a lot and she laughs loudly! And they do not like it at all.
They are all sharing like, six-minute memes of a woman laughing and are just straight up fuming over them. Clearly Margaret Atwood was not wrong when she said “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”
I would, actually, like to take a moment here and congratulate all of the “liberal” pundits for not flying off the deep end with some OH NO KAMALA LAUGHS AND PEOPLE DON’T LIKE IT! nonsense as they have done in the past with basically everything.
The other thing they think they have on Harris is, to quote Laura Loomer, “her sexual history.”
They’re also on quite a tear claiming that she supposedly made it to the Vice Presidency by giving out blow jobs.
Aside from this being very obviously untrue, can we just acknowledge if it were remotely possible to “ascend to the top” by giving blowjobs, straight men would have nothing.
It’s clear that what Republicans are upset about is the mere concept of blow jobs to begin with! After all, Samuel Alito himself said that he was very much looking forward to overturning Lawrence v. Texas, which barred states from making sodomy illegal. Back in May 2023, the Heritage Foundation proposed eliminating recreational sex altogether!
Yes, you read that right. The Heritage Foundation wants to make opposing recreational sex a feminist ideal. They know Andrea Dworkin never actually said that all heterosexual sex is rape, right?
At the same time, we’ve got video of JD Vance calling Kamala a cat lady and whining about her not having had her own children, because now Republicans also hate women who have either decided not to have their own children or who have fertility issues. (And yet he still voted against a right to accessing IVF too!) I don’t know if Kamala has a cat or not and the internet won’t tell me, but you know what I like? Cats! Cats are great. Who doesn’t like cats? I’ll tell you who — JD Vance, couch lover and cat hater.
This is not necessarily Kamala-related, but earlier this week, I happened upon a tweet from right-wing British writer Isabel Oakeshott about how rainbow flags are forcing young men into the waiting arms of Andrew Tate.
“I'm not surprised boys look up to Andrew Tate,” she wrote on social media. “Police call it ‘terrifying’ but only have to look at themselves/all around them, to see why. Covering everything in rainbow flags and 'celebrating' men becoming women - no wonder lads admire a man who is proud to be 100pc male.”
So they hate rainbows so much that they are basically forced to continually listen to a sex-trafficking misogynist? Really? That’s super weird of them! Is she saying that the only way to stop men from admiring or even becoming sex-trafficking misogynists is for no one to ever be allowed to enjoy rainbows again and for all trans people to stay in the closet? I don’t know! If they’re that fragile, I’d assume something else would have just as good a chance to break them. Anything else, really. That’s no way to live!
What’s next? Are they all gonna go Kristi Noem on all the puppies? Are they coming for Dolly Parton? (They did.) Do they just hate everything that is pure and good in this world? It seems so!
We may be more unhappy due to the fact that we are more likely to see and acknowledge injustices in the world, but, clearly, we’re also a lot more likely to really enjoy the good things in it as well! So let’s let the Right spend all of their time whining about people laughing and having recreational sex and petting adorable kittens and chasing rainbows or whatever and we can spend our time enjoying all of the nice things and also kicking their asses in November.
One of the most difficult things to cope with was learning to not hate myself.
Because I was taught to hate myself and my humanity in the fundamentalist Evangelical church. My thoughts were "sinful". My body was "sinful". Getting near girls or playing with girls was dangerous. I was worthless. I deserved to be burned alive forever. Nothing I could do was good enough. My best deeds were filthy rags.
I had to act a certain way to be 'masculine'. I mean, I was heterosexual. I had a deep crush on a girl at age five. But you know... you had to act a certain way. Play sports, be aggressive, be tough, don't show emotion. Never cry. Like cars. Like trucks. Like guns. Honor, loyalty, honesty, bravery, chivelry. earner, protector.
Becoming more comfortable in my own skin was a lesson that took fifteen years and counting. Realizing that I was... I am okay. My humanity is okay. My body is okay. And I can be and like and think whatever the Hell I want and it's okay. I'm still a man. And those qualities that I thought defined being a good "man" really just defined being a good person and that good women have those same qualities too. And it's more important to focus on being a better version of myself every day than it is to impress a bunch of jackholes talking about man cards and shit.
When I see a Truck driving down the road with a big “Fuck Joe Biden” flag, gun stickers, and a decal of the president kidnapped and hog tied I always think to myself…
Damn, there’s goes a happy motherfucker who everyone wants to be around.