Tuesday open thread: We're gonna threaten you with a good time
We take a momentary break from all things Ukraine to talk about those who promise people happiness.
Now, one would think this would be noncontroversial. It would be, as Madam Martha Stewart says, "a very good thing." Who doesn't like to be happy? I like to be happy. I'm sure you like to be happy. Kids like to be happy. Happiness is like buttercream frosting: something to which you automatically say "yes".
Well, not everyone.
Republican Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia predicted Democrats were plotting to "create happiness" for voters.
The Congresswoman who represents Georgia's 14th Congressional District made her prediction about Democrats during an interview with conservative program Real America’s Voice to discuss what President Joe Biden might say during Tuesday's State of the Union address.
“I think we’re going to hear Joe Biden, he’s going to claim victory over COVID,” said Greene, adding, “And if he does that, then you’ll know the Democrats are lying.”
She continues:
“You’ll know for sure, like we’ve already known all along, that they’re just using COVID for politics and they’re very much looking to move on and create happiness going into the midterms because they're scared to death of losing control when everyone goes to vote.”
Happiness? You'll get that when you're dead and in Heaven. And you get to Heaven by making everyone's life here on earth a sheer misery, and don't you forget that, bucko!
Really. Being against happiness is like being against puppies and kittens. Even someone like Mitch McConnell would be onboard with happiness. But not our Mad Marge. Oh no. If you're happy, it's because you've been lied to by those thieving Democrats. It's just part of their sinister plot to win votes by making people happier with their lives. Nefarious, skullduggerous, and importunate. (I may have invented one of those words.)
Here's the thing: Marge, also, tries to make her voters happy. It's just that what makes her voters happy is for her to be a screeching harpy and being as positively awful and crappy to everyone they hate as she can. It's a negative, not a positive, happiness. She does nothing to make her voters' lives better. She doesn't bring home the bacon. She just sits in Congress, on no committees, and brays on Twitter and weird right wing YouTube channels. I mean, if that's what floats their boats, then yippee. But the majority of sane human beings like happiness that actually makes them, well, happy, without the lingering aftertaste of hatred and despair.
Count me among the people who like "happy" happiness. Count me among the people who try to avoid misery in life, in the sense that we don't seek it out, or wallow in it. Count me among the people who are not Mad Marge and don't have her blinkered views on life. Part of me wants to know who hurt her. And then I realize I don't care; many people in life have been hurt, and they don't turn around and make the lives of others a perpetual torment. And if Democrats are going to advance my happiness, that of my nearest and dearest, and of the commonwealth in general, then they get my vote.
Happiness 2022. Because we fucking deserve it.