Home The Progressive Missionaries of Unhappiness
Home The Progressive Missionaries of Unhappiness

The Progressive Missionaries of Unhappiness

There is no one that the left hates more than a man who does not hate, who goes through the day without outrage and who does not spend his life stewing with vindictive resentments.

Leftists call it “privilege” now. They have called it apathy, escapism and a hundred other things.

They will find a thousand other names for it as they march through the future centuries grinding their teeth and cursing their country for its backwardness, their people for their provincialism and their culture for its mercantilism. But privilege is simply freedom from resentment.

To be of the left is to confuse perpetual outrage with righteousness. The professional leftist believes that the path to utopia on earth lies in constantly denouncing thought criminals until they have all been unthought so that only their kind of ethical and empathetic people walk the earth.

Like most utopians, they plan for a utopia that they could never actually live in.

Leftists without grievances are like an army without guns. That is why leftist experiments in communes dissolved into denunciations, power grabs and authoritarian rules as soon the drugs ran out. Often even before. The leftist isn’t seeking freedom from capitalism, religion, nationalism, racism, sexism, office dress codes, bar codes and any of the other great evils of the moment. These are just the outrage fuel of the willfully outraged whose resentment has become both culture and religion.

What he wants is to express an egotistical grievance at a world that is not built around him. His resentments came before his ideology. They are in a very real sense his ideology. The idealistic leftist is a passing phenomenon. He is useful for getting the actual work done while everyone else shouts. Unless he is very dim, he eventually realizes that and heads off to volunteer in Africa. The core is the aggrieved leftist whose grievances merge with his storytelling skills into the compelling narrative of a narcissist.

The perpetually aggrieved deeply resent those who are oblivious to their anger. It is the theme that dominates the literature, the music and the political writings of an infuriated left throwing its anger at a mindless mass that is perfectly happy collecting paychecks, living in the suburbs and watching television. It is not their prosperity that the left hates, but their uncomplicated happiness.

It is this uncomplicated happiness that the left sets out to ruin at all costs.

Leftist activism is drama. It is deliberately destructive and disruptive. It glories in taking the happy lives of ordinary people and wrecking them. It plays the part of the troubled sibling, the one who is driven to destroy the happiness of the rest of the family out of his or her own willful unhappiness.

Happiness is a choice. It is not dependent on the condition of the individual, but on his state of mind. The essence of enduring happiness is a state of stability. Leftist politics are instability incarnate; the opposite number of happiness. That is why the left acts as the destroyer of happiness.

The left does not think that anyone should be happy. It is not unhappy because it is personally enmeshed in suffering. The ideological leaders of the left tend to come from the upper classes. They know no hunger except when they are dieting. They experience so few material shortcomings that they treat poverty as a lifestyle; slumming in poor areas and showily living on a few dollars a day.

It is the happiness of others that makes the left unhappy. It is convinced that this happiness is unearned and illegitimate because it does not take into account how unhappy this happiness makes the left.

Privilege is the accusation that the very lack of resentment and grievance, neurotic responses to simple phrases and a cloud of free-floating anger, represents an ignorant oppression. The happy are only happy at the expense of the unhappy and must recognize the unhappy privilege of their happiness.

Leftists are missionaries of unhappiness. Their creed is salvation through anger. Their governing philosophy is to make others miserable in order to teach them how they have overlooked the misery of others. They are forever spreading misery around the world for the sake of the greater good.

If the left sees anyone being happy, it must immediately set out to ruin the fun. The simple joy of others turns out to be only a cover for monstrous abuses that they are determined to make everyone else see. If it’s an object, it was made by oppressed workers. If it’s a social group, it’s discriminatory. If it’s food, it makes you sick. If it’s a sport, it’s abusive. If it’s art, then it’s escapism from the misery the left creates.

It is straightforward happiness that the left hates most of all. It is unable to appreciate anything directly unless it is medicated. It likes things only askew. It says that it likes bad art and ugly fashions because it is being ironic. What it really means is that it is only capable of liking something as a commentary on the absurdity of the thing and the emotion of liking it. Even its happiness is a critique of happiness.

Its joys are as sour as the rest of its nature.

The left views simplicity as dishonest. It is full of secret agendas and projects this in paranoid fashion. It is always finding the subtext in everything because it brings the subtext to the table. It is forever carrying around Rorschach inkblots in its head and shouting about all the terrible things it sees around it.

Deriving its happiness from the unhappiness of others, the left must see the destruction of happiness as moral and its victims as immoral. Happiness is selfish, it insists, while the awareness of how many evils are hidden beneath the simplistic façade of happiness is ethically enlightening. And yet its own obsession with destroying the happiness of others is the selfish way in which the left finds its happiness.

The left is only truly happy when it is destroying something. Its sublime transcendent moments are revolutionary. Their joy is derived not from what is being created, but from what is being destroyed. Every leftist revolution from the reign of Madame Guillotine to Obama’s election was full of vicious glee at things coming undone. Under the banner of equality, the left inaugurates inequality. Through calls for peace, it brings war and with cries of prosperity, it ushers in an age of terrible poverty.

Unable to create, the left ultimately only destroys. Its creative energies spring from bitterness. It glories in subversively undermining the happiness of others, directly and indirectly, but once all the things that it sought to destroy have been banished, it has nothing more to offer. Its hatred is sterile. It poison can be artfully disguised as idealism, humor and passion, but when there is nothing left to attack or subvert, it shows its true viral form by dying, as every virus that kills its host must inevitably do.

When the left finally triumphs, its first order of business is a total ruthless purge of its own professional dissenters because without such a purge, it would remain in the same dysfunctional state.

The left is satanic in its original sense of ‘antagonist’. It represents the darker side of human nature. It is the ideology of those who cannot let their anger go, who gain a perverse enjoyment from their grudges and define themselves less by what they are for than by what they are against. Its followers are motivated by an endless resentment that cannot be appeased because the resentment is their purpose.

It is impossible to meet the left halfway or to compromise with it because it is not seeking the stable balance that so many conservatives are. It finds its true purpose in the chaos of conflict. It gains its meaning in opposition not in co-existence. To compromise with the left is to rob it of its purpose. And the left pushes back against any such efforts through renewed bursts of radicalism.

Conservative parties lose when they fail to come to terms with this antagonistic dynamic and assume their opponents on the left also seek a stable state that they can find common ground on. Stability is the enemy of the left. Stability is privilege. Stability is happiness. Stability is everything that the left despises.

The left has learned to cloak its animosity and destructive aims in positive rhetoric. It destroys economies, families and freedoms in the name of equality. Its cheering mobs realize too late that its cause is not the equality of opportunity, happiness or liberty, but poverty, misery and slavery.

The left does not redistribute wealth. It redistributes want. It does not want everyone to share in the happiness of others, but to be burdened with a larger burden of their miseries.

No compromise can be had with the missionaries of unhappiness. Happiness can be shared without diminishing its quality, but the division of misery is the aim of the professionally miserable.

The left has suffered its worst defeats at the hands of the happy warriors of the right. Its greatest vulnerability is its meanness of spirit. Its defeat comes when its malaise is contrasted with happiness, when its deep suspicion of humanity is met with patriotic optimism and when its alarmist crises are met with laughter.

Comments

  1. Anonymous8/10/14

    A joyous Sukkot, to you, Daniel.
    - Sanguine

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  2. Anonymous8/10/14

    Excellent article Daniel.

    What in the world would the missionaries of unhappiness do if they knew about Breslov hassidim and mitzvah gedola?

    Keliata

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  3. Anonymous8/10/14

    The left is all of that; it's nihilism with a sneer - djr

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  4. rexrs8/10/14

    Brilliant analysis, brilliantly written.Thank you.



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  5. Anonymous9/10/14

    I agree with your assessment that the Left wishes to destroy all happiness. You don't say this, but it seems to me it wouldn't be much of a stretch to say that to be against happiness is the same as being against all good. And that you've made the the point (for me) that this is another example of the struggle between good and evil, and if the Left is successful, there will be Hell on earth, which you've decribed here very well.

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  6. Anonymous9/10/14

    Sir, you have these people "pegged!" They are the only people I've ever seen turn victim-hood into a 'science!'

    This victim-promoting in turn keeps them in a job...........

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  7. It comes down to rabid self-righteousness. Or, more specifically, it comes down to those who simply cannot be happy determined to make others as miserable as they are all the while hiding behind the glittering mask of good for goodness sake. But really it is even more rancid that that. They delude even themselves. They truly believe they are righteous and thus the buzz words they love so much, DIVERSITY!, EQUALITY!, and JUSTICE!, are merely the tools they use to self-justify themselves. Never mind what is real or is the actual result of their actions. They are right because they shout good words.

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  8. Satan has always been jealous of God, because he cannot create anything. His only power is to distort, corrupt, question, or incite. Only humans are created in the image of God, with an ability to create what we can imagine. The Left's only tool in their kit is to cast doubt on our transcendent inheritance.

    As an obverse of the old cartoon: They want to be missionaries that boil the natives in the pot.

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  9. Anonymous9/10/14

    And they hate themselves first

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  10. Anonymous9/10/14

    Brilliantly written and spot on.You should promote this more on social sites and things like that. This needs a wider circulation. Best regards.

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  11. Anonymous9/10/14

    Brilliant appraisal of the left Daniel, agree with every word.

    As Churchill said, Socialism is the equal sharing of misery. They've done a great job of it since 1945.

    Proud Brit.

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  12. Anonymous9/10/14

    Its defeat comes when its malaise is contrasted with happiness, when its deep suspicion of humanity is met with patriotic optimism and when its alarmist crises are met with laughter.
    And instead we have Boehner and MCConnel et al.

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  13. Anonymous9/10/14

    Yesterday my daughter and I had a small discussion about some upcoming family birthdays. {Not mine, which I choose to ignore}
    I remarked that the milestones involved in these birthdays were kind of a big deal.
    She disagreed, saying that she considered a peaceful home, having good kids, and being happy almost every day, was her idea of a 'big deal'
    From the mouths of babes....
    sophie

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  14. OMG. Is this an Onion Article? Straw Many City!!!! What a fever dream.

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  15. Anonymous9/10/14

    "It is this uncomplicated happiness that the left sets out to ruin at all costs", as a European, seeing my country being flooded by immigrants, I know exactly what you mean.

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  16. Your description of the left sounds very much like your description of the Islamic State. They both want everyone to submit to their agenda and be miserably subservient to their superior world view. Or dead. Doesn't matter to them.
    Actually, the supreme master of both ideologies is Satan himself, as he is Biblically cast as the Devourer, the Father of Lies, the accuser, the Destroyer. He will have his fling, but his end is sure.

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  17. In other words: Leftists are Nihilists.

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  18. Outstanding insights; it warms my heart to know there are people this perceptive in the world.

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  19. Anonymous10/10/14

    This is the explanation I've been looking for all my life. Well done.

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  20. Anonymous10/10/14

    When you read the work of writers with great insight – which is the noblest virtue – it’s wonderful to find a phrase that distills the entire piece to its essence. Greenfield gave us a couple today:

    “The left does not redistribute wealth. It redistributes want.” It’s not entirely original; it’s been said before, but its wisdom is enduring. The other was:

    “Unable to create, the left ultimately only destroys.” The Obama Democrat Party is doing exactly that in America today. I fear it will end in tears. Only a cleansing revolution can resolve the conflict, so my forecast is death and pain.

    Daniel, if your insight sees an alternative, perhaps you could let us know.

    churchill

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  21. Excellent description of the left Mr. Greenfield. It reminds me a lot of the essay "Pensees" by Joseph Sobran but in a shorter version.

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  22. Anonymous10/10/14

    Awesome!

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  23. Anonymous11/10/14

    BY THEIR PROJECTIONS SHALL YOU KNOW THEM: when they accuse you of being an "angry white man;" be sure it is they who are the angry fellow!-When they accuse you of a "war on women" be sure they are waging some kind of war on someone, usually men; if they call you racist, ..... well, you know by now. Ultimately it is an infantile rejection of reality. I know it firsthand, because I had to overcome some of the stuff imbibed in college, in myself, and it is an obstinate enemy, I tell you. Leftism is "The Idiot's Guide to Life's Perplexing Problems," it can all be easily understood if brought down to a couple of simple concepts: racism, sexism, ageism, homophobia, Islamophobia, etc. You can win any argument (or rather stop it) handily with these easy-to-learn simple concepts, anyone can do it - you are an instant equal to all the brilliant minds on the other side.
    One aspect that really bothers me, and that was not touched upon in this brilliant (as always) article: resentments, like weeds in a garden, grow anywhere, at anytime, and the Left makes an art form out of pulling those latent tendencies out of everyone, magnifying them, and locking them into place, rather than leaving them as passing shadows in an otherwise normal mentality.
    Daniel, how DO you keep pumping out such great stuff? I deeply admire your gift and hard work! Thank you!

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  24. Funny in a sadistic, ticklish kind of way. The loony left has entered Animal Farm a long time ago. Oink.

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  25. "It is not the personal that is political, but the political that is personal. People with unusually thin skins ascribe the small insults, humiliations, and setbacks consequent upon human existence to vast and malign political forces; and, projecting their own suffering onto the whole of mankind, conceive of schemes, usually involving violence, to remedy the situation that has so wounded them.

    Dostoyevsky knew this, but the author closest to Updike in spirit, if his great superior in felicity of execution, is Joseph Conrad, the Pole-turned-Englishman. Conrad experienced political persecution from the inside, having been exiled to Siberia during his childhood with his father by the tyrannical czarist regime. One might have expected him therefore to have sympathized with extremists of almost any stripe, but he understood only too well that those who opposed tyranny by terrorism objected not so much to tyranny as such but to the fact that it was not they who were exercising it. Indeed, the terrorist temperament was apt to see tyranny where there was none. As Conrad puts it: “The way of even the most justifiable revolutions is prepared by personal impulses disguised into creeds.”

    http://www.city-journal.org/html/16_3_urbanities-terrorists.html

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  26. There are "red diaper" babies whose parents programmed their children to nurture a permanent sense of injustice and oppression. They in turn sired the "liberal bib" babies, raised in a household of wealth distribution and social justice, injected by their parents with a festering resentment for anyone who seemed to be "rich," even though the "liberal bib" babies were usually raised in affluent households and spic-and-span neighborhoods. These in turn birthed completely addled offspring, born with the mental DNA of guilt for having two nickels to rub together, for they were taught that the welfare families on the other side of town were entitled to the second nickel, and probably a fraction of the first. College for all three generations simply finished the lobotomies. And, presto, we have roaming the streets and campuses children and faculty with only half-brains.

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  27. Here I do not completely agree on exclusively blaming the left, It is not only the left that is a missionary for unhappiness, ALL extremists are proponents of the sour face mindset. Look at the recent news of how Iran's mullahs punished the youngsters for having posted a "happy" Youtube video.

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  28. Anonymous12/10/14

    Some of our younger voters and the media, are nothing more that rabid apologists for everything American.
    They are embarrassed that their hardworking parents raised them in safe neighborhoods, with decent schools, and always kept food in the pantry.
    Instead they idolize thugs and opportunists who prey on their naivete ..
    Serving jail time is a badge of honor, in their minds, and probably unjust as well, no matter the crime..They find amusement in mocking our military, our institutions, and our vanishing honor.
    Some will cling to these ideas into middle age and beyond. Thankfully, most will grow up at least for now. However, I fear we are sliding quickly into becoming a nation of perpetual teenagers, with all the accompanying emotional immaturity.

    sophie

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  29. Anonymous20/10/14

    "Happiness is a choice."

    I'm afraid I have to disagree with you once again, Mr. Greenfield. As the great philosopher Charles M. Schultz once said, "Happiness is a warm puppy."

    [Douglas J. Bender]

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  30. Anonymous7/11/14

    Best insult to the left:
    may you and your family always be HAPPY and may all your enemies know it!

    ReplyDelete

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