What's with the right-wingers' war on happiness?
"Work until you die!" is not the right take, dummies.
When I left conservative news media once and for all in fall of 2022, I also made the choice to consciously uncouple from Elon's bird app, which seemingly morphed into a toxic hell scape of red pill manosphere incels with no ability to self-reflect. A redundancy, I know, and a topic for another time. I’d only make brief checkins with tweeter dot com when someone sent me a video they thought was funny. I’d watch, x out of X (terrible rebrand, by the way), and carry on with life in the real world. There’s sunshine and grass there, I recommend 10/10.
That was until X offered cheap fun via the elbow-patched dude bros at Daily Wire getting trolled for such frigid takes as “retirement bad” and “video games badder.” I’m over simplifying on purpose.
I’ve watched “conservatives” lose the plot and abandon principles for years now in order to take up the mantle of becoming anti-leftist shit-talking haters with all the personal happiness of dried-out potted cactuses. I saw no point, at the time, in highlighting their nonsense and knew I couldn’t join them to reform from the inside since I belong to the demographic responsible for the downfall of all mankind: single women who make their own money. Again, a subject for another time. Let’s not get too distracted here, we have much to cover.
So I was lightly tickled when I saw that Harvard-graduate Ben Shapiro was getting dragged for a video in which he said, in part, that social security was terrible (agree) and that people shouldn’t retire unless they’re too unwell to work (violently disagree).
Now, for the record, I have never once spoken with Ben Shapiro. We’ve never been on the same group call, even. We have been work adjacent or mentioned in conversations between mutual work associates. Essentially, we know of each other through others. Secondly, I have no personal animus toward Ben in large part due to the first reason mentioned: I don’t know him at all. My issue is with what I consider to be the take, not the deliverer of it. With that stated, let’s move onto the larger point.
Not everyone’s jobs brings them happiness, joy, fulfillment, contentment, or even the lightest sense of purpose. Just ask anyone with a manager who falls on the narcissism spectrum. Not every job is a career, even. Have you seen cube farms, lit up with florescent tube lighting and despair? That’s what Dante had in mind when writing The Inferno. Many careers even in the private sector are just as vapidly soul-sucking as any government paper-pushing slog. I’ve long said that The Office and Office Space before it are uncomfortably accurate in their depictions of office structure and corporate culture.
Demanding people work in such places until they die is its own sort of death sentence.
A lot of folks feel completely trapped in roles they’ve found themselves pigeon-holed into, be it through their own choices or the simple circumstances of their lives, and are looking forward to their older ages so they can finally escape the menial daily grind of their “nine to fives” that thanks to email, messenger platforms, and everyone having their own phones tied to them like a cybernetic device, have become more like 24/7 jobs. Work from home can quickly turn into living at work if one doesn’t erect substantial personal boundaries. Even then, egomaniacal bosses with boomer-minded mentality of “I pay you, ergo eff your personal life” have ways of chipping at the walls.
It is rather indicative of a problem of our work-first cultural mindset — perpetuated largely by right-wing apostles echoing these creeds from air-conditioned studios surrounded often by their over-worked, off-camera minions — that so many Americans are looking forward to the days when they’ve got hip and knee replacements, to finally get their time to do what they want to do with their own lives. Which starts with leaving the work grind behind.
Does anyone remember that line in the Declaration of Independence that went something to the effect of all people (white men, at the time) had the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”? I’ve read the document a few times. There doesn’t seem to be an asterisk by that line that says anything about “except if your government sucks, then lol at you, keep working, loser.” But I don’t know, maybe my tiny, feeble female brain missed it. I’ve heard that can happen. Will a big, strong, logical man explain it to me? Thanks.
Anyway, my point and T. J’s point, was actually that people have the rights to both a life and to build toward enjoying it. Why is this so hard for some right-wing, what appears to be mostly right-wing dudes working at The Daily Wire, to understand?
Lauren Southern, who I’m nominating to be the new thought-leader for conservatives, came in like a wrecking ball with her video Shapiro’s Delusional Take on Retirement. In it she made an observation I’ve also noticed about the right, and one that’s just as problematic as the left.
Basically that the right-wing commentator’s obsession with serving “Big Capitalism” is, in Courtney’s opinion, just as toxic as the left-wing’s obsession with serving Big Government. The right didn’t used to always be this reactionary to what the left said and did, but as the years have ticked by, the right has become less concerned with the dignity of the human person and more adamant about simply opposing leftist dogma or “wokism.”
Even still, it seems to me that the right is also trying to shift the Overton window on what “wokism” really began as to now simply mean “not right-wing.” I’d point you to Matt Walsh’s stale take on video games, which he seems to have repackaged from early 2000s commentary. Again, a subject for another time. Future Courtney has much on which to opine.
There is, quite simply, nothing wrong with wanting to enjoy your life. In fact it’s a tragedy if you don’t. We all go through highs and lows, for sure. It’s not all cotton candy and ferris wheels, sometimes it’s waiting in line or dealing with a carny. This notion you must “work until you die” rings just as dystopian as “you vill eat the bugs.” Demoralizing your audience is an interesting strategy I wouldn’t personally lean into, but what do I know?
The right wing cannot both claim the mantle of “family values” while advocating people work until their bodies are no longer able to bear it. When are people showing value to their families when they’re working until their crippled or dead? The right cannot claim to champion individual rights while also demanding younger people shut up about their very real suffering and simply to “work harder” as they somehow did in the days of old, in what I like to called Trickle Down Misery. I’m looking at you, boomers and boomer-identifying peoples.
Conservatism used to mean something. It used to have principles. It used to see value in the human spirit, in beauty, human ingenuity, in life outside the cube farm and grind culture. I’d wager that conservatism hasn’t changed so much, but it’s self-proclaimed acolytes sure have in a quest to out-outrage the left to garner precious hate views and clicks. It’s disgusting and it’s not helpful to anyone but those peddling subscriptions.
If you love your job, if your job is your passion, congratulations. Keep at it for as long as you wish. But know that you’re doing so because you like it and not everyone is in the same situation. Which shouldn’t be a hard concept to grasp unless one doesn’t wander beyond their climate-controlled spaces and tax bracket. Some of us, myself included, actively enjoy getting outside to touch grass and live our lives beyond the screen, to form real, meaningful relationships with people who don’t have X accounts. I really, really hate calling it “X” what a stupid name.
Some of us enjoy bonfires, great music, reading, brunch with mimosas and carbohydrates, time with family and friends. Whatever happened to that small-town Americana ideal of finding your people and enjoying their company?
Most of us work to live, we don’t live to work. There are many ways to find joy and meaning in our time on this planet, and it’s wonderful to find meaning in not one place but many, to try new things, to learn new skills, to go outside our tax bracket and engage in actual offline dialogue with people who don’t make insane money from live reads with promocodes.
You know how irritating it is for me, someone who still considers herself conservative, to dust off leftist talking points about class in order to address a snobby point made from a righty-tighty? I’m getting the internalized rage over it.
I will leave you with a more positive video about the right needing to reacquaint itself with basic human emotions, as our conservative forbearers intended. Check out Lauren Southern’s well-timed longer video Conservative Sensitivity Training, and then get outside, go for a walk, enjoy your life.
Pleasantly surprised to find this in my email only days after x-ing (?) that I miss your witty articles.
This!!! All of this! I’m so tired of the hate-click-bait battles. There are so many things that would be worth while to debate. Real policy and cultural issues. Thanks for writing this.