America slumped into mass mental un-wellness during the 45th president’s years in politics. Every day has been fraught with conflict of one sort or another, some kind of performative aggression designed to make this ostensible leader look tough. Real problems intensified while invented ones dominated the news, along with 45’s love affairs with ruthless dictators.
It was too much for people with unimpaired cognitive faculties to have an idiot ruining our futures. And so, we coped with collective low-grade depression or anxiety, not bad enough to make us dysfunctional, in most cases, just bad enough to exhaust us. For people already suffering from anger management issues, it was the match on the kindling.
Early on in 45’s first campaign, I used my former career as a therapist and wrote about the candidate’s psychological diagnosis, even though we’re not supposed to diagnose anyone we haven’t met. Professional niceties got flushed down the toilet, as a lot of psychologists pointed out that 45 was a flaming nutjob. For the people with anger management issues, his hostility resonated, and although Hillary won the popular vote, the Electoral College gave us Donald. What happened next only elicited laughter if you had a genuinely black sense of humor. And that smile of amusement might well have been rueful.
After years of coping with 45’s hate-filled rallies that raised a potential army ready to kill if their candidate doesn’t win, anyone smart enough to realistically assess what is true have had enough. We entered the 2024 election season with heightened anxiety, not because Biden wasn’t a good president, but because he wasn’t popular enough. The fact that he’d be 86 by the end of his second term was a further thing to worry about. Passing the torch to Kamala changed everything.
Kamala Harris and Tim Walz both smile from the inside out. Dubbed “joyful warriors,” they exude the pleasure they’d get from making life better for all of us. In contrast, 45’s idea of a smile is a fake configuration of lips and upturned thumb not mirrored in his joyless eyes, and only trotted out for photo ops.
Smiling and laughing should not be underestimated. Academic and medical studies have shown that laughter increases serotonin and endorphins in the body, which reduces the risk of illness and relieves stress. We feel better when we smile, and it’s easier to feel like smiling when someone smiles joyfully at you. One researcher found that seeing a genuine smile is a social cue that creates a positive feeling in people who see it. The Harris-Walz ticket is raising us up from the depression and anxiety bred by a festering body politic.
Needless to say, Proust had something to say about that. “Let us be grateful to the people who make us happy,” he wrote. “They are the charming gardeners who make our souls blossom.”
Proust Said That © 