Stop telling me to 'find joy' while the GOP is wrecking America

I am done hearing that Liberals need to find more joy in their lives.

I am done being ridiculed that we don’t smile enough, and take everything too damn seriously these days.

You want joy from us? Then start comporting yourself like half-decent people who love our wildlife more than your guns. Stop spreading your heinous lies, and pick up one of those books you want to ban, and discover the truth. Knock it off with the bigotry and misogyny, and concentrate on fixing yourselves, because you are broken, and a lot to deal with.

I was spurred to write about this today, because while being a dutiful, dour Liberal and watching something called “real news” on the PBS News Hour last night while cooking dinner, the show’s co-host, Geoff Bennett was joined by Jessica Tarlov.

I’d heard of Tarlov, but never seen her in action, aside from a few clips here and there on social media.

Tarlov is the liberal voice on the Fox News show, "The Five," where she debates four Republicans on any of the 14,000 issues Democrats and Republicans disagree on these days.

Fox “News” of course is Rupert Murdoch’s right-wing propaganda network, which I believe is singularly responsible for all the hell we are living amongst in the United States right now. Without Fox, there is no Donald Trump. Without Donald Trump, our Democracy is not facing its greatest threat since the Civil War.

Tarlov was pitching a book and I enjoyed the interview, but one section picked at a scab sustained during the terrible blast the night of Nov. 8, 2016, when a lewd, woman-abusing bigot was somehow elected the President of the United States.

Here’s the final exchange:

GEOFF BENNETT:
“You’re fairly tough on Democrats in this book. You say that they too often don’t really inhabit conservative spaces, that they can be scolding, that the party has lost some of the joy and cultural connection that politics requires.
What do you think Democrats misunderstand about the people they need to win back?”
JESSICA TARLOV:
“That those people are also not taking politics as seriously as they are, that they are consuming media that they are oftentimes not interested in engaging in. That was one of the main findings of every autopsy there was from the 2024 election.
And you see Democrats dabbling more showing up. A lot of them are coming on FOX News. And the way that I found that politics and the politics of persuasion works is when you are in a long-term relationship with the people that you’re talking to and with their audiences, and when then they can really feel like you’re trying to be part of their world.
And most of the time, they want you to show up and not actually be talking about politics, which we’re still not great at. Democrats, we like football too, and all of the stuff that we get made fun of. But showing up on things like “College GameDay” and making sure that you’re going to those events, you see the reception that like a Wes Moore or a Josh Shapiro gets when they go out and do those kinds of things.
And I think that is still missing from the recipe. I worry for the midterms, even though the polling looks great at this moment, and I know the country is in tremendous economic crisis, and folks, they know what it costs to fill up their tank, they know what groceries cost, but the results won’t necessarily be an affirmation of the Democratic Party as a great option.
It might just be that the other side looked that much worse at this moment. And I wanted the book to emphasize a path forward for the party, which I have been thinking a lot about in terms of policies that will move us forward, but also what leadership looks like and joy.”

Maybe I’m just a thin-skinned liberal, but I don’t need to be lectured about what joy looks like in this moment of sheer terror in the United States.

And I am not here to joylessly beat up on Tarlov, who I think is a remarkable talent, and is actually doing some good. I would last about eight seconds on a show like that, before shoving an entire camera down one of those loudmouth’s throats.

I will remind her, though, that she is young enough to be my daughter, and while I greatly respect her generation’s perspective on things, my generation had more rights than she does now, and if that in itself isn’t a national emergency, I don’t know what is.

What the radical right-wing is doing to this country is not normal. It is EXTREMELY dangerous and we are within inches of losing everything.

Finding more joy in our lives would be nice, but right now the people who are truly paying attention are busy fighting for our survival, and Tarlov’s right to say what she wants to on the air.

Because as we know, Trump is going hard after our free speech.

Frankly, it’s insulting to the millions out there, who are scared to death and doing the real work to preserve our Democracy and hold onto the few rights we have left, while we go about our daily lives in the shadow of this fascist regime in our White House.

But if you want to believe we are incapable of joy, I can give you two instances that had us liberals singing from our rooftops, and what followed in the wake of all that giddiness.

The first example was on that glorious fall day in 2020, when the Associated Press called the presidential election for Joe Biden. I felt such pure joy that I whooped and hollered, strapped on my mask and took off like a shot straight to the Capital Square in Madison, Wisconsin, to celebrate with other joyful liberals, while keeping appropriate social-distancing protocols in place, of course, so we wouldn’t die from a pandemic that the Lysol-chugging Trump completely mismanaged.

That joy lasted a few days, until it became clear that the lawless Trump was not going quietly and began trying to shakedown elections officials to throw out or “find” votes, and told violent right-wing groups to stand by for further orders.

There would be no classy concessions, or peaceful transfers of power just as long as this lowlife was still around.

So Liberals put aside their happiness for the good of the country, and worked like hell to win Democratic special elections in Georgia, so that Biden would have a Democratic Senate to work with.

On the evening of January 5, 2021, joy flooded back into our lives when Democrats Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff won their respective races. Freedom rang in Georgia, and we went to bed that night feeling as if maybe, just maybe, we had saved America.

That joy lasted 12 hours, when on the 13th hour, Trump and his anti-American thugs violently attacked our Capitol and tried to overthrow the 2020 election.

I’m not sure I have felt much joy since that terrible, terrible day, when we watched in horror at the worst homegrown attack on American soil since the Civil War.

And when it was done, and Trump had lost, he told the attackers that he “loved them ...”

Nearly six years after that horrible day, when I don’t feel rage, I feel profound sadness and worry as Trump’s attack continues. Joy is fleeting, and reserved for weddings, birthdays and important events in the lives of the people I love.

This doesn’t mean that I don’t seek out happiness and connection. I do it all the time, in fact, by getting out among nature and associating with the best things on earth — our animals and their pristine habitats. Except those things, too, are under direct attack by these Republican terrorists.

Our air and water are being purposely poisoned again, and endangered species are being slaughtered, so billionaires can rape our countryside for profit. Nearly every day there is some horrific story about our wilderness being assaulted by Trump’s blood-thirsty Orcs.

And you want joy from me?

And what about the millions of American children and families who were temporarily lifted out of poverty in 2021 when Biden expanded the Child Tax Credit in his American Rescue Plan? Well, Republicans could not WAIT to end all that. Their billionaire owners weren’t going to put up with our tax money being spent on trivial things like feeding and clothing children, when there were AI data centers to build.

Then there are the barbaric cuts to our government, our healthcare, and schools.

The cuts to USAID are almost too hideous to contemplate.

Republicans are spitting on our North American friends to the north and the south, attacking our voting rights, demolishing our White House, building insane ballrooms, and renaming the Kennedy Center.

Measles is making a comeback.

I’m sorry, but what kind of sicko finds joy amid all of this?

If Democrats aren’t presenting themselves like a sunny bouquet of flowers each day, maybe it’s because they have the guts to care, and the strength to fight for what is most certainly good and right.

I for one will not be apologizing for the lack of joy I bring to the nation’s table right now.

But if it’s joy you want, then look me up when the orange monster, and the people who have enabled his inhumane carnage, have finally gone off to meet their makers.

D. Earl Stephens is the author of “Toxic Tales: A Caustic Collection of Donald J. Trump’s Very Important Letters” and awarding-winning journalist who led newsrooms, and worked as a reporter in the newspaper business for decades. You can find all his work here.