They Aren’t Happy Unless They’re Unhappy

Slate (the online version of The Atlantic, just for stupid people) recently tweeted “Bad Bunny’s halftime show applied one of the greatest lessons you learn as a part of an oppressed group: Joy is resistance.” Which is just a fancier way of saying pain is joy—or, more accurately, misery is meaning.

Years ago, I proposed a simple idea: some people are not happy unless they are unhappy (or can make others around them miserable).

That idea came back to me when I stumbled across a Psychology Today article titled “Are You Addicted to Unhappiness?” It outlined traits common to the chronically unhappy, and several were immediately familiar. These people tend to:

– Find reasons to be miserable when life gets “too good,” and invent them when they can’t.

– Prefer victimhood and blame over personal responsibility.

– Compete to see who has it hardest.

– Achieve goals yet find no satisfaction in success.

– Struggle to recover from setbacks.

– Feel enslaved to their emotions and powerless to change them.

– Remain dissatisfied even when life is objectively good.

In short, they suffer from a mental short-circuit: they cannot be happy unless they are unhappy. They are deeply invested in the belief that life is nothing but struggle and pain.

In a strange fusion of sadomasochism and progressive asceticism, they claim to hate suffering while avoiding enjoyment or fulfillment altogether—because those things don’t register as morally valid within their worldview.

The pattern is unmistakable:

– They revel in pain yet are perpetually aggrieved, offended by and afraid of everything.

– They claim to want solutions but pursue them only by imposing suffering on others.

– They demand strict compliance with the rules of their progressive religion—rules derived from an ideology that insists reality is subjective and no rules truly exist.

I was raised to believe the world is filled with beauty, and that seeking happiness is natural—not indulgence, but contentment. The Declaration of Independence places the pursuit of happiness alongside life and liberty. Yet these people pursue misery with religious devotion.

They inhabit a Hobbesian universe where oppression and conflict dominate everything. This is not incidental; it is the core catechism of progressivism: envy drives society, wealth is theft, capitalism is environmental vandalism, human progress is inherently destructive, and everyone is locked in perpetual conflict with everyone else.

Then there are the pretenders, those who frame their discomfort as “human rights” violations and in doing so, climb over the bodies of people subjected to real suffering.

Two recent examples come from U.S. Olympians who drew attention for their comments: freestyle skier Hunter Hess and “pansexual” ice skater Amber Glenn.

Hess said, “If it aligns with my moral values, I feel like I’m representing it. Just because I’m wearing the flag doesn’t mean I represent everything that’s going on in the U.S.”

Translation: I don’t understand law or policy, but my feelings are hurt when the government does things I don’t like.

Glenn, hoisting the LGBTQ2IA+++ flag, offered a rambling lament about “hard times” and “fighting for our human rights”—without ever being asked what those hard times were or which rights were actually being denied.

A more honest translation might be: “When people won’t use my preferred pronouns or treat me as morally exceptional, that is basically the same thing as what’s happening to the Uighurs in China.”

The comments are absurd, especially when these athletes are some of the most pampered people on earth—and there are real human rights violations being carried out in many of the countries competing in the Olympics. The hyperbole is absurd and the press that asked these questions—then failed to ask even one follow-up—is perhaps the most absurd of all.

This is what happens when unhappiness becomes a moral identity. Pain is elevated, joy is politicized, and grievance becomes a credential. In that world, happiness isn’t something to be pursued—it’s something to be distrusted, resented, and redefined as resistance.

How can they be happy when there is so much invented trauma in America?

Any society that treats misery as virtue will never be satisfied, no matter how much it is given—because dissatisfaction isn’t a problem to be solved. It’s the point.