"Me Not Happy"

Over and over again we seem to be required to watch the spectacle of the wealthiest, most privileged, and yet seemingly most miserable people in the world, go on in tiresome detail how evil everything is that made their wealth and privilege possible. Many of these elites from across the globe have no problem using the same technology they hate to spread their ideological messages of anti-capitalism, anti-technology, anti-progress, and, of course, anti-Americanism (the symbol of all the previous).

These global luddites, medievalists, and jihadis have one thing in common. They are all deeply resentful of the modern era because despite all the things available to make life easier and more enjoyable, they aren't happy!

NEWSFLASH! - Happiness is not related to the number of things one possesses. It has more to do with the power and energy that actually creates the wealth and technology--the free expression of that creative impulse that lies within every human. It has to do with taking responsibility for your own individual life and striving for the best that is within yourself.

Many of these global elites mistakenly believe power over others is what will make them happy and so they attempt to control and shackle that creative power--the best that is within others.

NEWSFLASH 2 - Happiness is not related to power over others; rather it is intimately connected to learning to have power over one's self in order to harness the capabilities within and become the best person you can be.

Victor Davis Hanson takes up the theme of unhappy global elites in his Friday essay:

The anti-Americanism that we frequently see and hear, then, is often a plaything of the international elite — a corporate grandee, a leisured athlete, or a refined novelist who flies in and out of the West, counts on its globalizing appendages for wealth, and then mocks those who make it all possible — but never to the point that their own actions would logically follow their rhetoric and thus cost them so dearly.

We might expect that a chagrined Ms. Nooyi would resign from Pepsi since it is the glossy fingernail of the American middle finger that apparently so bothers her. We pray that Mr. Khan will stay among the mobs and rioters of the madrassas and mosques he stirred up. Perhaps novelist Roy can write in an indigenous Indian language, peddle her books at home, and thereby disinvest from this hegemonic system that drives her to fury.

Then there is the director of anti-American films from Denmark, Lars von Trier, who whined, “Mr. Bush is an a**hole. So much in Denmark is American. . . America fills about 60 per cent of my brain. So, in fact, I am American. But I can't go there to vote and I can't change anything, because I am from a small country. So that is why I make films about America.”

Memo to poor head-pounding Mr. von Trier: There is no compelling reason to have anything American in your country — except in the past to expel German invaders you either could not or would not keep out. Simply stop buying American. Don’t watch American movies. Admonish not us, but your own leaders to get out of NATO, pronto — the faster the better. Deny entry to all American troops — and tourists. Embrace the EU. It’s bigger and more populous than the U.S. Create an all-EU defense force. Go for it all!

Above all, be sure that your films are not marketed through any global organization that is either American-financed, directed, or substantiates a Westernized hegemony in the promulgation of intellectual property. Perhaps there are plenty of Danes who would see your films about Denmark at home — and that might cleanse your brain of what you hate, if make you a little less money.

In Michael Crichton's book, State of Fear, one of the more psychologically satisfying moments occurs when the bloviating, superior and wealthy environmentalist/entertainer--who has been exhorting everyone on the virtue of returning to the primitive life--gets eaten by a tribe of cannibals.

It's easy to fantasize the sword of [poetic] justice efficiently dealing likewise with the "me not happy", spoiled elites of today.