From endless protests and outrage to personal crying and venting on social media, progressives aren’t having any fun in this political climate, as in so long as President Trump remains in office, and they don’t want you to do so either.
It’s no secret that progressives are miserable, veering from outrage to depression with a healthy dose of scolding in between. Last month, the playwright Eve Ensler stated it plainly for The Guardian right before the Fourth of July, claiming she was suffering from physical maladies that qualify as depression as a result of President Trump being in office. “In this authoritarian and suffocating climate where being an American feels like a curse, where just breathing here feels like complicity with genocide, psychotic imperialism, misogyny and endless racism, it is hard to move, let alone imagine what one can do to transform this horror to good,” she wrote, but beyond Mr. Ensler’s own personal issues, the signs are everywhere you look and present in every issue, whether large or small. As recently as last week, CNN reported that “The Scream Club,” a bizarre conflagration of people literally screaming at the world to vent their frustrations, has gained popularity in Chicago. Every Sunday night, people gather on the shores of beautiful Lake Michigan for a group scream at the water if not actually at the sky. According to the local Fox affiliate, “The Scream Club was launched earlier this summer and is quickly gaining traction as more people look for an outlet to let go” of precisely what is unclear, but I don’t think its a coincidence it was founded at around the six month mark in President Trump’s new administration. “I think that we do such a good job at suppressing all the things that are going on in our lives and we never have a safe outlet to do so. If you think about one person trying to do this over here by themselves, screaming, somebody would look at them like, ‘you’re nuts,’ so we’re giving people a safe space to be able to do that,” explained one of the founders, Manny Hernandez in the parlance of our mad times, who went on to claim that over one hundred people were at the most recent session. “We wanted to make this very intentional. So what we do, we give people little biodegradable papers, where they write down their intentions of what they want to let go of. They write it down, and then Manny walks them through a breath to prepare the body, prepare the mind for release. They throw the paper in the water, and we do the screams,” explained founder Elena Soboleva. While I could not find anything overtly political from either Mr. Hernandez or Ms. Soboleva, though Ms. Sobela does advertise herself on X as “forging frontiers of art,” “dematerializing exhibition making,” and “seeking the sublime in bits & atoms,” does anyone seriously doubt the vast majority of attendees are disaffected progressives venting their impotent outrage at the world?
Last year, the American Psychological Association published “Stress in America in 2024, A nation in political turmoil,” which can at least partially be seen as a harbinger of things to come. At the time, more “than 7 in 10 adults reported the future of our nation (77%) as a significant source of stress in their lives, making it the most common source of significant stress in this year’s survey. The economy was the second most common, with 73% of adults having reported it as a significant source of stress. The 2024 U.S. presidential election followed closely at 69%.” Though the finding was similar to the previous election at 68%, 2020 itself was a marked shift from 2016, when only 52% reported stress as a result of our political process. In addition, more than seven in ten adults were worried about violence and more than half, a whopping 56%, believed the election “could be the end of democracy in the U.S.” Perhaps even more incredibly and disturbingly, “Around 2 in 5 adults reported the state of the nation has made them consider moving to a different country (41%) and the political environment in their state has made them consider moving to a different state (39%). In addition, nearly two-thirds of adults (64%) felt as though their rights are under attack” while “around a third of adults (32%) reported the political climate has caused strain between them and their family members, and 3 in 10 (30%) said they limit their time with family because they don’t share the same values.” Though the APA didn’t ask about political affiliation or beliefs, other polls about happiness in general reveal a stark divide between progressives and conservatives. For example, the 2024 American Family Survey revealed that 37% of conservative women and 28% of moderate women, between the ages of 18-40, self-reported that they were “completely satisfied” with their lives while just 12% of liberal women said the same. As The New York Post described it, “Liberal women are the least likely to report being fully satisfied with their lives and are far more likely to report feeling lonely often…Liberal women were also nearly three times more likely than conservative women to say they experienced loneliness at least a few times a week.” Even as early as 2022, the Cooperative Election Study found that 51% of conservatives, including men and women of all ages, reported excellent mental health compared to 30% of moderates and a scant 20% of liberals. Conversely, 45% of liberals report poor mental health while only 35% of moderates and 19% of conservatives say the same.
We can only assume the situation has gotten worse since President Donald Trump took office for the second time on January 20, and though no polls have been conducted that I am aware of over the past six months, there is at least some evidence in progressive behavior at both a group and an individual level. Since then, protesting has become something of a performance art in progressive circles with a supposedly major event announced on a near-weekly basis. At times, even the various labels of these protests suggested their general unhappiness and anger. For example, last Saturday “tens of thousands of people” were expected for the latest incarnation, “Rage Against the Regime,” talk about wearing your heart on your sleeve. “People don’t know what to do with their rage,” explained Hunter Dunn, a national spokesperson for the 50501 protest group, an organizer of the rally. “Let’s give them something productive,” he told USA Today. As they reported, “Organizers say the demonstrations, the latest in a series of peaceful summertime protests in hundreds of locations across the country, are meant to mobilize masses of people against the administration’s actions. They are particularly concerned about aggressive immigration enforcement, dismantling of government programs and agencies from Medicaid to the National Weather Service, and attacks on democratic institutions, according to a news release. They also want to draw attention to the Trump administration’s refusal to release more information about deceased child sex predator Jeffrey Epstein.” In other words, it’s a protest about anything and everything with rage as the driving factor according to their own words. Last month, protests were held nationwide on the Fourth of July of all days, once again in the service of everything and anything. According to People, “Citizens across the United States are marking the country’s 249th birthday with protests against the Trump administration. On Friday, July 4, scores of protesters took to the streets to rally against President Donald Trump’s policies established since his return to office in January, including ICE immigration raids and deportation, the bombing of Iranian nuclear sites and overall perceived abuse of federal power. The timing also aligns with Trump signing his landmark ‘Big, Beautiful Bill,’ which includes cuts to popular programs like Medicaid and SNAP and reallocates money for Trump’s most controversial programs, including making Immigration and Customs Enforcement better-funded than every other federal law enforcement agency and most countries’ entire militaries.” Less than a month earlier, “No Kings” was all the rage, billed as “one of the largest days of protest in U.S. history. From deep red small towns to our largest cities, millions of people turned out to make it clear that the American people will not bow to fascism. Now, it’s time to organize for the long haul.”
On a more personal level, posting videos of people crying, screaming, and otherwise lamenting almost everything and anything on X and Tiktok has become something of a cottage industry. While the controversy over Sydney Sweeney’s appearance in a series of advertisements for American Eagle marks the most recent incarnation, it is certainly not the only one and even celebrities, who in a more sane world would know better, have gotten in on the act. Late night host Jimmy Kimmel cried on national TV in the wake of President Trump’s victory. Actress and entrepreneur Selena Gomez famously, or infamously if you prefer, filmed herself crying over President Trump’s immigration policies and then deleted the post. In March, a random progressive woman announced that she cries “several times a day” thinking about President Trump. “Anyone else having a hard time not just breaking down crying several times a day because you’re just watching the horror happen, while you have so many people around you that either have no idea, don’t care, or are pretending it’s not, and like you’re crazy, and you’re just a conspiracy theorist, and you’re just insane, and you’re too dramatic, and you just need to calm down, and you just need to shut the f*ck up? But you want to help, and there’s nothing you can do because you do’’t have money, you don’t have billions of dollars, you don’t have any dollars that you can spare, frankly, like truly. But that’s the only thing that seems to kind of make a difference, and you can’t even do that. You can’t even do that. You can only speak, and now we can’t even speak. So watch and cry. It is, I guess, the worst it gets. It’s not like the quieter I want to get. It’s the angrier I get, the louder I want to be. I’ve just been screaming for so long that I’m not sure who I’m even talking to anymore. Who’s left? What else do you need to see?” Some have even claimed that Democrat elected officials have been in tears over Donald Trump. For example, California Governor Gavin Newsom was said to cry or at least hold back a tear during a speech in June over the President’s immigration actions in Los Angeles. The Times of India described it this way, California Governor Gavin Newsom appeared visibly emotional on Tuesday as he addressed the state for the first time since violent protests erupted in Los Angeles, with social media users speculating he was about to cry. The riots by thousands of people followed federal immigration raids and the deployment of the National Guard. With his voice shaking at times, Newsom pleaded with Californians to resist what he described as US President Donald Trump’s efforts to erode democracy.”
Setting aside whether any of this is healthy, much less effective, we can certainly agree that it ain’t fun and as a result, we see a disturbing trend in angry progressives attempting to shut down other people having fun. Personally, I would argue that one of the reasons they’ve taken aim at Ms. Sweeney recently is strictly because her public personality is carefree, fun, and as another commentator noted, cheeky, but the trend isn’t limited to her. Earlier this year, a revival of David Mamet’s Glengarry Glenn Ross was met with claims it simply cannot be performed with President Trump in office. Under normal circumstances, the play is the ultimate black comedy – laugh out loud funny – with a dystopian undercurrent, but not anymore. As The Daily Beast’s Tim Teeman claimed, “There’s an argument to let David Mamet’s 1984 play stay pure to its words—but those racist and homophobic slurs land with a thud in the era of MAGA.” “Beamed into 2025—via the enduring cultural imprint of the 1992 movie starring Al Pacino and Alec Baldwin—this revival of Glengarry Glen Ross, starring Kieran Culkin, Bob Odenkirk, Bill Burr, and Michael McKean, lands with a puzzling, bitter thud,” he continued. “ The production, directed by Patrick Marber, feels both dated and absolutely of the political and cultural moment of now.” In other words, you can no longer enjoy a night out at the theater to see a true classic. Perhaps even more incredibly, some are arguing that comedy is no longer, well, comedy. According to The Wrap, male stand ups are now “emboldened by the current climate.” “If there was an effort to make stand-up comedy a bit more genteel a few years ago,” Sharon Knolle opined, “a second Trump administration has emboldened more transgressive voices who are willing to wind it back to the days when it was fine to have a laugh at the expense of women, trans people, people of color and the mentally disabled.” Ultimately, the “current political climate” is the only thing that matters to them and as long as President Trump is office they will continue to vent and rage and no one else can have any fun. Where this ends, nobody knows, but it is hard to see how rage and slamming everyone who’s not enraged is a viable long-term strategy. It will either burn itself out, or alienate the average person past the point of recovery, at least in my humble opinion as a tried and true fun-loving American.
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 