Against Misery

By Charles C. W. Cooke

Thursday, March 19, 2026

 

‘Cheer up,” the British like to say. “It might never happen.”

 

To which the comedian Jack Dee once retorted: “Actually, I think you can tell by the chisel coming out of my knee that, on this occasion, it has in fact happened.”

 

If, indeed, you have a chisel coming out of your knee, what follows is not for you. At no point in human history would a man with a chisel sticking out of his body have been expected to stop being miserable, and there is nothing about our age that ought to alter that expectation. Now, as ever, a chisel in the knee serves as a presumptive Get Out of Happiness Free card, whose holders may moan, complain, grumble, cavil, and bitch to their heart’s content.

 

But the rest of us? Could we perhaps dial down our angst just a little? If, as is mercifully common, you have been spared one of the handful of genuine problems that your grandparents might have recognized as such, then “Cheer up” is pretty solid advice, all told. I know, I know. You don’t like the president? Neither do I. And you wish that some of the laws that bind you were different? Me too. And you think that things could be better than they are? You’re right. They could. But is that really a reason to be so down on your country? Surely one doesn’t need to be a Stoic to conclude that doom and gloom are to be avoided until avoiding them proves impossible rather than embraced as a lifestyle choice.

 

And yet, for quite some time now, the default mood of our politics has been depressed, even as Americans remain pretty darn happy with how things are going for them personally. Per Gallup, 81 percent of Americans are either “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with their lives, while just 20 percent are either “very” or “somewhat” satisfied with the way things are going in the United States in general. And why wouldn’t they be, when, day in and day out, our leaders declaim and condemn and lament the awful state of things. They point to the dastardly villains who are screwing us; cite figures that suggest that our lifestyles are precarious; deliver rhetoric designed to make us believe that we are unfortunate; and, increasingly as a matter of habit, look backward rather than forward when waxing lyrical about the American dream. When, rarely, one hears optimism, it is laden with caveats: The United States could be great, if only it were altered wholesale. Our future would be bright, if only those who disagree with us were vanquished for all time. If only this politician were to win, or this one policy were to be passed into law, or this one constitutional change were to be made, then we might attain the sunlit uplands that our forefathers promised us.

 

I think that this inclination is bonkers. The United States has many problems at present. But this was also true in 1980, 1950, 1920, 1890, and at each and every earlier juncture. Pick a date at random since 1776, and one will invariably discover all manner of cultural, social, political, and economic issues attached to it. Why? Because America is run by people, and because people are flawed. Because there are no solutions in statecraft, only trade-offs. Because democracy is a process, not a guarantee of perfection. It is, of course, virtuous for a free people to attempt to improve the country they inherited. But it is a grave mistake to believe that anything short of the establishment of heaven on earth represents failure. What we have in the United States right now — it’s not a matter of if or when or after or before, but right now — is a miracle. This country — as it is. This economy — as it is. This culture — as it is. This constitutional order — as it is.

 

A baby who is born in America today would have been envied by pretty much every other human being who came before. Without having done anything to earn it, that baby is the beneficiary of thousands of years’ worth of other people’s effort, experimentation, and pain. For that baby to grow up and look around this country and disdain all that he sees would be ungrateful. But for the political class to cultivate such a sentiment? That is a sin. Having strong political views does not require one to descend into despair. As a polity, we appear to have forgotten that.

 

***

 

Lest I be accused of Pollyannaism, allow me to list the major challenges we face. The federal government is massively in debt, spends more than it takes in each year, and has no plan to reverse this trend. Our entitlement programs are unaffordable but cannot be touched for fear of angering the electorate. We are still suffering the lingering effects of the worst bout of inflation in 40 years. The housing market remains too expensive for many, and interest rates, while historically normal, are higher than they have been for two decades. China is a serious geopolitical threat that is arguably on the same scale as that once posed by the Soviet Union. Our higher-education system has left millions of students in debt but without the prospects that they believed would be unlocked by incurring that debt. Our K–12 education system is, in many areas, producing students who can’t read, write, count, or think straight. And mass immigration — which has been turbocharged by a persistent unwillingness to enforce our laws — has left many voters angry and unsettled.

 

These challenges are all real, and they are all serious. But ’twas ever thus. Fire up the random date selector again and consider a decade that you are tempted to romanticize. The 1990s? Fun, except that crime was higher than at any point in the 20th century. The 1980s? Great, except that everyone was scared of an imminent thermonuclear war, and the abortion rate was astronomical. The 1970s? Nice, except for stagflation, oil crises, Watergate, and the rocketing number of divorces. The 1960s? Exciting, except for the political assassinations, race riots, domestic terrorism, Vietnam War, and Cuban Missile Crisis. Yes, in hindsight, we know that most of these problems were solved or reduced. But the people living through them did not know that they would be. And, not knowing that, they faced the same alternatives that we do: to understand — to acknowledge — that the United States is great in spite of its issues or to collapse into nihilism.

 

I am not making the case here for a given president or party. Indeed, given the low quality of our current crop of politicians — including, for two decades now, our commanders in chief — I will not pretend to be upset that Americans have given low marks to their leaders since at least the late 1990s. Still, I will confess to being a touch worried that the electorate has adopted a worldview that renders satisfaction philosophically unattainable. Ultimately, the split between the Americans who are satisfied with their own lives (81 percent) and the Americans who are satisfied with the state of their country (20 percent) is absurd. Americans live in America. Certainly, life is more than mere politics, but if “the way things are going” in America really were unsatisfactory to a supermajority, one would not expect that same supermajority to say that their personal lives were A-OK. Given the considerable size of the gap, it seems likely that, when asked about “the country,” most people are answering on behalf of other supposedly unhappy people — many of whom probably do not exist. Logically, it is possible for 80 percent of the population to believe that their lives are good and to be so worried about the fate of the minority that they hold a negative opinion of the country as a whole. But I am skeptical that this is what is actually going on. All things considered, it seems far more probable that, egged on by commentators, journalists, and politicians, Americans have become convinced that, outside of their own enclaves, the United States is a hellscape.

 

***

 

Which is a problem because, in the year of our Lord 2026, the United States is no such thing. In fact, it is the best place in the world by far. It has a durable constitutional order that, more than two centuries since it was ratified, continues to protect individual rights to an extent that remains unique in the West. It has the largest and most dynamic economy and the highest standard of living of any large nation. It has the most impressive higher-education sector; the best scientists, engineers, and doctors; and the lion’s share of the global technology industry. It boasts massive natural resources, including enough oil to remain energy-independent, vast tracts of arable land, and abundant fresh water. It has the most fearsome military, the world’s reserve currency, and the most important financial markets on earth.

 

Better still, most trends are in America’s favor. In 2008, the combined economies of the EU slightly exceeded the economy of the United States. Today, the United States’ economy is one and a half times the size of the EU’s. In 1990, the United States’ share of the global stock market was 30 percent. Today, that share is 65 percent. In 1980, the United States imported 40 percent of its petroleum. Today, it is the world’s largest producer of oil and a net exporter of energy. And, of course, the United States’ ability to project military power remains unmatched.

 

These advantages do not wipe out the challenges that the U.S. faces. But they do prompt the question, “As opposed to what?” Or, to put it more bluntly: If the reflexive pose of the American political class is to be melancholy, then what in the name of all that is holy ought the rest of the world to feel? Please believe me when I say that I do not begrudge this Republican and that Democrat their gripes. In a freewheeling republic, the expression of grievances is ubiquitous, inevitable, and sometimes even valuable. But it might be nice if the complainers’ jeremiads were more often interspersed with heartfelt praise for the United States as it actually exists. Negativity sells, no doubt. But there is more to being a statesman than perpetually provoking the citizenry into disgruntlement. After all, if we Americans, of all people, cannot strike a better balance between cheering our country’s successes and addressing its deficiencies, then nobody else has a chance. And despondency has never solved a problem anyway.

 

There have, in the long history of this country, been a handful of years in which remaining optimistic proved a tall order: among them, 1862, when it looked as if the country might split apart; 1930, when the economy was in unprecedented free fall; and 2020, when a once-in-a-century pandemic ground the nation to a halt. We are not living in those years. Rather, we are living in a normal time, facing normal problems, and contriving normal solutions. A century hence, few people will be interested in what happened in 2024 or 2025, and those who do bother to think about it will presumably be confused as to why our conversations about quotidian current affairs were so often eschatological in timbre.

 

William Wordsworth once asked, “Who is the happy Warrior? Who is he / That every man in arms should wish to be?” Today, I might instead ask where the happy warrior is. Despite having been given more than our ancestors could ever have imagined, many of us seem determined to interact with our peers from under a cloud, to pull them in tight so that they, too, end up damp, miserable, and inexplicably despondent about the prospects of the place they call home.