Why leftism attracts the sad and depressed — and keeps them that way



By now, the trope of the “sad leftist” has become so popular that it’s essentially a meme. Multiple studies show leftists are, on average, far less happy than conservatives. That aligns with the experience of many who observe self-professed leftists exhibiting more anxiety, gloom, and hostility than others.

It’s not difficult to understand why. If your main news sources tell you the president is a fascist, half of your countrymen are bigots, and the world is about to end due to climate change, you’re bound to feel — and vote — blue. Yet, even in Democratic administrations, leftists never seemed content.

People latch onto progressive narratives because they offer someone to blame. That brings short-term relief, but it quickly fades.

This suggests the root of their discontent isn’t merely political messaging but something deeper. Rather, the ideas implicit in leftism seem antithetical to a happy life and human flourishing — even if well-intended. Leftists push for diversity, equity, and inclusion in place of meritocracy, support a more powerful state to implement those ideals, advocate open borders to globalize them, and demand wealth redistribution to fund them. In the sanitized and euphemistic language they often prefer, leftists are about fairness, progress, and kindness.

Sad people lean left

Nate Silver recently weighed in on the happiness gap between conservatives and progressives. His take? People might have it backward. It’s not that leftism makes people sad but that sad people gravitate toward leftism: “People become liberals because they’re struggling or oppressed themselves and therefore favor change and a larger role for government.”

If this is true, it still doesn’t explain why leftism is correlated with sadness and why it offers no remedy. Conservatives, for their part, offer a diagnosis and a cure: Leftism is foolish and destructive — so stop being a leftist. That’s the gist of Ben Shapiro’s infamous line, “Facts don’t care about your feelings.”

While clever and catchy, this oversimplifies the problem. People who ascribe to liberal or leftist causes don’t merely do so because they prioritize feelings over facts. Yes, some are true believers, but most are reacting to powerful cultural pressures and personal struggles. These feed destructive habits that, in turn, make them more susceptible to leftist propaganda.

After all, the narratives that comprise leftist propaganda are easy to understand and adopt since they lay the blame of all society’s ills on someone else. People are poor because rich people exploit them; people of color are marginalized because white people are racists; queer people are depressed because straight people don’t accept them; third world countries are dysfunctional because Americans and Europeans meddled in their affairs too much or too little; and leftists are unpopular because Trump and other conservative populists are effective con men.

The media’s vicious cycle

These narratives not only offer paltry short-term solace — they breed resentment. Instead of directing their efforts to personal improvement, leftists are encouraged to push their anger outward — sometimes through direct violence (vandalism, looting, even political violence) and sometimes indirectly by cheering on those who perpetrate it. In this way, left-wing media weaponizes its audience.

Nevertheless, the principle motivation behind leftist propaganda is not necessarily weaponization. It’s monetization. Beyond adopting leftist narratives and positions, audiences need to continue consuming leftist media and become addicted to it.

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  Karolina Grabowska/Pexels

As Georgetown professor and computer scientist Cal Newport explains in his book “Digital Minimalism: Choosing a Focused Life in a Noisy World,” society has now entered the era of the “attention economy,” where media companies do everything in their power to hold people’s attention — for forever. In conjunction with tech companies, these outlets turn otherwise healthy people into helpless junkies enslaved to the apps on their smartphones.

Like any addiction, this one feeds a destructive cycle. People latch onto progressive narratives because they offer someone to blame. That brings short-term relief, but it quickly fades. The need for comfort drives them to consume even more leftist content, which distorts their view of the world and fuels resentment. Anxiety deepens. Misery spreads.

As their emotional state deteriorates, they seek comfort in even more content. Eventually, this behavior sabotages their ability to function. They become dependent on the very content that made them feel worse in the first place. Many even join the performance, filming themselves crying, ranting, and broadcasting their despair for clicks.

Meanwhile, the titans of the attention economy grow wealthier and more powerful. They refine their algorithms, suppress dissent, and tighten their grip. The last thing they want is for their users to wake up — to take Newport’s advice, unplug, and rediscover meaning in the real world. They might just find happiness. And stop drifting left.

Model a different life

This presents an opportunity for conservatives hoping to transform the culture. The answer isn’t just a matter of advocating time-tested ideas but of modeling the habits that reinforce these ideas. Rather than view leftists as incorrigible scoundrels and idiots who refuse to open their eyes, conservatives should see them as unfortunate people who have been seduced, reduced, and enslaved by powerful corporate and government interests.

This means that conservatives should do more than offer political arguments — we must pull them away from the vicious cycle through modeling a better life. Leftists (and many on the online right, for that matter) must be reminded that being perpetually online and endlessly scrolling is a recipe for sadness. In contrast, church, family, friends, and meaningful work are what empower people. They are what make us human — and happy.

Once the cycle is broken — and the leftist has regained some control over himself — the case for conservatism becomes much easier. If Nate Silver is right that sad people gravitate to the left, then it’s only logical to assume happy people should be attracted to the right. Conservatives should cherish those values and habits that make them, on average, happier and more fulfilled. It’s time to stop drinking leftist tears and help them out of their malaise.

JD Vance joined liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails REALLY fast.



Vice President JD Vance is not exactly a shrinking violet. The Marine veteran who rose from relative poverty to become second in command of the world's greatest nation has a habit of seeking out fruitful confrontation.

At the Munich Security Conference in February, for instance, Vance told European officials to their faces that they were stepping toward tyranny and turning their backs on the values they once shared in common with the United States. Just weeks later, he bashed the U.K.'s censorship regime with leftist British Prime Minister Keir Starmer seated right next to him in the Oval Office.

While he has long participated in fiery exchanges with Democratic lawmakers and other antagonists, both in person and on Elon Musk's X, Vance evidently wanted to bring the conversation to leftists on their own turf.

The vice president created an account Wednesday on the liberal Twitter knockoff Bluesky. Things went off the rails pretty quickly.

Vance kicked off his Bluesky residency by writing, "Hello Bluesky, I've been told this app has become the place to go for common sense political discussion and analysis. So I'm thrilled to be here to engage with all of you."

'I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids.'

Accompanying his initial post was a screenshot of the Supreme Court's majority decision in United States v. Skrmetti, in which the court upheld Tennessee's ban on sex-change genital mutilations and sterilizing puberty blockers for minors — clearly a touchy subject for the Bluesky crowd.

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  Photo by Ethan Miller/Getty Images

Vance highlighted a portion of the decision in which Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "There are several problems with appealing and deferring to the authority of the expert class. First, so-called experts have no license to countermand the 'wisdom, fairness, or logic of legislative choices.'"

Roberts noted further in the excerpt, "Contrary to the representations of the United States and the private plaintiffs, there is no medical consensus on how best to treat gender dysphoria in children. Third, notwithstanding the alleged experts' view that young children can provide informed consent to irreversible sex-transition treatments, whether such consent is possible is a question of medical ethics that States must decide for themselves."

Vance added in a follow-up message, "To that end, I found Justice Thomas's concurrence on medical care for transgender youth quite illuminating. He argues that many of our so-called 'experts' have used bad arguments and substandard science to push experimental therapies on our youth."

"I might add that many of those scientists are receiving substantial resources from big pharma to push these medicines on kids," continued Vance. "What do you think?"

— (@)  
 

Regardless of whether Vance's intention was to troll the netizens of Bluesky, the result was the same.

Apoplectic leftists immediately piled into the comments various smears and accusations. Many threatened to report Vance in hopes of getting him banned for some perceived offense or another.

The attacks were, however, interrupted roughly 12 minutes after Vance's first post when the platform suspended him, according to Axios reporter Marc Caputo.

Leftists looking to vent were confronted with a message that read, "Not found. Account has been suspended."

RELATED: Runaway judges, rogue rulings — and JD Vance is having none of it

  Photo by Kayla Bartkowski/Getty Images

Despite the appearance that Vance's account may have been suspended because of his politics or perhaps because he shared a court ruling that struck at the heart of the sex-change regime, Bluesky claimed in a statement obtained by Forbes, "Vice President Vance's account was briefly flagged by our automated systems that try to detect impersonation attempts, which have targeted public figures like him in the past."

"The account was quickly restored and verified so people can easily confirm its authenticity," continued the statement. "We welcome the Vice President to join the conversation on Bluesky."

As of Thursday morning, Vance's initial posts were buried in negative comments, although he had netted over 7,500 followers. According to the user tracker Clearsky, he had been blocked by over 81,000 users at the time of publication.

Blaze News reached out to the vice president's office for comment but did not immediately receive a response.

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Meet the schmucks crippling the anti-woke alliance



Until recently, “woke” served as a useful term among anti-Marxist liberals, nationalists, and conservatives. It gave us a shared language in the post-2015 fight against the rise of a virulent neo-Marxist ideology. The term helped forge a broad coalition that seemed capable of resisting this aggressive cultural revolution.

That kind of unity, born from a single word, marked a real political achievement.

Now, a handful of anti-woke liberals have decided to weaponize the term, turning it against the very coalition that made resistance possible in the first place.

Some malicious liberals now use “woke right” to smear the entire nationalist right. Others — more naive — try to limit it to what used to be called the “alt-right” or “white nationalists.”

I understand. I really do. Some liberals pushing the term “woke right” are deceitful scoundrels who act in bad faith. Others, more earnest, seem to be nerdishly trying to solve abstract questions in political theory.

Once a rallying cry for a shared fight against neo-Marxist ideology, 'woke' has now become a poisoned well. That’s not an accident — it’s the goal.

But in this case, it doesn’t matter whether you're a cynical manipulator or a confused theorist. Every liberal using “woke right” is being a schmuck. They’ve taken a term that, for a decade, helped unite anti-Marxist liberals, conservatives, and nationalists against a rising neo-left — and crushed it underfoot. They’ve made it unusable.

Yes, you schmucks, “woke” always meant one thing. It referred to the radical neo-leftism that sane liberals, conservatives, Christians, Jews, and nationalists could unite to fight. By repurposing it as an insult aimed within the coalition, you’ve turned it into gall in our mouths. You’ve stripped a common term of its meaning and made it a weapon to divide allies.

Targeting the anti-woke coalition

This explains the astonishment — and sense of betrayal — many on the nationalist right feel toward certain anti-Marxist liberals who invented and promoted the term “woke right.” It also explains their dismay at the credulous liberals who walked straight into the trap.

This isn’t just a matter of redefining an old term. It’s a betrayal. And if it sticks, it will destroy the anti-woke coalition that, for a brief moment, looked like it might actually win.

Of course, the right has always contained distinct factions. The “alt-right,” as Richard Spencer labeled it, and the narrower “white nationalist” fringe set themselves apart from more mainstream nationalist conservatives. The “dissident right” occupied a broader space. Then there were the “NatCons” — mainstream nationalist conservatives. These terms were familiar and reasonably accurate. And for those who couldn’t be bothered with accuracy, the liberal media always had ready-made labels like “illiberal right” or “Christian nationalist right” to lump together anyone right of center with a tone of condescension and alarm.

In short, anyone seeking to critique parts of the right already had a full vocabulary to choose from. The language existed. The definitions were known.

Poisoning the well

So why invent something new? Why did a handful of self-styled intellectuals in the anti-Marxist liberal camp decide they needed a new term — “woke right” — and then labor relentlessly to make it stick? What drove them to sabotage a shared language that had helped build a broad but fragile alliance?

Here’s the answer. A few anti-Marxist liberals saw strategic value in “woke right” that more precise terms like “alt-right” or “white nationalist right” lacked. Let’s count the advantages these aspiring poobahs aimed to squeeze from the phrase.

  1. “Woke right” exists to humiliate. The term targets people who spent years — often at great personal and professional cost — building a serious opposition to the woke left. It tells them: You’re no better than the Maoist radicals you fought. And when that message comes from liberals who once stood beside them on the barricades, the insult cuts even deeper.
  2. “Woke right” signals virtue. By turning on the very coalition they helped build, anti-Marxist liberals get to prove their ideological purity. Using “woke right” says: I’m not one of them. I’ll keep delegitimizing and canceling nationalists and conservatives forever.
  3. “Woke right” provokes. Unlike clunky phrases like “illiberal right” or “Christian nationalism,” this one hits a nerve. It enrages the very people it targets. For a certain breed of liberal troll, that outrage is the entire point.
  4. “Woke right” destroys the term “woke” as a coalition-builder. Once a rallying cry for a shared fight against neo-Marxist ideology, “woke” has now become a poisoned well. Nobody can use it without suspicion. That’s not an accident — it’s the goal.
  5. “Woke right” ensures mutual hostility. The term injects humiliation, provocation, betrayal, and contempt into what was once a fragile alliance. That’s not just linguistic sabotage. It’s a deliberate strategy to guarantee that anti-Marxist liberals and nationalist conservatives despise each other — and never cooperate again.

So that’s why an anti-Marxist liberal might prefer “woke right” over all the existing, more accurate terms. But he’d only do so if he aimed to drive a wedge between liberals and the nationalist right, fuel mutual distrust and resentment, and cripple the two sides’ ability to work together.

That’s why I say every anti-Marxist liberal using this term acts like a schmuck. Because either you’re deliberately sabotaging the anti-woke coalition — snatching defeat from the jaws of victory — or you’re too politically clueless to see the damage you’re doing and too blind to recognize who’s playing you for a fool.

Either way, the political term fits: schmuck.

An agenda endangered

Plenty about working with liberals aggravates me. But nothing grates more than watching big-name liberals find new ways to express their disgust toward the very nationalists and conservatives who helped them advance a common cause, no matter how recently those alliances formed or how much those allies contributed.

Some readers may be too young to remember the end of the Cold War, so let me offer a bit of history. After the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, a handful of liberal ideologues saw the moment not just as a triumph over communism, but as an opportunity to erase nationalists and real conservatives from public life. When they talked about a “unipolar” world, they didn’t mean global American leadership. They meant unchallenged liberal dominance — an order where no one with influence could deviate from liberal orthodoxy. Francis Fukuyama’s infamous fantasy of exiling anyone driven by “thymos” to the political wilderness captured this vision perfectly.

Today, we’re watching a smaller-scale attempt to rerun that liberal fantasy. A few ideological commissars — flushed with self-satisfaction — mistakenly believe they’ve won the war against wokeness. They’re eager to shift from fighting the woke left to purging their nationalist and conservative allies. They want another “end of history” — one where liberalism rules unopposed and everyone else disappears.

I’ll concede this much: For now, the campaign looks pathetic. Only a small group of fanatics in the anti-Marxist liberal camp genuinely believe this nonsense. But the speed with which they’ve duped others into turning their fire on their own coalition partners should make anyone’s head spin.

Donald Trump and JD Vance made the right call by bringing anti-Marxist liberals into the fold. Their victory depended on building a broader coalition, and that coalition remains essential if any part of the nationalist-conservative agenda stands a chance of becoming law.

But that coalition can’t hold — not for long — if a handful of ideological commissars keep advancing the lie that nationalist conservatives pose the same threat to decency and order as the radical left. That’s not coalition politics. That’s sabotage. And unless it stops, the people pushing this narrative won’t just fracture the alliance. They’ll ensure its collapse.

Editor's note: This article is adapted from a post that appeared originally on X.

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Government overreach warped a law to protect the internet. Now Congress might let it die. Here’s why.



Why does Section 230 exist? Section 230 shields tech companies from liability for the user-generated content they host. If you listened to the 230 absolutists here (one of whom even has a 230 tattoo), the story of 230 might sound like a divine creation story.

In the beginning, God created Section 230. Now, the internet was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the blessings of liberty were hovering over the waters. And God said, “Let there be Section 230,” and there was Section 230.

So why would Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) and Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) even think about sunsetting this law, potentially returning the internet to the world of darkness? In the real story of Section 230, the government created Section 230. And that story begins with good intentions but ends with government overreach.

Let us begin with the good intentions. Imagine that, hypothetically, a rapist and human trafficker becomes a popular social media influencer on X. And one of his victims tweets that he is a rapist and human trafficker. The influencer then files a frivolous defamation lawsuit against not just the victim—but also against X for hosting her tweet.

In that situation, X can invoke the legal shield of Section 230, and the judge will dismiss the lawsuit. But that is only where the story begins, not where it ends.

Imagine that you’re in high school, and you learn from your classmates that there’s child porn of you on Twitter. Multiple people contact Twitter to take it down, and you even provide Twitter a copy of your ID when asked, but it still doesn't take it down — until a federal agent intervenes.

You sue Twitter, alleging that it violated federal child pornography laws. Twitter does not even attempt to contest that allegation. Instead, it invokes the legal shield of Section 230, and the judge dismisses your claim.

That, in a nutshell, is the real story of Doe v. Twitter: “Twitter does not argue that Plaintiffs have failed to allege a violation of Section 2252A but contend this claim is barred by CDA § 230 immunity. The Court agrees.”

In tech policy, we must analyze the full scope of a law. In Moody v. NetChoice (2024), the court chided both sides for confining their battle to the “heartland applications” of a law and for ignoring the “full scope” of the law’s coverage.

And while the 230 absolutists will defend Section 230 based on its heartland applications — defamation and other forms of tort liability — the full scope of Section 230 touches every single federal and state law, including federal child pornography laws.

Section 230 is the government. It’s a special immunity for the tech industry that’s created by the government. Under normal circumstances, the story of Doe v. Twitter should be a story where injustice triumphs because of government overreach.

Yet, when Sen. Graham and Sen. Durbin attempted to narrowly reform Section 230 for child porn alone, they were met with an apocalyptic reaction from both D.C. lobbyists and D.C. think tanks. And the worst culprits were the (corporate) libertarians who supposedly hate government overreach.

Perhaps that explains why both senators are now trying to sunset Section 230: to obtain leverage for 230 reform. In D.C., the easiest path is one where the Congress does nothing. Today, Section 230 stays the same if nothing happens. Sen. Graham and Sen. Durbin lack meaningful leverage — even if they are attempting to reform 230 for child porn alone.

But if Section 230 sunsets on January 1, 2027, it gets repealed if Congress does nothing. Now Sen. Graham and Sen. Durbin hold the leverage. And while I could speak for hours to debunk the bad (or even bad-faith) arguments against 230 reform, those bad arguments also lose their power when the people making them lose their leverage.

No immunity for child porn does not mean, for example, that a tech company would be directly liable for every piece of child porn that a user posts. No federal or state law imposes such strict liability — in part because that would be unconstitutional under Smith v. California (1959). For all this talk of how Section 230 is “the Internet’s First Amendment,” repealing Section 230 would not repeal the actual First Amendment.

No immunity for child porn does mean, however, that if any incident like Doe v. Twitter were to repeat itself, government overreach would not block the victims from seeking justice.

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[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-01-at-1.34.23 PM-e1743528952864-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Screenshot-2025-04-01-at-1.34.23%5Cu202fPM-e1743528952864-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]If the FBI officials who buried the Hunter Biden laptop story aren't held responsible, it will be impossible for Americans to have any faith in the agency — or the electoral process.