Now with the official start to summer with a soggy solstice celebration in those far-distant lands, the US also finds itself in a struggle to keep a straight face on reality.
Especially, and particularly, when Drug Enforcement Administrator Michele Leonhart doesn’t have the intelligence to admit heroin is way-more harmful than marijuana — she dodged the question 11 times in three minutes yesterday during a House Judiciary Subcommittee hearing and concluded: “I believe all illegal drugs are bad.”
Is she unhappy?
Modern life appears to have reduced the happy-generated look at a lot of our stuff — Ms Leonhart was first appointed to her job in 2003 by George Jr, which by that fact alone would prove she must have internal respect problems, or she’s just lying.
(Illustration found here).
In the terms of being happy nowadays, apparently respect means more than hard cash.
A new study published in Psychological Science appears to show that respect and admiration by those around you creates an overall happiness more than a big bank account.
Via Science Daily:
“We got interested in this idea because there is abundant evidence that higher socioeconomic status — higher income or wealth, higher education — does not boost subjective well-being (or happiness) much at all. Yet at the same time, many theories suggest that higher status should boost happiness,” said Anderson (Psychological scientist Cameron Anderson of the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley).
So if higher socioeconomic status doesn’t equate with a greater sense of well-being, then what does?
Anderson and his colleagues hypothesized that higher sociometric status — respect and admiration in your face-to-face groups, such as your friendship network, your neighborhood, or your athletic team — might make a difference in your overall happiness.
“Having high standing in your local ladder leads to receiving more respect, having more influence, and being more respect, having more influence, and being more integrated into the group’s social fabric,” Anderson said.
…
One possible explanation, which Anderson hopes to explore in future research, is that people adapt.
“One of the reasons why money doesn’t buy happiness is that people quickly adapt to the new level of income or wealth.
Lottery winners, for example, are initially happy but then return to their original level of happiness quickly,” said Anderson.
That kind of adaptation may simply not occur with local status.
“It’s possible that being respected, having influence, and being socially integrated just never gets old,” Anderson said.
Or you can revise thyself.
Or adapt as the situation changes around you even as people are screaming you’re a liar.
Can one be happy, really, running for president of the United States or be in such a delusion-infused state that what actual folks are saying means less than what is tinkling in one own’s brain.
David Corn posted yesterday at Mother Jones on the brain-tickle of Mitt Romney, concluding: He’s not merely a flip-flopper; he’s a self-revisionist.
The most-awful example is Mitt’s brain-freeze on a now well-known incident when he was in prep school where he led a bunch of bullies to cut a supposed gay kid’s hair — Romney claimed “no memory” of the incident. Ha!
Corn further concluded:
Romney’s serial denials of past positions have partly shaped his public political persona.
He was for gun control measures, now he’s not.
He favored climate change action, now he doesn’t.
He was a fan of individual health care mandates, now he decries Obamacare.
His craven flexibility was perhaps best epitomized when he tried to explain to Kranish and Helman why during the 1994 Senate campaign he had written a letter to the Log Cabin Republicans, a pro-gay rights group, asserting a desire “to establish full equality for America’s gay and lesbian citizens.”
He told the reporters, “well, okay, let’s look at that in the context of who it’s being written to.”
Romney, in this moment of candor, was inadvertently admitting he was an unapologetic panderer.
That was an exception.
Romney tends to reject charges of flip-flopping, as he did in his unsuccessful interview last November with Fox News’ Bret Baier.
And this is to be expected.
To be a credible candidate, Romney cannot acknowledge his long list of 180s.
(Nor can he dwell on his years as governor of Massachusetts, where his signature accomplishment was health care reform that was the basis for Obama’s initiative.)
But his refutation of the past extends beyond the politician’s traditional refusal to acknowledge previous positions that have since become inconvenient.
He has adopted an overly flexible attitude toward his personal history, showing that he is an unreliable source of information about himself.
If he cannot tell his own tale accurately, can he be trusted to tell the nation’s?
Yes, indeed.
Personally, it’s not only the problem that Romney is a liar, a serial flip-flopper and an elitist asshole, but I’ve also discovered I can not bear to watch the man walk — have you seen how he walks?
My stomach churns whenever a video clip appears showing the sonofabitch walking with little, quick, bird-like strides way-similar to a fawning subject with moves that would shame even Albert Goldman.
No one can be happy walking like that.