The senator made the comments in response to the DNC “love fest” during an appearance on CNN's “State of the Union.”
Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC) said he isn’t buying all that Democratic “joy” on display at this past week’s Democratic National Convention in Chicago during a Sunday appearance with Jake Tapper on CNN’s State of the Union.
During their conversation, Tapper brought up the “disciplined” and “well-produced” DNC this week that, as the journalist put it, “conveyed patriotism and unity.” Graham didn’t see it that way.
“Well, I didn’t see what you saw,” Graham told Tapper with a laugh. “If you’re a Republican, you saw a hate fest. You saw a hate fest full of insults.”
“Americans are not joyful when they go to the gas station and fill up their car,” he continued. “They’re not joyful when they make their mortgage payment. They’re not joyful when they go to the grocery store. People are hurting, and this whole joy love fest doesn’t exist in the real world.”
To bolster his claim, Graham pointed to the gas prices, the state of the border, and inflation during Donald Trump’s presidency when “the world was not on fire.”
He's either lying or what he said gives us a look into his shitty perspective of the world. Either way such a miserable and pathetic existence.
I think this is a great example of how a conservative mind views the world.
They are never happy or joyfull, its always a struggle and you fight for an idea despite you hating all of it. The idea that your life is not filled by misery is alien to them.
At this point being conservative is just akin to mental illness. Destructive, depressed, delusional to themselves and others. If ever there was a real social contaigion, it would be this state of being.
I grew up in a pretty conservative household and we were literally raised that life is work and work is hell. By way of the transitive property, life = hell. It's taken a long time through various degrees of depression and I'm still not fully grown out of it.
But yes, the entire culture and identity is about being miserable and persevering through it, even if that means making yourself and everyone around you more miserable to justify the perseverance.
Like the saying "nothing good comes free." You could say the sunrise is free, but they'll argue it's not because you have to wake up early and waking up early is by necessity miserable so that the sunrise can be good. They're brainwashed into thinking the only way a good thing happens is through suffering. Except the truly lost ones who only see life as suffering.
As an extension, if the conservative sees something free that people need, they will try to monopolize that free thing and then sell it. They call this innovation.
I feel the opposite as a Democrat. I support positivity, but I won't smile while Palestinians are being murdered. That seems pretty tone deff. I'm happy Donald Trump is going down regardless. I'm voting Kamala. Please don't forget to protest after we win.
I'm also worried about Armenia, Hong Kong, Myanmar, Syria, Iran, Taiwan, Tibet, Uyghurs, immegrants entering the US, UKRAINE. I am NOT smiling while people are dying and our nation is complacent.
I will tell you in advance: with that mindset, even if every issue you stated in the last paragraph is solved, you will still not be able to smile. People will still keep dying and suffering from injustice, just elsewhere or in different ways.
Try to celebrate every incremental step towards justice and use that energy towards the next step and so on.
Yeah, but this presumes that his heart will grow and he'll learn compassion, when we know he's just going to remain the same joyless, miserable slug he's always been. The grinch has more redeeming qualities than Graham ever did.
Maybe if you're Lindsey Graham. Pretending to be something you're not and constantly sucking up to people who hate you to keep your job sounds miserable enough.
The state of the border is due to Republican interference on that border bill specifically requested by Trump to keep it an issue this election, and Inflation performance was better overall when compared to other Western Nations during Biden's term and worse than during Trumps.
The problem with inflation is that it's sticky i.e. the inflation that happened under Trump didn't go away under Biden. Inflation has been slower (although you'll notice it's still elevated) but the inflation that already happened is baked in to that.
People can feel that things are more expensive than they used to be. It doesn't matter that things are getting more expensive slower, what matters is a bunch of inflation already happened and it didn't go away (and, in fact, just kept getting worse)
It's ever present too. If inflation were to ever stop for a sustained amount of time I guarantee it would be a far worse political issue. In the meantime things always cost more tomorrow than they will today which is why I argued what I did: relative inflation control was better than it was for almost everyone else under Biden than Trump because it is one of the only ways to fairly compare administrations as each one experiences their one unique circumstances.
The OG charts have a darker legend too. I don't know why they did that. I upped the contrast and saturation to make it even clearer than it is on the source page.
Oh, he’s both wrong AND responsible. He’s pointing at results of policies and blaming people who set the policies that will improve the situation in the future for the results of the policies set by him and his cronies.
He’s trying to normalize a false equivalency.
It’s like blaming the current government for global warming and its effects, instead of just tasking them and empowering them to move the needle back in the right direction so it doesn’t get much worse than it already has.
Happy can be had for the cost of a hobby, or of a friend buying another round, or jamming another game onto the screen.
But as J. D. Salinger said: "The fact is always obvious much too late, but the most singular difference between happiness and joy is that happiness is a solid and joy is a liquid."
Happiness needs a vessel of a certain shape and size.
Joy can fill up anything finite.
Don't mock Graham for this. He is expressing his sadness even if he doesn't see it. Express sorrow for his lack of understanding of our time here.
“Americans are not joyful when they go to the gas station and fill up their car,” he continued. “They’re not joyful when they make their mortgage payment. They’re not joyful when they go to the grocery store. People are hurting, and this whole joy love fest doesn’t exist in the real world.”
These are all great points, and he’s right! The problem is that the policies he and his party support are not helpful towards solving any of these issues.
As someone with a good amount of privilege, I do smile when I buy snacks. I just wish we had more democrat policies so that others could feel the same way.
I smile when buying gas too… it’s still MUCH cheaper than it will be, and I’m looking forward to abandoning gasoline powered motors completely in the near future.
The smile is both for what will be, and for the increased price of gasoline driving us towards that future.
Of course he fucking realizes he's the cause of it. He's doing the right thing politically in showing empathy to people that feel misery. He's creating the problem and making himself the solution for it. It's entirely calculated and not a "dumb" thing to do.
That's not just weird, that's inhuman or downright evil.
It's also a perfect example of psychological projection. He never feels joy and thinks everyone else feels the same way. His is a sad and pathetic existence.
Let me translate: The DNC was not joyful because it made MAGA fear and loath. He then pivots to project all this on the "American people" remembering that that's who he's supposed to care about.
Lindsey is a windsock; useful to see which way the wind is blowing.
Fucking asshole has the nerve to say the world wasn’t on fire during trumps presidency AND that trump is PRO-Life when he was perfectly ok with Covid as long as it was as gonna hurt cities and therefore Democrats more. Media motherfuckers need to start calling out this hypocrisy in real time.
My take is that statement is perhaps the most authentic thing he ever said in his life. He wouldn't recognise joy of it went up to him and kissed him on the mouth.
He must be bewildered seeing all that happy emotion.
Pretty much, anything he says can be dismissed with a subtle jerking-off motion.
Graham in 2016:
"I want you to use my words against me. If there’s a Republican president in 2016 and a vacancy occurs in the last year of the first term, you can say Lindsey Graham said let’s let the next president, whoever it might be, make that nomination."
Graham in 2020:
"I fully understand where President @realDonaldTrump is coming from. https://t.co/qlhtEwTCdX
As to my view of filling a Supreme Court vacancy in 2020, I’d encourage you to review these most recent statements.
You know, fuck Trump, fuck Graham, and fuck every Republican. But:
Americans are not joyful when they go to the gas station and fill up their car,” he continued. “They’re not joyful when they make their mortgage payment. They’re not joyful when they go to the grocery store. People are hurting, and this whole joy love fest doesn’t exist in the real world.”
Is perfectly accurate. I get that everyone is excited about Harris, but lying to ourselves about the economy makes us look out of touch, at best. Most of us can't afford a down payment on a house. Most of us are a few missed paychecks away from homelessness. Most of us are one bad doctor's appointment away from bankruptcy. Most of us are drowning in student loans. Republicans absolutely want to make all of those worse, but pretending everything is fine is bullshit.
No-one is pretending everything is perfect, but you also have to have a positive vision for the future. Having a whole convention bitching about stuff without solutions is not the path forward.
Democrats discussed ideas to make things better regarding the points Graham made, BUT it's the Republicans that are the major roadblock to any and all solutions.
Graham is the guy taking a massive shit in your living room and then complaining that the cleaning lady is too cheerful about cleaning up the room. And she's not fast enough... And she's to blame for making him take that dump.
Fuck all Republican politicans, they offer ZERO solutions to anything. All they do is stoke fear and division.
The "joy" or whatever doesn't have to be "Everything is great!" It can also be "Shit sucks but maybe we can get a coalition together to fix it. " Just hoping things can be better gives people joy. Like going to church and stuff
There is so much stoic wisdom to respond to this with. Momento Mori would be the most widely known idea, Negative Visualization is similar to that, and the Last Time Meditation is a more obscure one.
There are people who know they will die in the next week. If you can pay your mortgage, and you have good health, that is reason enough to be joyful. Those people would do anything to trade places with you and your good health and your mortgage payment.
There are people who cannot pay their mortgage. People who got a foreclosure letter from the bank last week. Would Lindsey Graham rather us all be in a miserable situation like those pitiful people?
Sure, paying your mortgage is not great, but you can mope about it, or you can be joyful with what you have. You will not have another today. Would you rather spend it moping about what is impossible to achieve today, or joyful about the positive things in your life right now? I know which one I would pick.
At the same time, I know this may be hard to grasp because it took me decades to discover that joy can be a choice. It can be really hard to see that, which is why I pity Lindsey Graham.
I'm pretty doom and gloom but I still have joy in my life, so even if no one else does I'm proof it does exist. I would feel bad for Graham if he wasn't such a wretched creature
Denying your sexual identity leads to self-hatred and little joy. No surprise there.
Joy aside, Graham also addressed Donald Trump’s Friday comment via Truth Social that his “administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights.” A comment many found ironic.
I mean, it was basically an insult fest against the GoP lol. Not that I'm complaining; it just makes sense the Republicans are whining about it. Fucking hypocrites.
Last I checked, gas was about $3.03 where I'm at. Border crossings are lower than when Joe took office. And nobody was happy about their mortgage payments under trump either.
republiQan muckety-fucks: Goddam this Kamala/Walz ticket is knocking our dicks in the dirt! We’ve gotta send some messengers out to the talk shows, who do we got who isn’t facing trial for felony crime?
republuQan intern: Well, we have Lindsey Graham.
republiQan muckety-fucks: (sighs loudly, rubs eyes for a long time)
republuQan intern: . . . Sirs?
republiQan muckety-fucks: (a full sixty seconds later) . . . Fine. Send out Graham.