Almost Every American Is Extremely Unhappy, for Some Reason

A new poll found that Americans are the unhappiest they’ve been in nearly half a century, though I certainly can’t imagine why that would be the case.

The Associated Press reports that the the COVID Response Tracking Study, conducted by researchers at the University of Chicago, found only 14 percent of American adults say they are “very happy,” with 50 percent of respondents saying they “often or sometimes felt isolated in recent weeks.” In 2018, 31 percent of Americans said they were “very happy,” and only 23 percent said they felt isolated.

Apparently, Americans haven’t been this unhappy since 1972, at the tail end of the Vietnam War and Nixon’s first term in office. Now, we are in the midst of a pandemic that’s killed tens of thousands of Americans thus far and seems unlikely to let up. The economy is cashed. The world is not going back to normal. We are (still!) at the mercy of a racist, brutal police system, one in which black people are disproportionally imprisoned and gunned down by cops in the streets.

Rampant racial and economic inequality is getting worse. Donald Trump is still in office. The alternative is this guy. Things will probably get worse before they get better. The future is…bleak, to say the least. At least we have HBO Max?