“Joy” is now Democrats’ official campaign strategy. Of course, joy in the true sense resonates with people who are starving for it. But we ought to ask about the deeper purpose of the Harris-Walz presidential campaign adopting “joy” as messaging. Even The New York Times recently offered skepticism, stating “joy is not a political strategy.” No, it’s not.
But I’ll go out on a limb, and say there’s a weird trick going on here. Consider thinking of Vice President Kamala Harris’s “joy schtick” as analogous to the joystick used in aircraft and video games. The joystick is all about imposing control, dictating movements and direction. Likewise, the psychological operation behind the Democrats’ joy schtick is about controlling or “nudging” the direction of an electorate that’s profoundly miserable because of the insane amounts of inflation, crime, and social turmoil cultivated under the Democrats’ watch.
As with all such “joy” campaigns in the history of modern totalitarianism, they end up tacitly stating that “misery is joy.” It’s like being beckoned into a sado-masochistic relationship in which inflicting and receiving pain is supposed to be pleasurable. Enthusiasm becomes mandatory.
Not only is a “joy” campaign meant to distract attention from the track record of tyrants, but with media control it imposes an Orwellian anti-definition, similar to the novel 1984’s delusional slogan “freedom is slavery.” Or like the passage in Isaiah 5:20 about those who would call light darkness and darkness light, those who would call good evil and evil good.
The formula always
