“Rush Limbaugh, D.D. — Doctor of Democracy … I have the cure for what ails us. Here’s my prescription: Self-reliance. Morality. Personal responsibility. Optimism and good cheer. Confidence in the irrepressibility of the human spirit.” — me, The Way Things Ought to Be, 1992

“A man … recently wrote me … accusing me of being too upbeat and optimistic. He said that by listening to me, one would get the idea that there is no hurting or suffering going on in the world and that everything is working out for the best. Wrong. I realize that there are failures and suffering. I just happen to believe that there would be a great deal more of them if everyone had this writer’s pessimistic, defeatist attitude. We can feel compassion all day for ‘the Suffering,’ but what do we do the next day? … What ‘the Suffering’ need is steady doses of confidence-building optimism.” — me, See, I Told You So, 1993

On April 18 cnn’s Brian Stelter tweeted: “I crawled in bed and cried for our pre-pandemic lives. Tears that had been waiting a month to escape.” He whined, “I hit a wall. Gutted by the death toll. Disturbed by the govt’s shortcomings. Dismayed by political rhetoric that bears no resemblance to reality. Worried about friends who are losing jobs; kids who are missing school; and senior citizens who are living in fear.”

This is the overall flavor of mainstream news every day: hysterical, apocalyptic, relentlessly negative. Deliberately dispiriting. The coverage is designed to make you believe there is no end in sight, that in fact this shutdown should be the new normal — just as the pathetic economy under the Obama Administration was supposedly the new normal of America in decline. The media happily supported that, too. They loved telling us that America’s best days were behind us.

But it wasn’t true, as the last three years under Donald Trump have demonstrated. America’s best days are yet to come. The trajectory toward those days is suspended at the moment — temporarily — but a roaring economy will be ahead of us again. There’s good news out there. There’s good news in everything.

Don’t get me wrong. My optimism isn’t artificial. I’m not somebody who constructs phony upbeat scenarios in an attempt to falsely motivate people. I’m a genuine optimist. I have the optimist gene. And while I’ve been furious about the purposeful ruination of the economy, what I haven’t said enough is that I believe we are going to come out of this. Like you, I’m chomping at the bit to get started on it.

When I say I have the optimist gene, I mean I’m an optimist by nature. I look for reasons to be happy in whatever situation I find myself. For instance, when I was being medically prepared to undergo the first round of cancer treatment, I had to undergo various exams to make sure I could withstand the literal poison they were going to throw at the cancer in my body. Because I had to get eye tests, I now have three sets of prescription glasses. I am seeing better than I have in 30 years! That’s something to be grateful for.

Don’t misunderstand. I’m not one of these phony-baloney, plastic-banana, good-time rock and rollers. Sometimes things get me down. But I have a positive attitude as part of my dna. This optimism infuses how I live my life. I’m a spontaneous person. I don’t plan very much in advance at all. My radio program is spontaneous. At work and in my personal life, I often leave my schedule open in case something new and interesting crops up. I’m always holding out for something better. I actually don’t even need a daybook. The number of people around me who are frustrated by my spontaneity — familia and work associates — are legion. But I’ve always been this way.

As I say, I’m not some kind of Pollyanna. I have seen tough days. I’ve been on every rung of the socioeconomic ladder. I’ve been fired six times. I’ve been broke twice. I’ve been in debt. I’ve seen life from all sides. Because of my experiences, I’ve never been intimidated by the prospect of failure. I have always believed in myself, and I’ve known that I live in a country that rewards hard work and excellence. I’ve never doubted the American Dream. Because I’m living it.

That kind of hope motivates. It gives energy. But one sure way to squelch that is to worry about what other people think. If you start tailoring yourself to try to be what everybody else expects you to be, before you know it you don’t know who you are. That way lies misery. If you can escape the prison of worrying about what people think of you, you’ll be amazed. You’ll feel freer, less burdened, happier, more optimistic. Trying to please everyone ultimately makes more people depressed and defeatist than anything else.

Leave defeatism to the left. Instead, be of good cheer. Note the upbeat demeanor and smiling humor of Ronald Reagan and Donald Trump, both of whom restored the confidence of the American people in the inherent greatness of our country. Trump winning against Hillary Clinton in 2016 proved yet again the power of optimism and patriotism — trouncing bitter and perpetually outraged Swamp-dwellers. What could be more optimistic than the determination to make America great again?

Trump is leading us through this era of leftist lunacy with an inspiring cheerfulness and positivity that I share. Especially during this Wuhan virus disruption, his optimism is driving the media over the edge. At one task force briefing, Trump remarked, “I don’t want to be negative. I’m a positive person. Somebody said, ‘Oh, I wish he’d be more negative’ … Well, this [covid-19] is really easy to be negative about. But I want to give people hope, too … We’re going through the worst thing that the country has probably ever seen … there’s nothing great about it, but I want to give people in this country hope. I think it’s very important.”

Then the President declared, “I’m a cheerleader for the country,” and leftists’ heads exploded. “Asinine,” spat cnn’s Chris “Fredo” Cuomo. Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti said this kind of “premature optimism” will “kill more people.” Trump’s upbeat attitude has the entire Democrat-Media Complex frothing at the mouth.

Is there anyone more miserable than a liberal? Their relentlessly negative worldview infects everything, including their personal lives. Take this description in The New York Times by 47-year-old Long Islander Christina Galante about going out on a promising date with a man she met on a dating app:

We were getting cozy on the couch, and … I said, “Wait a second, you didn’t vote for Trump, did you?” And he said, “Um, I was in the military and I grew up in the South.” And I was like, whoa. what the [expletive]?!?! It totally turned the night on its head.

Research bears out my observation that the left is losing it. Since 2002, Gallup has been conducting a survey comparing the happiness levels of Americans according to their political parties. Along with numerous other polls, including the National Opinion Research Center’s General Social Survey, the consistent results show that Republicans surpass Democrats in feeling satisfaction in their lives. But in Gallup’s most recent polling, conducted at the end of 2019, the happiness divide between the left and right is more stark than ever. While 53 percent of Republicans report feeling “very happy,” only 29 percent of Democrats do. The 24-point spread is the largest Gallup ever recorded.

This persistent and pervasive despondency detected in polling liberals irritates the left to no end. It led to an academic study that appeared in a recent issue of Science. UC-Irvine psychologist Sean Wojcik tried to spin the happiness differential between conservatives and liberals:

Research suggesting that political conservatives are happier than political liberals has relied exclusively on self-report measures of subjective well-being … [driven] by conservatives’ self-enhancing style of self-report … Relative to conservatives, liberals more frequently used positive emotional language in their speech and smiled more intensely and genuinely in photographs.

So according to Professor Wojcik, conservatives are lying about being happy. And liberals only say they’re unhappy in polls, but he knows they’re really happy because they have bigger smiles in Facebook pics. You can’t make this stuff up.

In reality, the blame-America-first crowd is miserable. How can they not be? cnn, msnbc, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and all the rest of the liberal outlets are a never-ending echo chamber of despair and doom. Every potentially positive event is recast through an “Orange Man Bad” or “America Is Bad” filter. The barrage of negative news is endless. We are told that misery has finally taken over in America, that the American dream is dead. And that is celebrated.

I have always been, and always will be, a truth-teller about the greatness of America. Make no mistake — our nation faces very real problems, particularly now. I am fully aware of that. But sitting around whining about how awful everything is, as every leftist does, accomplishes nothing.

I, for one, am tired of all the negativism. I have the satisfaction of knowing that I am right — because I know the amazing heights this nation is capable of. Greatness is in our dna. That is why I remain confident, full of good cheer, and profoundly optimistic. And so should you. Do not doubt me.

Illustration ©2020 Shutterstock/Elymas