after he graduated. While teaching, he wrote a history textbook that Virginia secondary schools are probably still using. At the bar, he was an ad copywriter like me, working at the same agency as my ex. I liked Brad the minute I first met him, and besides being one of the nicest people I ever met, he was also one of the smartest.
As was our habit, between bites of our cheesebugers and gulps of Guinness, we discussed the state of the world, the nation and whatever movie, book or hot piece of ass we'd happened to encounter. That day, discussing early American history, I came up with a theory. Call it "Jefferson's Biggest Mistake". As the author of The Declaration, as the most brilliant and polymathic mind of his time, one phrase of his, I suggested, has created more psychic pathology, more envy, more greed, more selfishness than any single phrase in American history: "...and THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS...".
"Life, Liberty...", yes. Absolutely. Those first two words are what this country was founded on. But "the pursuit of happiness" was just wrong-headed, and ill-fated, right from the get-go.
Let's start with the word "happiness". "Happy", the adjective from which "happiness" derives, is
a poor substitute for the word "joy". Happy is sappy, joy is JOY! Joy is intense but momentary, like life. Happy implies lasting joy, unlike life. Ask any European what "happy" means to them and they'll laugh in your face! It's just a silly, naive English (American) word. "Happiness" goes even further by implying a state of being. There is no such "state of being". Unless we all walk around with smiley faces like some mass asylum for village idiots! Couple "happiness" with "the pursuit of" and substitute "happiness" with "money" and you've got what America has become: Greedy, selfish, arrogant, envious, ruthless, delusional, intolerant, priggish, small-minded, profit-seeking at any cost.
Sure, there were, and are, millions of enlightened Americans who don't equate "happiness" with "money" or accept the word "happiness" as some sort of entitlement. But the few who don't are massively outnumbered by those who do, the rich and powerful, the poor and powerless. Brad thought my analysis was "brilliant". Maybe.
But twenty-five years later, "brilliant" analysis is less meaningful than ever. Every damn aspect of this culture has gotten worse. From Reaganism to Wall St. to political corruption to George W. to Cheney to Iraq to
Afghanistan to the Great Recession to "reality shows" to Fox News to "celebrity idolatry" to Facebook to Twitter to the death of music and publishing and reading to Tea-Party Republicans to a "do-nothing-in-spite-of-Obama-Congress" to "is-there-anyone-out-there-with-a-functioning-brain?", this country is a festering dunghole of misanthropic ooze. I got mine, loser. Fuck you. I got squat, dickwad. Fuck you, too.
Happiness! Pure unadulterated, unalterable, unreasonable, unsubstantiable, unconscionable happiness!
Ah, Tommy, you must be rolling in your grave!
