Dumb, unhealthy, angry.... and happy?

Some stuff on Twitter has got me thinking about that favourite topic:  How the Right Got Consumed by the Culture Wars and Went Nuts.

This, for example:

And this:

That article by Richard Hanania (who I don't know) briefly makes the point that lots of research has shown that people who say they are on the Right are happier than those on the Left.   And I used to think that made sense when I was younger - the motivation to social change that is typical of the Left seemed to me to come mainly from people from unhappy family backgrounds.  

But the typical anger profile has, in large part, flipped now.   Sure, on the Left, there's lot of angry emotion over identity politics, but not all of it is ill founded.   And comedy has moved to be completely liberal dominated.  Happy people laugh more, don't they?

I wonder - is social research into happiness (which I suspect is actually quite a slippery thing to measure accurately) lagging behind the current state of the Right?   Because you sure as hell don't get the impression from social and Right wing media that the current Trumpy/Murdoch led American Right (and those Australians who align with it) has been happy for years.   A boiling pot of resentment that their ideas are not overwhelmingly accepted (by and large) by media, academia, big business and the public - yes.   A vast echo chamber of resentment and conspiracy mongering to explain why they find they find themselves in a minority - yeah.  

I note that some on the Right who were eulogising Rush Limbaugh recently said how much humour was a part of his early career - but I suspect that in the last decade, as with Right wing media generally, the attempts at humour became less important and got pushed out by anger, resentment and conspiracy.  

So, does it come down to the question - to what degree can you be angry all the time, and still count yourself as "happy"?      

Things to ponder over...