There are going to be days like this I suppose.

There are two truths in the world: 1) everyone wants to be happy and 2) everyone sees themselves as pretty amazing.

Oddly enough, this inevitably leads to religious wars, racism, bigotry, class warfare, poverty, and every kind of despicable behavior known to man.

Why? Because we aren’t actually as amazing as we think ourselves to be. Everyone believes, deep down, that he/she is a special person. This isn’t strictly true. Each of us is special, but we are special to those who know and appreciate us, not the greater population of mankind. Further, we all have different expectations for happiness. One person seeks money, another to go fishing, another to change the world, another to travel. When we are unable to achieve these goals, or when these goals are difficult to attain, we begin to perceive the world is against us. That someone or something is trying to prevent us from achieving the happiness that our special status deserves.

And so humans suffer from a kind of mass hysteria. Numerous political and social movements have used the perception that other people are to blame for your problems as a way of rallying broad support. This battlecry unites the strategies of George W. Bush, McCarthy, and Adolf Hitler.

It is the terrorists, the Chinese, the immigrants, the Communists, the Jews, the blacks, the Arabs. These are the source of your problems. Elect me and I will eliminate your problems by somehow eliminating these other people.

Today in America I see this. A perception by the middle class that their problems are caused by other people, by black people, by Mexican people, and by people who don’t share the same viewpoint as middle America.

This is, in a larger sense, the most ridiculous notion in the history of civilization. Middle-class America today exists because previous generations killed all the Native Americans, used slaves to build the early economy, instigated wars with neighboring states, forced their way into markets that had no interest in their services, and invented the most appalling ways of killing people known to man. And yet still the most powerful force ever in the history of the earth finds itself constantly afraid of wasting money on welfare or subsidizing research.

I see this perception that America is under constant cultural assault by other people all the time. For example, the Fox News Channel has made careers for guys like Bill O’Reilly because of paranoid non-threats such as the War on Christmas. 80% of Americans refer to themselves as Christian. Does this seem like a country in which a ‘War on Christmas’ should be taken seriously? Our entire economy gears itself around the holiday, every charity, every church, every academic activity takes Christmas as its fundamental dividing point. Yet some people seem to feel that using “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” signals some kind of immoral assault on the very basis of Christianity. This perception can only be considered irrational. Yet it persists.

Some groups might be forgiven if this blaming other people for their own problems seems rational (even thought it might not be): African Americans have been the subject of intense, state sponsored racism in this country as recently as 35 years ago, and an entire social movement has emerged advocating a return to values as they were when African Americans were enslaved. Understanding why blacks might think they are being persecuted isn’t hard: There is a lot of evidence that it is still occurring and there are a lot of people alive today who grew up in a culture where racial hatred was an institutionalized reality.

I don’t really recommend you spend much time thinking about this. There isn’t much anyone can do to prevent people from being ignorantly afraid. You can’t explain to someone that their pitifully narrow viewpoint is just that, when they don’t want to believe anything else. You can’t even explain that happiness isn’t the same for everyone.

I just spent all weekend and today thinking about this. I’m depressed, exhausted and increasingly angry. I don’t want my child coming into the world as it is. This is a world filled with hatred, racism and ignorance, and too many people are doing their best to keep it that way.

Some days I just don’t want to make the world a better place. Some days, the world doesn’t deserve it.