Because mine is a mixed household, we attend both conservative synagogue and church services. Worship is quite different despite the common denominator of the Torah/Old Testament. However, in both places, an attitude of gratitude permeates the services. Each faith expresses profound gratitude that God has created our world, us, the blessings that surround us, and, in the case of Christianity, ultimate salvation. No matter our personal situations, we are cradled in a world of divine wonders and miracles. (Job 5:9.)

It’s different when you’re a leftist. In that case, God, if you even believe in him, is the servant, not the master. Leftists make the choices that serve their needs and then cherry-pick their way through the Bible to find emanations and penumbras suggesting God’s imprimatur for those choices. Abortion? God approves, never mind the Bible’s reverence for life. Homosexuality? God approves, never mind the Bible’s manifest rejection of homosexual acts. Transgenderism? God approves if you just ignore the whole Adam and Eve thing. Frankly, at day’s end, He should express gratitude to us.

YouTube screen grab.

And that gets us to Michelle Obama, a woman who is decompensating before our eyes. It’s weird to think about because Michelle has had life handed to her on a silver platter. She grew up in a stable, two-parent home in a nice neighborhood. She attended the best local schools before attending Princeton and Harvard Law School (although her Princeton thesis suggests that she was in over her head).

When she left Harvard Law School, Michelle was instantly accepted at Sidley & Austin, a very prestigious law firm. From there, she quickly moved to city government and then into activist non-profit work.

In 1996, coincidentally, when Barack Obama was elected to the Illinois Senate, Michelle became the associate dean of student services at the University of Chicago, ultimately working for the U of C Hospitals. By 2006, she was earning $273,618 a year, which was a good salary for the Midwest. Add in Obama’s Senate salary and royalties from his books, and the Obamas were bringing in almost a million a year. Since leaving the White House, Michelle has become fantastically wealthy, the owner of multiple fabulous homes, and someone who parties with the “beautiful people” (most of whom are also unhappy).

Along the way, Michelle had two healthy, beautiful young girls. (And am I the only one who’s noticed how unhappy those girls seem, too?)

So, here we have a woman who has had a better education and job opportunities than most Americans, and was and is married to a man who was a rising young star, eventually becoming both the United States President and a singularly admired figure. There should be a whole lot of gratitude going on there. But there wasn’t and isn’t.

Michelle grudgingly stated that, with Obama’s elevation to the White House, for the first time in her life, she was proud of her country...a country that had treated her so well. And she complained, Lord, how she complained.

Michelle complained that short people asked her, a tall woman, to get products down from grocery store shelves; that that her legal work was boring; that, even in the White House, a mansion in which she lived rent-free and with servants, she had to pay for her own food, as all other Americans do; that Barack was an unhelpful father whom she hated; and that it was awful to be First Lady a victim of racism (including from adulatory media outlets).

Now, Michelle has an entire podcast that seems to be dedicated to complaining about the horrors of being a black woman. Here’s just a recent example:

Things are so bad for Michelle that she’s entered therapy to deal with her issues:

‘At this phase of my life, I’m in therapy right now because I’m transitioning, you know? I’m 60 years old, I’ve finished a really hard thing in my life with my family intact, I’m an empty nester, my girls are in—you know, they’ve been launched,’ she said.

Michelle said that she’s got ‘other voices’ to talk to and a ‘new person that’s getting to know me’ as she works through things. 

Being out of public service, she now finds herself in a situation where ‘every choice that I’m making is completely mine.’  

‘I now don’t have the excuse of, “Well, my kids need this” or “My husband needs that” or “The country needs that.”’

(And did Michelle just obliquely acknowledge that she’s moving on from Barack?)

This is a woman who has led a charmed life—more charmed than she deserved, perhaps—and still feels like she’s a victim.

In a way, I understand Michelle, because I used to be a leftist feminist, too. My problems at work weren’t because I didn’t work hard enough; they were because the firm was a “men’s club.” My difficulties, such as they were, with raising young children weren’t because I was disorganized or lacked emotional generosity; it was because their father didn’t do enough. Nothing was good, and nothing was my responsibility. For me, though, everything changed when I learned gratitude.

What I reflected before learning to count my blessings was the leftist creed that Churchill articulated so well on two separate occasions in 1948. In one speech, he said, “Socialism is the philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy.” And in another, he explained, “I do not at all wonder that British youth is in revolt against the morbid doctrine that nothing matters but the equal sharing of miseries, that what used to be called the ‘submerged tenth’ can only be rescued by bringing the other nine-tenths down to their level…”

At the heart of this socialist misery is an absence of gratitude. Socialists never appreciate what they have; they only resent what they do not have. That’s not just a material problem (e.g., my neighbor has a fancy car, and I don’t). It is a profound spiritual problem, which gets me back to where I started.

For people of faith, the baseline for gratitude isn’t the materialism that characterizes leftists (something ironic given that leftists hate the capitalism that made the material things in their lives possible). Instead, for religious people, the baseline for gratitude is that they live in a world that God created for them and, if they are Christian, that they inherited a salvation that Jesus Christ sacrificed to give them.

Thus, for the faithful, their gratitude baseline is intertwined with the very core of their beings. This is why religious people are happier, while leftists, especially leftist women, are so unhappy, leading to therapy or sucking up prescription pharmaceuticals.

More than just being a leftist, Michelle Obama belongs to a cohort of women—black women—who are repeatedly told that they are goddesses and queens. Being your own personal divinity, though, isn’t a recipe for happiness. It is, instead, a recipe for the embittered despair that characterizes one of the world’s luckiest women.

UPDATE: I also wanted to share with you two of my favorite songs, both about gratitude. The first is from Benny Friedman, singing Thank You to God. (The song is in both English and Hebrew, but here is a full translation of the Hebrew lyrics.)

The other is from Itzhak Shamli, who took a catchy, but sleazy song, about sex, and turned it into a meditation on gratitude to God:

(You can see the English translation in the song notes here. Also, for a fantastic a cappella version, check out the cover the Maccabeats did.)