There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy. – R.L. Stevenson

Can it be joy is a new idea?

Grimness is contagious: gripped by the virus, we can think of little else. It begrimes our outlook like a noxious fog.

For nearly a decade now, Donald Trump has peddled anger and gloom. The world was going to hell, things had never been worse, only he could forestall Armageddon. He told lies to buttress his contention, preposterous whoppers easily disproved, which his disciples devoured as avidly as dog Henry chicken. They wanted to feel bad: the supposed calamity of our national condition implicitly validated their gnawing discontent. Of course they were unhappy, with barbarians swarming our borders, babies being aborted – at birth!, evil books luring schoolkids from the primrose path of “normal” sexuality, and… Grievances aren’t hard to locate when you’re aggrieved. Down in the dumps, all you can see is dumps. Good news must be lies. Storm the Capitol, you’ll feel better: STOP THE STEAL.

There will always be crackpots at streetcorners exhorting “the end is near” – it’s a cartoonists’ trope. One learns to hurry past these malodorous hirsute Jeremiahs. That Trump was elected President with his cockamamie assertions and obnoxious boasts knocked me and mine for a loop. Now we were grim too. That this pestilence might be reelected forebode ill for our democratic experiment and civilization’s future. It became impossible to smile – ever again. When our enfeebled commander crumpled in a debate, we felt doomed to despair in perpetuity. How could this be! Can nations commit suicide?!

Then something amazing happened. Our crippled captain quit – finally – and was instantly succeeded by an articulate, laughing, pretty, confident, convincing standard-bearer, as sudden and implausible as a genie out of a lantern, laughing – laughing! – joyous with a contagious joy, and she chose as her running mate another laugher, chubby and jolly as Dionysus. What the – ?! Accustomed to grimness, such ebullience initially felt discordant, as if Madam Harris and Coach Walz hadn’t gotten the message we were living in hell.

Trump, with his feral instinct for self-preservation, instantly recognized the danger posed by Kamala’s laugh and attempted it mock it. Nobody wanted a President who laughed – the very idea! Only his scorn didn’t take. Folks seemed to like the idea of feeling joy in public service and optimism about tomorrow. Warily, we had to relearn how to rejoice, but when we managed it, gusted to glee by a grinning national convention, it felt grand.

When the Harris/Walz duo is elected November Fifth, as I believe they will be, first pundits and data-crunchers, then historians, will scramble to explain this puzzling American pivot. The economy will be cited, and the border, and advertising messages, and abortion rights, and revulsion at Trump’s cruelty, and all will be valid, none exclusive, for motives are ropes of countless strands. I nominate, for consideration, the power of joy. We want to feel good about who we are and excited about where we’re heading. We gravitate toward leaders who inspire, as toward a warm campfire on a cold night, and recoil from leaders who are grim. We may tolerate nastiness in office as we may swallow bitter medicine when we need it but quit the prescription the instant we feel strong. Kamala and Walz, bless them, are reviving delight in our American adventure: doing so seems, for them, not just inclination but obligation. They get in their gut what the unjustly neglected Robert Louis Stevenson was talking about: “There is no duty we so much underrate as the duty of being happy.”