In a season of grotesque sexual misbehavior by (as always) men of the Left, one sorta wonders how it ever came to be.  Not that long ago, the women of the Left assured us that Bill Clinton's misbehavior in the Oval Office was "just sex" and no big deal.  It was a sixties attitude — free love and get-out-of-our-bedrooms and such.  In that spirit at least one female reporter volunteered a gratitudinous freebie to the then-president for his, uh, services to the cause.

No trace of that attitude attaches to #MeToo, the latest version of the Left's complex and contradictory approach to relations between the sexes.  If the sixties attitude treated sex playfully (at least as re: Bill Clinton), #MeToo seems convinced that men are too dangerous for sex and must be punished for their maleness.  To be sure, the Epstein revelations seemed to underscore the point about toxic masculinity.  If you ever wondered what a toxic male looks like, look no farther than Jeff.

Into this alarming environment comes TV fare showcasing the idea that women aren't as good as men, but better.  Computer hackers, car-jackers, detectives, doctors, lawyers, spaceship commanders — all better than their male counterparts.  And they can fight!  Little bitty women with toothpick arms beat up whole gangs of muscular male brutes with square jaws and hairy bellies.  In the next scene, these gals turn on the charm in scanty evening gowns as the guys line up panting.

I don't watch the comic book flicks where the female hero with exaggerated curves, dressed to bring these assets into unmissable relief, beats up the worst villains in the universe, but it's hard to escape the ads.  Gotta be quick on the remote.

The point, among others, is that the male hero has all but disappeared from the cultural scene.  For that matter, so have just ordinary guys who do what ordinary guys do, who laugh a lot and look on the sunny side, who aren't wimpy and weepy and angst-ridden.  For the female-driven Left, only girls have complex personalities drawn with depth and (possible) insight, who bravely overcome abuse and march grimly on to set the example for the abused sisterhood coming up behind them.

If this is how progressives see the world, small wonder we normals (hat tip: Kurt) don't get it.  Progs choose to hang out down in the dumps, moping about how unfair it all is, rather than focusing on the fun things, the funny things, the gorgeous things, the interesting things, the curious things, the sweet things, the awesome things.  It's true that the world is full of evil, but this ought not shut down seeing the rest.

It's lefty despair that makes modern culture so unbearable.  Despair drives lefties from one extreme to the other so that what they said in their youth contradicts what they say in their oldth.  They are out of balance, and instead of swinging back toward the center, they go ever farther out, getting ever unhappier.

And completely unnecessary.  You can't control much of what the world throws at you, but you can control your attitude toward it.  For most of us, it is possible to choose to look on the sunny side, to keep that stiff upper lip, to opt for good cheer over blue funk.  Seeing the human condition as both comedy and tragedy keeps us in balance and out of the Lefty Slough of Despond.