This is not funny:

Not funny at all.

Sure, I could make all the jokes in the world about how systemic racism is causing depression in young liberals, or how lack of access to gender affirming care is where the real problem is, but that wouldn't seem right.

These are real people we're talking about. Young people. And they're depressed not because of systemic racism or anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, no.

They're depressed because almost all the ideologies on the left require liberals to be upset about, well, everything it seems.

And oh look, what's this?

Matthew Yglesias, co-founder and former columnist over at far-left Vox seems to think the same.

The piece explores recent data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) showing alarming rates of sadness and depression among American teenagers, along with another study exploring the depression levels of American teens broken down by political affiliation.

"The CDC survey doesn't ask teens about their political beliefs, but [the study found] not only divergence by gender, but divergence by political ideology," Yglesias wrote. "Breaking things down by gender and ideology, they find that liberal girls have the highest increase in depressive affect and conservative boys have the least. But liberal boys are more depressed than conservative girls, suggesting an important independent role for political ideology."

Yglesias argued that, while exploring the impacts of technology and social media on teens is important, he does not "believe that liberal boys are experiencing more depression than conservative girls because they are disproportionately hung up on Instagram-induced body image issues — I think there's also something specific to politics going on."

So this is a big-time left-wing journalist sounding the alarm over the terrible effects leftism has on the mind. In essence, he's arguing that, yes, leftism is a mind virus as we sometimes joke about over here on the right. A mind virus that teaches young people to weaponize their "oppression."

More from Yglesias:

Yglesias credited, in part, what he called the "selection effect," suggesting that progressive politics have become "a more congenial home for people who are miserable."

"But I think some of it is poor behavior by adult progressives, many of whom now valorize depressive affect as a sign of political commitment. The thing about depression, though, is that it's bad," he continued. "…I think we need some kind of society-level cognitive behavioral therapy to convince people that whatever it is they are worried about, depression is not the answer. Because it never is."

Yglesias acknowledged the argument by left-wing academics that liberal teens are "depressed because they correctly perceive injustice in the world." But he noted that progressives have "used their agenda-setting power to make structural racism, pervasive sexism, and rampant socioeconomic inequality into unavoidable features of political discourse" as a method of getting people to pay attention to "what they think are the most important problems."

"Mentally processing ambiguous events with a negative spin is just what depression is. And while the finding that liberals are disproportionately likely to do it is interesting and important, it's not sound practice to celebrate that or tell them that they are right to do it," he wrote.

Yglesias ultimately argued that the left should "stop encouraging people to catastrophize," which can cause young people to "[dwell] unproductively as problems fester."

So I'd argue that what lefties fill their minds with these days — systemic racism, Republican "fascism," the world ending due to global warming — these are all things that fill the mind with negativity. And this negativity results in depression.

Now, on the Right I think it's important to take this research and learn from it. Sure, we're not quite as depressed as the folks on the Left, but we all know we play the negativity game too, sometimes.

I think it's best for all of us if we just turn off cable news every once in a while and learn to live outside the box of politics. This fad of watching the news and then parroting what we're told by the talking heads in our daily conversations is just killing us.

The world isn't as terrible as they make it out to be, so maybe we need to take a break from this new fad and start living life like humans again.

Anyhow, I'm off to mine the internet for a few uplifting stories for you folks that have nothing to do with politics.

Talk soon.