“Bah! Humbug!”?

Please don’t hear me mumbling (or shouting!) “Bah! Humbug!” or see me as the Grinch who stole Christmas (or the holiday spirit, for that matter) in reading what follows. 

I have arrived at the arguable belief (a ’conviction’ from the outside looking in?) that, owing to several loosely related causes and reasons, some more discernible than others, denial, self-deception, wishful thinking, myopia, insecurity, anxiety if not depression (or at least the symptoms of same), fear, nastiness, dispositional anger or resentment, willful ignorance, procrastination, and weakness of will have become ubiquitous psychological and epistemic phenomena (there being no hard and fast boundary here) in our country (and seemingly in more than a few other countries around our planet). I confess to succumbing on occasion to at least some of these mental states and conditions. This is a personal judgment and generalization (and symptomatic diagnosis), for which exceptions can be cited, but these only serve to distinguish and highlight the rule in this case. I welcome attempts to convince me otherwise, should you find the time and stamina! (Contentedly cultivating one’s garden or imagining yourself above the fray, as it were, are not postures from which counter-arguments or sentimental expressions of solace—however well-intended—should be made).