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There’s nothing more boring than talking US politics. It’s a two-party system where, besides cosmetic differences, both parties are the same. That is, both, in the long run, take us down the same path: a consumerist society obsessed with increasing wealth for just a few. Their only real difference is how they want to get there—either in a gas-guzzling Ford F-250 or in an EV.
The most disappointing event in US politics is the presidential election. It’s a two-year ordeal where the public is bombarded with messages from a couple dozen candidates. All that energy and effort to discuss things said by people who will mostly be forgotten by the time the next news cycle comes around. After those two years, there’s a good chance that the candidate who wins the election doesn’t even get to be president. It’s all very anticlimactic, in my opinion. The last couple of elections, I’ve been wise enough not to pay attention. Throughout that time, candidates from both parties have won and lost, and US democracy is still there, behaving as it usually has throughout its brief—in historical terms—existence.
Yet, here I am, talking about the US presidential election. But don’t leave me, please; it’s not what this post is about. So, Kamala Harris, the Democratic candidate, is trying to make up for lost terrain because her party insisted on running with Joe “Which One Is Putin” Biden for the first year and a half of the campaign. How does an American presidential candidate make up for a mistake? With guns! In an attempt to appeal to Republican voters in swing states, she told reporters that she had a gun and, like any other proud American, if someone broke into her home, that someone is gettin’ shot. At least, shot at.
The wisdom Vice President Harris is invoking here was best expressed by Wayne LaPierre, the former CEO of the National Rifle Association. LaPierre had a brilliant idea that would end the epidemic of mass school shootings across America. Days after 20 children were shot in an elementary school in Connecticut in December 2012, he said that to stop bad guys with guns, we need more good guys with guns. Kamala obliged and went shopping for a bang stick.
The idea of a presidential candidate unloading on a home intruder is preposterous. Firstly, it encourages violence with firearms in a context where her rival candidate suffered two shooting attempts in the past months. Secondly, it’s not credible—she’s the Vice President of the United States of America and candidate for president. If some intruder managed to get through the Secret Service, I doubt Kamala would be able to take care of them with her six-shooter. But most importantly, studies show that people with guns in their homes are more likely to suffer an accidental shooting or to use them in domestic violence incidents or suicide, rather than in self-defense.
Harris’s statement not only lacks credibility, but shooting our way out of problems is also a flat-out bad idea. To start with, who defines who the good guy and bad guy are? Is the good guy a public official playing the system to reach a net worth of 8 million dollars, or some schmuck desperate enough to risk 2 to 6 years in the clink for burglary? Burglary is a bad thing, but does that mean that anyone who goes down that road should be shot, possibly killed? If the good guy does end up killing the bad guy, what about the grief and pain of the bad guy’s close ones? Why do they deserve to suffer? And the shooter? Does the good guy just carry on with their life after killing someone as if nothing ever happened? And that’s the happy path. What if the good guy with the gun fumbles and the bad guy with the gun ends up with two guns in their hands?
As someone who doesn’t live in the USA, I couldn’t care less about their obsession with guns. All countries have weird things they’re hung up about due to past traumas. The lesson here is that bad ideas like “good guys with guns against bad guys with guns” take hold. It’s the kind of idea that can win you the US presidential election. Nowadays, it seems like it’s bad-idea galore out there. Between climate change denial and the flat-earth revival, we have QAnon-like conspiracy theories and the anti-vaccine movement. Governments, on the other hand, apply trickle-down economics and subsidies for fossil-fuel industries. Kids were even caught up doing the Tide Pod and cinnamon challenges! Really, who in their right mind could think it’s a good idea to swallow a Tide Pod?
In today’s technological environment, where anyone can put their ideas out there — not me, of course — we have bad ideas up to our necks. And bad ideas catch on, probably because they’re simple. It’s easier to understand that we can shoot bad guys to get rid of them, instead of looking into all the social forces that drive someone to resort to theft to survive, and try to fix them.
As much as we like to consider our time uniquely perilous, there’ve been bad ideas in the past. Consider pseudosciences like phrenology and eugenics. In healthcare, bloodletting, mercury treatments, and lobotomies were all well accepted at some point. To lose weight, we’ve come up with the grapefruit, tapeworm, and cigarette diets… Yikes! In policy, think about the war on drugs and the D.A.R.E. program. All bad ideas that were very popular and backed by a considerable part of the electorate.
Why stop there? This could be part of a larger historical trend. That is, maybe we’ve been moving forward following easy-to-understand ideas that a lot of people agreed with but were bad. Ideas like an anthropocentric view of the universe and the enshrinement of rationality; spirituality through organized religion; passing down power and wealth through inheritance; the patriarchy; the social contract; and colonialism and imperialism justified by racial superiority. Today, the idea of capitalism with a consumer society, based on infinite resources and happiness for sale, where all aspects of life are left to the market for an optimal outcome. All bad.
These are the ideas that modern societies are built on. But were these the best ideas of their time? Why would our forefathers have been better equipped than us to figure out the best ideas of their generation? Maybe they weren’t. Back in the day, accessing ideas was much more difficult than now. Maybe these were the ideas they could get a hold of, and they became popular because they were simple and easy to understand. Or, more insidiously, these could have been the ideas that supported a certain status quo. In hindsight, the results of implementing these ideas aren’t so good. We’ve mentioned them ad nauseam: environmental degradation, inequality, anxiety, and a nagging dissatisfaction with life. Maybe it’s time to change our mentalities and go for ideas that are complex and don’t win the popularity contest.