The Party of Unhappiness
GOP social policies (pro-guns, anti-immigration, anti-minority, anti-abortion) successfully fire up their very vocal base, but it also has an unfortunate side effect: it makes Republican voters very unhappy people.
What makes you happy is probably a bit different than what makes me happy, but in general, sustainable happiness does not come from adding more of anything. It’s not about a new car or a new house or an Instagrammable holiday destination. Those good feelings are not sustainable. Happiness is mostly about taking away. If we remove the worry and the anger and the jealousy and the regret and simply exist in the present, then we return to our default state: happiness. That is why someone who has nothing can be happy. That is why the “pursuit” of happiness often ends in tears.
So, let’s say that happiness is simply being fully present in the moment. If you’re getting pulled back into the past, you might be feeling sad or angry or depressed. If you’re getting sucked into the future, you’re probably anxious or fearful.
The great difficulty is being in the moment. It all sounds embarrassingly simplistic and straightforward but Buddhist monks might spend a lifetime meditating and still struggle with this.
To increase one’s chances of leading a happy life by being in the moment as much as possible, you really just need these two things…
- Acceptance (PAST) — just accepting things as they are without judgement. You can’t change the past after all. An element of gratitude goes a long way here. Yes, maybe you were unfortunate. Maybe things didn’t go perfectly, but you’ve come a long way and the adventure of life is still there to be lived!
- Security (FUTURE) — enough stability (food, shelter, resources, support, safety) so that you’re not worrying about how you’re going to survive the next month or the next year.
Note that in the long term, these 2 things can be related. If a society has long term security, people will lead more comfortable lives that are easier to accept. If a society lurches from one political crisis to the next, security seems more tenuous and there may be lingering resentment (Brexit, Trump, etc) that make it more challenging to stay grounded in the present.
One way to increase your happiness is to join a commune where everyone supports each other to establish security and community. Or, similarly, give up all the worldly crap you don’t need and join a Buddhist monastery. These are extreme examples but illustrate what’s at the core of happiness.
More practically, move to New Zealand or Western Europe (not the UK). Here, especially in Scandinavia, you’ll find democratic socialist countries that routinely top the Happiness Index. The happiest countries are those that have a very strong social support from the Government. People don’t worry what will happen to them if they lose their job or get ill or need to take time off to look after a child. Security allows you to relax. Security lets you play. Security enables you to feel confident enough about the future that you can go out and enjoy your life.
Now let’s flip the equation. What if we wanted to create a political party that was intended to make voters as unhappy as possible? Simple. Don’t accept past events and remove all support systems so that your future feels highly precarious. In such a scenario, you’ll rarely be happy.
This is precisely what the Republican Party offers.
The GOP doesn’t accept legitimate election results. They don’t accept that the climate crisis is real and dire and that their actions have exacerbated it. They don’t accept responsibility for the thousands of Americans that die each year from gun violence. They don’t accept responsibility for systemic racism and the moral duty to accept immigrants. They don’t accept that women have the right to choose what to do with their own bodies.
And in terms of security, the GOP doesn’t support a livable minimum wage ($7.25/hr U.S. $12/hr Germany $15/hr Denmark $20/hr Switzerland). They are against efficient public transport. They are against free public healthcare. They are against free higher education. They are against protecting future generations from catastrophic global warming. They are against protecting public lands and wildlife and clean air and clean water. They support logging and the toxic pesticide and herbicide that comes with GMO crops.
And so the happiness of Republican voters is getting hammered from both sides. They’re unhappy because they’re being told lies about the 2020 election being stolen, because there are too many foreigners queuing up at the border, and because they believe that the Government is going to come and take their guns. And they’re unhappy because real incomes haven’t improved in decades and, with minimal support structure to the fabric of society, it doesn’t take much of a medical emergency for one to lose everything.
And of course, this is not purely an American phenomenon. Britain’s Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage successfully sold Brexit on the basis of racism and xenophobia. Other right wing extremists like Bolsonaro in Brazil and Berlusconi in Italy relied on racist messaging to get out the vote.
This isn’t an academic issue. This isn’t abstract. This is measurable. Republicans are unhappy people and they die earlier than Democrats. And 9 of the 10 most unhappy states are red states. Mental health is just as important as physical health. Since we mandate that cigarettes come with a Government health warning, maybe all ballot papers should warn that, “voting Republican may cause unhappiness”.
