I think a lot of it comes down to a style of politics, but not the great big presidential levels, although this too shows some of the same symptoms.
I know exactly what arguments will be set against the points I am going to make, but think about it.
Go to any first world country and look at what posts you are eligible to vote for,
I remember seeing a thread in this matter, and it was noteworthy just how many officials are voted into office in the US compared to pretty much everywhere else.
In the UK we vote for our Members of Parliament, local council, Euro Parliament Members, perhaps our City Mayor in a few places and also our local Police Commissioners - and that’s it, at the maximum and its frequently less.
For many of those officials, the vote turnout is incredibly low, sometime less than 10%, and for the largely completely unwanted Police Commissioners even less than that - for most of our population we think that it is better to have professionals carrying out many of the roles that US citizens vote in office, including public prosecutors, the idea that these functions should become politicised is most unwelcome
Who wants an third rate political rabble rousing amateur in pace instead of a person who has spent their whole career as a professional and has worked perhaps decades to attain their role through merit (though sometimes one does wonder if its a case of ‘jobs for the boys’)
Hell we don’t even vote directly for our Prime Minister.
So why do I think the US population is easily scampered into hasty decisions, they seem to be used to making electoral choices?
Well remember that phrase about ‘third rate political rabble rousing amateurs’ - how do you get folk to vote for you? What you do is hype up and pump up serious but numerically few incidents into an apocalyptic vision of the collapse of society.
You get right off your trolleys about such utter nonsensical stuff that has been completely blown up out of all proportion, and getting the electorate worried is what its all about, get lots of negative and sensationalist campaigning done, and because there is a vote almost every other month, the hype has to be maintained by the next third rate rabble rouser.
Add to this atmosphere of Christian religious extremism always ready to sell the vote of their congregation to whoever is seen to be the moral aspect of public political life and you can see why the US population can be scampered off into the sheep pens.
Gun control falls fair and square into the remit of the US scaremongers, who posit the threat to ‘democracy’ or social order - and the ever diligent US citizen is engineered into believing they must have guns to counter the guns that everyone else has. What we have in the gun control debate is MAD in the living rooms, kitchens and lobbies of our own homes.
It just would not do for the average US citizen to feel safe and comfortable, just how would you get the funding for the military, for wars around the world, and for every president to portray themselves as being firm, tough and all that stuff.
It is far harder to deal with the inequalities of opportunity in the US, we in the UK can’t do it either but in truth there has to be something worthwhile for everyone in society to reach for- or the disenfranchised will use whatever means are at their disposal, and in the US that means handguns.
Maybe in the US you have more democracy than you can handle.
, when I was growing up, mostly what I saw in the newspapers was stories about racial riots and then student protest/riots. The murder rate, btw, has been steadily declining since it’s peak in about 1991 and is now less than half what it was then.