Comment by graemep
4 months ago
I am not advocating tearing everything down, as that will make things worse, especially if done violently.
> That leaves no room for democratic participation
I think there is very limited room for democratic participation and it has become far to difficult to change anything. If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation? Even if the parties are different and I do not like the policies of either, what is the value of my vote?
I think things will improve in the long term when there is sufficient pushback, but it will take a long time.
> If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation?
In joining a party that represents you better—or founding one if no such party exists—and campaigning for it. Democracy doesn't end with casting a ballot, especially in trying times like these. Nobody is going to come and save us; if we don't stand up, nobody will.
I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "The Germans: They thought they were free" by Milton Mayer[1]. It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.
[1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html
> It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.
> If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.
How do you jive these two statements?
My point is that the German society wasn't inherently evil, but stunned, indifferent; a comparatively small group of thoroughly sinister people managed to use that to their advantage. The correct thing to do would have been civil resistance, while it was still possible.
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