Featured photo: Mannequins | © F. Muhammad on Pixabay
Before tomorrow's normal everyday life has me fully under control again, I'll take a look at the new year. In any case, it is pleasing that the current federal government is actually trying to turn things around, at least on some serious problems, and get the situation somewhat under control before it is actually far too late.
Even though yesterday I had to drive my youngest son to Frankfurt Central Station at very short notice so that he could reach his workplace on time. Unfortunately, this also shows that we in Heilbronn have learned nothing at all when it comes to the infrastructural connections to our city in forty years. The positive thing about it is that at least the railway is now starting to get its main routes back under control - unfortunately, as already written, Heilbronn has not been one of them for a long time!
And in addition to improving our infrastructure, another example is the motorway bridges, our government is trying to promote the necessary restructuring of our industry while also taking national precautions into account. Unfortunately, there are still enough “Stalinists” in responsible positions who are still trying to sell our country to Putin and his cronies. That's why there will be no functioning Bundeswehr or even a sustainable arms policy; The recent debate about compulsory military service can be seen as a mere attempt to get party soldiers and their own clientele into wages and bread and into very lucrative feeding troughs.
Because it can still be observed across all parties that one's own self-sufficiency remains the primacy of German politics (keyword: intellectual-moral turnaround). Which unfortunately also means that the Union parties are doing everything they can to get back to the feeding troughs, but very little to make responsible policies in these difficult times - even if currently only in opposition - or even to try to reposition themselves and to bring themselves back into play with the voters as parties capable of governing with fresh and good, competent and not prejudiced forces.
It is also pleasing to see that the majority of the members of Alliance 90/The Greens and the FDP have recently continued to acknowledge their own government responsibility and are trying to get our country back into safe waters despite very big problems and challenges.
But before we can all get back to safe waters, there will be a lot of cliffs to navigate this year! And as long as we continue to refuse to take responsibility together as a European federal state, many of these cliffs will not be able to be avoided by us at the helm - or even avoided at all.
And that's what's really exciting about this year, is that we depend on others for better or for worse. And all of our own measures and decisions can only contribute to helping us determine the future direction in the event that we return to calmer waters.
For us Europeans, in addition to local and regional elections, there are also elections for the European Parliament. For us people in Heilbronn, these are the local elections and the European elections on June 9, 2024. And these are actually the two most important elections, because on the one hand, we will determine how local politics will be made in Heilbronn in the future, namely whether party interests or local challenges will play a role for us play. There are simply no party bigwigs on a local council who can implement party political nonsense or supra-regional compromises at our expense. Here we should elect fellow citizens of Heilbronn who primarily want to eliminate the city's problems and challenges and advance Heilbronn as a whole. Neither Nazis nor communists belong on a local council; that is simply not worthy of a former Free Reich city!
The European Parliament elections taking place on the same day will determine the future politics of Europe and thus our common destiny. It is important that we vote for those parties that are European and have their sights set on a European federal state, at least in the long term. And we should pay close attention to whether and how the parties in question, i.e. those who are together in the European movement have brought forward how they imagine the future Europe in their respective election programs and how they would like to achieve this.
Once you have found several such parties, you can decide according to your own preferences, because there is a wide range of concepts here: more liberal, conservative, social democratic or even based on a specific ideology or religion, such as a special responsibility for nature , humanism or Christianity. But here too, anti-democratic and totalitarian parties have no place in a democratic parliament! — only totalitarians claim that this is the case, and only until they can bring Parliament into line or eliminate its democratic members.
But as already indicated, in the most important election of the year, most of us - at least my readers - can only watch!
The 2024 all-important election will take place on November 5, 2024 in the USA. And this is about nothing less than the survival of US democracy and thus also the continued existence of the Western world.
For better or worse, all other political decisions in the world have to fall into place behind this decision by the US voters - I am not assuming that a democracy will be declared in China or the Russian Federation this year or at least that the Indian Prime Minister will do so without if and But is committed to democracy and our western civilization.
And that's how they decide Americans once again the fate of our world after 1942. Until then, we have no choice but to hope for the best and, in the meantime, do everything we can to ensure that from 2025 onwards we all pull together and finally end the larger and smaller wars in order to face the challenges that actually lie ahead can.
- We must finally curb man-made climate change and deal with its ever-increasing consequences.
- We must at least try to preserve the biodiversity that still exists and approach nature and environmental protection globally.
- We have to make the global economy work as a whole and this can only happen if everyone in the world benefits from it
- We must all agree on a viable and sustainable world policy that enables all states and groups in the world to resolve emerging conflicts without resorting to military means.
And we will all create these conditions for this, whether in the USA, in Europe or in other parts of the world, in this still young year of 2024!
Everyone should do what they can and what is possible for them. But at least we Europeans should make use of our right to vote! — while we still can.
I also have other plans for this year.
- I try to continue to lead the two clubs that I chair as best as possible, but at least responsibly.
- This year I'm also trying to find a little more time for my family and myself, but above all to pay more attention to my own health - and this becomes more and more time-consuming as I get older!
- I'm trying to continue writing on my blog, paying more attention to my note box and also reading more books right through to the end
- I try to make the projects I plan as successful as possible.
I think 2024 will also be an exciting year, but unfortunately I also fear that it will be the most exciting year ever after 1942.
And so I hope and pray that in 2024 we will be able to navigate all the obstacles as well as possible and look back on an eventful time at the end of the year. I am firmly convinced that we can succeed if as many of us as possible pull together and in the right direction.
As has been written many times: we actually all know what needs to be done and what we should do ourselves. And we all know only too well what we shouldn't do.
It is our decisions that make us who we are. And sometimes others make decisions about us - and that's what makes me so sad, especially since we have to assume that we got ourselves into this mess.
What remains is hope!
