Post photo: voting booths | © Alexandru Nika, Shutterstock
This November is all about the US elections, which will hopefully bring a result soon, although we all hope that every vote cast will be counted.
Currently deliver the 45th President of the United States, Donald Trump, and his challenger, Joe Biden, a neck-and-neck race, and again, because of US electoral law, winning over a few million more voters won't help the Democratic candidate.
In the Senate elections taking place at the same time, it looks as if the Republicans will not be able to maintain their majority, but the Democrats will not be able to achieve it themselves either.
In the ongoing elections for the House of Representatives, however, the Republicans are even succeeding in increasing the number of their representatives and reducing the current Democratic majority.
It is therefore fair to say that not only the previous election campaign was exciting, if not frightening or even disturbing. The limits, and even more so the vulnerability, of democracy should have been revealed to both the most hardened campaigners and the inexperienced spectator — whatever the outcome of the election, it will surely take years to restore stability to the western world.
None of the US candidates, and certainly not their parties, have covered themselves in glory; commercial television with its trash content has already fully manifested itself in the very top of our politics: sexual orientation and gangsta rap posturing are replacing more and more debates and programs — and not only in the USA.
To make matters worse, more and more citizens in the USA as well as in Europe like and vote for such politicians, as well as totalitarian regimes, such as the Russian Federation, the People's Republic of China or Iran, strengthen this desire in our populations by all means, with the doubt stoke the meaning and function of democracy and thus manipulate the elections in the western world.
If you now have to watch that even our own governments and courts tolerate these external attacks on our democratic institutions and processes without countermeasures, you have to start asking yourself how our democracies are doing overall.
Although everyone, without exception, enjoys the advantages and, above all, the achievements of our democracies, it is evident that fewer and fewer are willing to stand up for our democracies themselves.
Worse still, those who live superbly by and with democracy themselves continue to erode democracy at its core through tricks and tricks, not only changing constituencies in their favor — gerrymandering is not an exclusively American problem — but also the sizes of the parliaments to suit their own needs and at the same time ensure that their responsibility as elected representatives of the people is at most purely moral.
We voters don't seem to care at all, the main thing is that we get a good show!
Germany hasn't been looking for statesmen for a long time either — we're looking for the superstar.
And as soon as this is discovered by the media, we no longer need extensive, expensive and complicated elections — the acclamation on Facebook and Co. should be enough for the voter.
Until then, the greats of our politics will be touring around the world in private jets, touring through trashy talk shows, allowing themselves to be locked in the container in a media-effective manner and broadcasting their private lives down to the smallest detail on all available channels.
But democracy works differently, so every vote cast must be counted - no matter how long this may take!
I would like an article from Peter Winkler in the Neue Zürcher Zeitung (NZZ) of October 31, 2020 for in-depth reading. The title is "The first season of the "Trump Show" in the White House ends - what price did America pay for it?"
#democracy #elections #one man #one vote
"My only remaining question is, why an honest pimp, con man, fraud, and kidnapper like yourself would get involved in something as nasty as large-scale corporate activity?"
"The money was good."
"Oh, but if that's your excuse, what will be next? politics?”
john barnes, The Lost Princess Man (2009: 144)
