Post photo: Chancellor in the election campaign | © Shutterstock
We're all back to our normal routine now, and we're sure many of us have already lost sight of our New Year's resolutions — even COVID-19 has stayed with us and will keep us busy for quite a while.
But what we have all learned from dealing with a pandemic recently is that both our society and politics are no longer prepared for the everyday; the successes of European unification so far have turned us all into fair-weather people.
Nothing bad in itself, as long as you stay prepared for the rain. Unfortunately, it now turns out that we are no longer that, regardless of the area.
This knowledge would even be helpful if the majority of us drew the right conclusions from it.
Unfortunately, many of us are now complaining to politicians that the politicians are keeping their promises that were untenable from the start and are getting us out of the rain — no matter what the cost!
Unfortunately, more and more fellow citizens are realizing that politics is overwhelmed by this and are beginning to seek their salvation in ideologies that are as old as they are wrong or in hocus pocus.
Unfortunately, many - to my great astonishment also younger ones - take refuge in the "just keep it up", according to the motto: after us the deluge!
This means that we are all going from bad to worse, and the bill will only work out for those who will find their end of life before the necessary cash collapse.
It is also astonishing, especially when you look at the coming elections, that many of us are sticking to the tried-and-tested candidates, but at the same time are building on being presented with new solutions.
When I look at our election posters, we will probably soon have a state parliament consisting mainly of grandpas and grandmothers, some of whom boast that they have been building Saarlandstrasse for decades or will be doing the final repairs to the war damage on the Saarlandstrasse in the coming years Get a railroad to Würzburg. Many of the well-established, graying politicians have also lost sight of our original intention of creating a European federal state, and some are now even convinced that this must be a Greater Europe, because Greater Germany was closed at the time jumped short.
Our world is turning noticeably faster, which means that the challenges of our time are adding up. We should therefore slowly realize that nothing changes for the better if you keep doing the same thing over and over again.
A first step would be to finally start building the United States of Europe from the bottom up (local to state) and from the inside out (core to edge), as well as improving the major deficiencies of our democracies, such as: B. to limit mandates and terms of office so that as many new solutions as possible are given a chance, and decision-makers have the opportunity to at least experience the medium-term effects of their work; In any case, necessary projects and decisions are no longer put off so easily.
I don't want to open the door to the obsession with youth, but suggest that well-trained citizens who are in the middle of life should be given the opportunity as early as possible to help shape their future politically.
"What is it we all seek for in an election? To answer its real purposes, you must first possess the means of knowing the fitness of your man; and then you must retain some hold upon him by personal obligation or dependence.”
Edmund Burke, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790)
