Learning democracy
Created | Updated Apr 7, 2005
I think the really dangerous thing about politics is that it is so mindnumbingly boring, and therefore left to the numbskulls who don't understand it either but manage to look solemn in suits and not yawn themselves to death with the unmitigated tedium of it.
In the old GDR there was one party and you were expected to vote for it. OK, well, there actually were more parties and on election day one was given a list with "The candidates of the National Front" which had some people from the other parties on it as well. You voted for that whole list by simply folding the paper and putting it in the ballot box. Or you voted against by crossing the list out. There was usually one voting cabin, but entering that was seen as a clear indication that you voted against and you'd be glared at by the panel of officials holding your ID and stared at fascinated by the other voters, so one could just as well cross the list out and be done with it, or much more prudently fold the thing in full sight of everybody and be done with it too.
1989 all that changed. One demand of the Peaceful revolution were secret democratic elections. So on the first (and last) secret democratic election day in the GDR in 1990 I religiously toddled to vote for the Volkskammer and was handed a list of parties as long as my arm. I can't remember what I voted for, it was some greenish purple serious and virtuous little outfit, which perished at the 5 % hurdle. The Christian Democrats (CDU) won hands down, which was correctly interpreted as a clear vote for the reunification, which both the Eastern and Western CDU jointly espoused.
1990 we were reunified, that is, taken over by West Germany. It fascinated us that the West Germans should be economically so powerful to just take over a country of 16 million people. It seemed almost too good to be true. It was, but we realised that only later.
There are two big parties in Germany, Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD). I'll call them red and black, because it don't matter what they call themselves, as their politics are undistinguishable and interchangable. Their combined vote is always at around 70 %.
There are three small parties, one's yellow (Liberal Democrats FDP) and dreaming to reintroduce Manchester capitalism, nevermind who'll buy their products if we all sweat 12 h days on quarter-pay, one's green and simply dazzling with half-knowledge and deep concern about the things they know at best half of. There are the Democratic Socialist, which are the reformed communists of East Germany, they're usually depicted as deep red in the graphs. When the East Germans feel particularly disgruntled, we vote for them, as that has the surefire and immensely pleasing effect of setting everybody else foaming at the mouth and crying how ungrateful we are.
As mentioned before, the red-black vote is a fixed 70 %, the only substantial thing that ever changes is really just the ratio. And as the two parties both have only one aim and one capability, which is getting themselves re-elected, that ratio doesn't matter any.
If black wins, yellow teams up with them, or alternatively red with green, to ensure the opposition doesn't get a say in anything, nevermind that roughly half the voters voted for them.
Only dark red sits in the corner all alone being hissed at.
So each election 70 % of the voters toddle to the ballot box to ...again... add their vote to the 70 % red+black vote. Those who feel original vote vellow and green.
Now it's not 95 % for the one party anymore, now it's 70 % for the two parties, and this what's called democracy. Be still my beating heart. AND it's supposedly all done with free will, so i can't see any excuse for it far and wide, unless it would turn out that we have some dastardly Moriarties daddling the voting machines or some big bad executive conspiration of big bad companies to blame. That would greatly relieve my mind and restore my faith in my fellow citizens! No such hope, though.
So although not believing in Western democracy, and although there is a German proverb to the effect that if elections were likely to change anything, they'd be outlawed at once, I did turn out religiously on voting day, ever since the first elections were held, because, after all, I thought if a lot of people voted something must come out of it and East Germans making up 20 % of the voters something ought to swing our way for simple mathematical reasons. Naive, I know! All there was in that direction was a certain protest vote for deep red, which West German commentators busily explained away with our having lived in a dictatorship, and thus not having a clue what democracy was.
As we progressed into democracy, it increasingly became a question of voting for the lesser evil. Voting against, not for, certain outfits.
Now there isn't even a lesser evil anymore. So i thought I would join the party of the non-voters. Friends of mine said they considered to cross out the whole list ...memories! ... to show their disgust with the political parties, and if enough people did it, that sort of thing could not be merely counted as invalid votes anymore.
If the non-vote increases enough, at some point the government will loose it's legitimation.
Naive, I know.
In the GDR it had called my attention that in West German tv and radio - we were not supposed to watch and listen to those, but everybody did it, and the West Germans very obligingly put up transmission towers all along the border, the only place their transmitters didn't reach into was Saxony, which was accordingly called "Tal der Ahnungslosen" which can be loosely translated as valley of the ignorant, naive, innocent- as I was saying, listening to the West German news etc. it called my attention that they were in the habit of overusing the word "democracy" just as much as our side was overusing "socialism" "progress" and "our successes". So that made me suspicious. There was an inflation of words like "peace" and "defense" on both sides, which was rather worrying...
The other word continually flashing in the West German shop window was freedom. Freeeedoooom! I got really tired of that word even before the horrible night when I watched Braveheart in a motel wedged between 8 lane highways, because there was nothing else to do, and I wanted to keep up to date.
In the old GDR travel abroad was restricted very much, and that was the main thing that brought the wall down, came even before bananas. Then people realised that a passport is not all it takes to be free to travel, one has to have money. You'd think that was obvious, but to a lot of people it wasn't. So one has as much freedom as one has money. Most of us didn't have any money, and no idea how fatal that could turn out to be.
Seems it's commercials which are really being sold, not beer or chocolate or cars or music.
There were those credit card adds, competing for the reunited customer, offering free trial periods. Many East Germans thought it meant a freespending offer, and of course many West Germans scoffed how stupid that was, but was it? The adds suggested precisely that, spend all you want for free. Of course one knows that can't be true and the brain can filter accordingly. But in the back of the head sits that suggestion and works subconsciously. Result: Overdraft.
Another of the overused words is The Market, true enough what you say, the free market is becoming more and more a fiction, just like democracy and freedom. Socialism was finally torn apart by the increasing discrepancy between reality and fiction. I think the same can happen to capitalism also.
So, i'm often asked, is the West better or was the East better? Well some things were better in the east, some are better in the west. It all depends what one wants from life really.
On the whole my tally shows a slight plus for the West, because i've always hated people bossing me in the name of ideology, even if i shared that ideology. In the west it seems i got a chance to determine my own life, even though i now know that it's a very slight one playing with the loaded dice, and it needs everything i got to achieve some freedom .
In the old GDR there was one party and you were expected to vote for it. OK, well, there actually were more parties and on election day one was given a list with "The candidates of the National Front" which had some people from the other parties on it as well. You voted for that whole list by simply folding the paper and putting it in the ballot box. Or you voted against by crossing the list out. There was usually one voting cabin, but entering that was seen as a clear indication that you voted against and you'd be glared at by the panel of officials holding your ID and stared at fascinated by the other voters, so one could just as well cross the list out and be done with it, or much more prudently fold the thing in full sight of everybody and be done with it too.
1989 all that changed. One demand of the Peaceful revolution were secret democratic elections. So on the first (and last) secret democratic election day in the GDR in 1990 I religiously toddled to vote for the Volkskammer and was handed a list of parties as long as my arm. I can't remember what I voted for, it was some greenish purple serious and virtuous little outfit, which perished at the 5 % hurdle. The Christian Democrats (CDU) won hands down, which was correctly interpreted as a clear vote for the reunification, which both the Eastern and Western CDU jointly espoused.
1990 we were reunified, that is, taken over by West Germany. It fascinated us that the West Germans should be economically so powerful to just take over a country of 16 million people. It seemed almost too good to be true. It was, but we realised that only later.
There are two big parties in Germany, Christian Democrats (CDU) and Social Democrats (SPD). I'll call them red and black, because it don't matter what they call themselves, as their politics are undistinguishable and interchangable. Their combined vote is always at around 70 %.
There are three small parties, one's yellow (Liberal Democrats FDP) and dreaming to reintroduce Manchester capitalism, nevermind who'll buy their products if we all sweat 12 h days on quarter-pay, one's green and simply dazzling with half-knowledge and deep concern about the things they know at best half of. There are the Democratic Socialist, which are the reformed communists of East Germany, they're usually depicted as deep red in the graphs. When the East Germans feel particularly disgruntled, we vote for them, as that has the surefire and immensely pleasing effect of setting everybody else foaming at the mouth and crying how ungrateful we are.
As mentioned before, the red-black vote is a fixed 70 %, the only substantial thing that ever changes is really just the ratio. And as the two parties both have only one aim and one capability, which is getting themselves re-elected, that ratio doesn't matter any.
If black wins, yellow teams up with them, or alternatively red with green, to ensure the opposition doesn't get a say in anything, nevermind that roughly half the voters voted for them.
Only dark red sits in the corner all alone being hissed at.
So each election 70 % of the voters toddle to the ballot box to ...again... add their vote to the 70 % red+black vote. Those who feel original vote vellow and green.
Now it's not 95 % for the one party anymore, now it's 70 % for the two parties, and this what's called democracy. Be still my beating heart. AND it's supposedly all done with free will, so i can't see any excuse for it far and wide, unless it would turn out that we have some dastardly Moriarties daddling the voting machines or some big bad executive conspiration of big bad companies to blame. That would greatly relieve my mind and restore my faith in my fellow citizens! No such hope, though.
So although not believing in Western democracy, and although there is a German proverb to the effect that if elections were likely to change anything, they'd be outlawed at once, I did turn out religiously on voting day, ever since the first elections were held, because, after all, I thought if a lot of people voted something must come out of it and East Germans making up 20 % of the voters something ought to swing our way for simple mathematical reasons. Naive, I know! All there was in that direction was a certain protest vote for deep red, which West German commentators busily explained away with our having lived in a dictatorship, and thus not having a clue what democracy was.
As we progressed into democracy, it increasingly became a question of voting for the lesser evil. Voting against, not for, certain outfits.
Now there isn't even a lesser evil anymore. So i thought I would join the party of the non-voters. Friends of mine said they considered to cross out the whole list ...memories! ... to show their disgust with the political parties, and if enough people did it, that sort of thing could not be merely counted as invalid votes anymore.
If the non-vote increases enough, at some point the government will loose it's legitimation.
Naive, I know.
In the GDR it had called my attention that in West German tv and radio - we were not supposed to watch and listen to those, but everybody did it, and the West Germans very obligingly put up transmission towers all along the border, the only place their transmitters didn't reach into was Saxony, which was accordingly called "Tal der Ahnungslosen" which can be loosely translated as valley of the ignorant, naive, innocent- as I was saying, listening to the West German news etc. it called my attention that they were in the habit of overusing the word "democracy" just as much as our side was overusing "socialism" "progress" and "our successes". So that made me suspicious. There was an inflation of words like "peace" and "defense" on both sides, which was rather worrying...
The other word continually flashing in the West German shop window was freedom. Freeeedoooom! I got really tired of that word even before the horrible night when I watched Braveheart in a motel wedged between 8 lane highways, because there was nothing else to do, and I wanted to keep up to date.
In the old GDR travel abroad was restricted very much, and that was the main thing that brought the wall down, came even before bananas. Then people realised that a passport is not all it takes to be free to travel, one has to have money. You'd think that was obvious, but to a lot of people it wasn't. So one has as much freedom as one has money. Most of us didn't have any money, and no idea how fatal that could turn out to be.
Seems it's commercials which are really being sold, not beer or chocolate or cars or music.
There were those credit card adds, competing for the reunited customer, offering free trial periods. Many East Germans thought it meant a freespending offer, and of course many West Germans scoffed how stupid that was, but was it? The adds suggested precisely that, spend all you want for free. Of course one knows that can't be true and the brain can filter accordingly. But in the back of the head sits that suggestion and works subconsciously. Result: Overdraft.
Another of the overused words is The Market, true enough what you say, the free market is becoming more and more a fiction, just like democracy and freedom. Socialism was finally torn apart by the increasing discrepancy between reality and fiction. I think the same can happen to capitalism also.
So, i'm often asked, is the West better or was the East better? Well some things were better in the east, some are better in the west. It all depends what one wants from life really.
On the whole my tally shows a slight plus for the West, because i've always hated people bossing me in the name of ideology, even if i shared that ideology. In the west it seems i got a chance to determine my own life, even though i now know that it's a very slight one playing with the loaded dice, and it needs everything i got to achieve some freedom .
