Many countries claim to have a democracy and hopefully you live in one. The main tenet of the process is purportedly that you choose your own officials, which in a fair election allows you to prioritize certain ideas over others. Of course freedom, jobs, less taxes etc. are general ideas everyone will support every time, and this gets a lot of people elected. Lately a new brand of politician has arrived, which seems to be fully supported by niche beliefs which sometimes contradict. Patriots, fascists, racists, all kind of small groups can be identified and addressed through social media. Campaigns of others can be undermined.
But this is not what democracy was originally. Originally it was just people coming together in a town square to make group decisions, with voting deciding the outcome. Originally the vote of a previous day could also be overturned by the group. The advantage was that in a socially coherend city like Athens everyone knew the ideas and passions of others and a majority vote meant you knew you could shut up about an idea voted away.
Modern society is way more complex. Now we have extremely strong interests being defended, and there is so much knowledge to have about what goes on (about industry) that lobbyists, or advisors with industry knowledge are essential. But of course democracy was never meant to decide on what industry does. As a result most of what industry does is weighed against the idea of profit, financial gain. That standard is more powerfull than that of wellbeing of the population, because there is no group who can independently think and take a strong position for that, not even the medical sector (because it is also an industry).
The cult of personality allows people to have no actual thought process, vison or ideas, only a personality you like.
Banks and fossil are the strongest powers in society by far, and its clear they run dutch politics at least. They strongly push in EU politics as well, for nuclear and ‘green gas’. The dutch kabinet is no longer reliably supplying the parliament with information. The policy for the next 3 years has been set in stone in an untransparent process behind doors, without votes. The new kabinet of ministers is larger but has the same people in it that where send away because the tax office commited gross abuse by demanding money back from people without reason or recourse, destroying lives and possibly even killing people. Of course industry and banks are used to that, they don’t care about it, and this kabinet was 100% in their pockets under Rutte.
But as said earlier democracy was not meant to be this sideshow where politicans are more bussy seeking ways to make the public approve what industry wants then to represent subgroups of people shape laws for all people. The guidance to make improvements would be to state that democracy is a thought process. It is the nation thinking. It is the nation testing ideas. Some of this happens in politics, so for instance an idea is lauched by a minister (a testing balloon).
The way the thought process should work is that the public talk to local politicians about what they want, then these talk to other local politicians to see if they think the ideas make sense, then this gets lifted to the politicians in parliament and minsters who may decide to prioritize the ideas. This is not how it works. The right wing majority of dutch politics is anti democratic. They get their ideas from industry and banks, and of course there are many sycophants who want the favor of banks and industry around the country who simply take their cues and repeat the mantra’s (also found in books of the WEF or other right wing writers). Its about lying to keep the left intimidated and weak. Who works the hardest? Not the banker. Who cares the most? Not the industrialist. Who adds the most value? Not the CEO (usually) but of course the engineer, intern, PhD student. But no, these people work so hard! Of course you don’t have to work hard if you can influence politicians, which is what right wing politicians are for.
The media keep inviting right wing talkingheads so the thought process gets sabotaged because people allow their minds to be scripted based on the cult of personality based trust
Democracy tries to work as a thought process, but fails almost immediately between the citizen and the local councils. In the case of the Meta Datacenter near Zeewolde the local politicians agreed with the energy guzzling (climate unfriendly) project only to say it regretted it shortly after. In a real democracy that would mean the project once again would be blocked. It doesn’t seem that happened. In other places the anti-fossil Left simply stopped being parties in the council maybe because it no longer made any sense to always lose. The main reason for these phenomena is banks and the fossil industry.
It used ot be that you could earn a honest day’s work by working honestly for a day. That is no longer true, you can work and not earn enough to live, you can not work and earn plenty. You can live in a city and never see a plant or animal yet eat plants and animals every day. You can work an online job (many have to now) and just be detached from the entire rest of the planet. For years. This bubble society (post coming) is a real problem. We don’t need each other, we don’t see each other, we can’t help each other, we have no shared thought processes. Most public affairs are inaccessible because they are locked behind bureacracy and nobody gets rewarded to keep an eye on what really goes on.
To fix all this we need to lear how to facilitate the thought process again. We need to speak our minds in all cases, prioritized based on the effect on our community, not on our wallet. We may have to make the incomes of politicians hypertransparent. A fixed fee for speeches for example, no means to earn later for services rendered, no lobby jobs after your politicial term. Items on agendas must be brought in by the public (We had a prime minister that asked to cut Shells dividend tax, and no party ever asked for it, which shows you his fossil/banking puppet nature). A member of parliament has to speak about problems of real people that came in through the local and regional councils. It would be very easy for citizen to indicate with issues they thought where actually important to them (through the DigID environment).
It seems the current right wing paralysis of politics is entirely because of corruption. The false belief in economism as the way forward for the next decade is terrifying. The idea to allow 24 datacenters without also requiring explosive expansion of renewables seems to indicate a desire to burn US and Russian gas, which can only lead to more animosity which the EU being a stakeholder may suffer the effects from. We almost had a war (and may still have it) in Ukraine because of the idiotic desire to use fossil energy. That is without talking about how banks destroyed the home building industry, social housing and build up a large group of nitrogen polluting farms who’s owners have to face the possiblity of shut down. So much is going wrong all because of economists, WEF globalists. How many of those live in dutch cities? How did they get their agenda through their city councils? They didn’t.
The goal of the economistic Right is to screw up our idea of democracy so we have no place to start. The ranks being cleaned from lobbyists and people without actual constituents would be a good step.
like a dog on leash or a horse with a bustrens being controlled by a few persons our politics is run by politicians that listen to a few advisors. The mantra is simple : Make sure fossil energy is used, This will protect both the power of the fossil sector and that of the banks. The latter can trade anything for the fossil fuels, they create the money. So we get US gas, the US gets to buy some dutch companies, we get russian gas, Russia gets to buy some dutch companies. No doubt the Meta datacenter was pushed through to get gas from the US?
Because of climate change the above reads like everyone lost their mind in Holland. It proves really hard to increase right wing policing because people in Holland are so reasonable, in spite of the Right (without any citizen asking) to increase the pain by driving up home prices, reducing what can be rented etc. etc. The people with thoughts should help restart the thought process : No talk about topics nobody brought up (this is what eliminated Rutte’s dividend suggestion), and no politician that doesn’t have a reason for his ideas. Right wing politicians always expose their manequine nature because if you ask them anything about their position they just don’t know. Rutte famously said he doesn’t have a vision. He also said that he will break the law if it pleases him (let’s hope its nothing creepy he did). In a democracy thoughts trickle up (you could interpret the trickle down economy as one where thoughts are blocked from trickling up by money, so corruption institutionalized). And they can then be tested for their rationality and effect on others. Farmers can’t keep producing 7 times more meat than Holland needs. But what can other farmers do to reduce emissions? Etc. And anyone who can not defend his/her idea on its own merit or indicate its origin in facts or social impact has to simply abandon it.