Not even an icy welcome for German reunification

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by August

No but your European parlmentary system works a bit different than ours. Here we tend to vote for individuals whereas you Euros vote for their party.

The party campaigning is folowing American examples since long. It is pretty much focussed on single faces, not programs. Every party, in federal elections, names one candidate for chancellorship, like you have your parties mentioning just one candidate for president. The campaigns in Germany are not SPD versus CDU. The last one was Merkel versus Steinmeier, and before that it was Schröder versus Merkel.

Every government throughout history tries to manipulate the people. However you severely overestimate the degree of corruption and rottenness as least when it comes to the US. This I blame on the extensive detachment between government and population that is the norm in Europe.

I do not see your governments being less detached from their populations. And economic lobbyism in your politics is even more prominent a distortion of electroal decisions, than it even is in Brussel - and in Bru7ssel it already is a Kraken.

Do not mistake some printed intentions on some 200 year old pergaments, with contemporary realities. And do not allow them clever leaders to play on your emotional, patriotic strings to make you sing their tune. The problem is not the American or German constitutions, but that leading politicians in both countries do not give much for them, and think that it is okay to violate their spirit and meaning if one finds a way to bypass them so that one gets away with it. In the past, you have often said you think I am anti-American. I am not, I hold the American state design in much, much higher esteem than you maybe even imagine. It's just that I see the very wide gap, the wide abyss between how it was meant to be, and how it actually is. The difference between idea, and reality. That difference is immense. And my criticism of America - almost always is aiming not on the founding ideas as the basis of the nation, but the actual state of things.