[graemep]

I am not advocating tearing everything down, as that will make things worse, especially if done violently.

> That leaves no room for democratic participation

I think there is very limited room for democratic participation and it has become far to difficult to change anything. If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation? Even if the parties are different and I do not like the policies of either, what is the value of my vote?

I think things will improve in the long term when there is sufficient pushback, but it will take a long time.

[9dev]

> If I vote and I do not care which of the parties that have a chance of winning wins because their policies are so similar it does not matter, where is my democratic participation?

In joining a party that represents you better—or founding one if no such party exists—and campaigning for it. Democracy doesn't end with casting a ballot, especially in trying times like these. Nobody is going to come and save us; if we don't stand up, nobody will.

I can wholeheartedly recommend the book "The Germans: They thought they were free" by Milton Mayer[1]. It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.

[1]: https://press.uchicago.edu/Misc/Chicago/511928.html

[hiatus]

> It very thoroughly describes how a society ends up asking how the holocaust could possibly have happened while nobody did anything about it while it did.

> If the government is not working like that, you have an administrative problem, not a societal one. A state is its population.

How do you jive these two statements?

[9dev]

My point is that the German society wasn't inherently evil, but stunned, indifferent; a comparatively small group of thoroughly sinister people managed to use that to their advantage. The correct thing to do would have been civil resistance, while it was still possible.

[hiatus]

But a state is its population, by your own words. How can you say German society wasn't inherently evil and yet hold that a state IS its people? Either the German population is evil and willed evil into existence, or the state is greater than the sum of its parts. It seems obvious that the latter is the case.

[9dev]

Now that's mixing things. We are talking about democracies; and there, a state is its population: Every constituent carries responsibility for the government—the state—that is elected in fair elections. Even by abstaining, you agree with the majority. Without the German people, there wouldn't be a state of Germany.

But of course that doesn't apply to autocracies and dictatorships, which Germany pre-WW2 obviously turned into. My point is that the Germans voted for the NSDAP, and dit not resist the transformation into an autocratic state. They let this happen, out of indifference, wrong assumptions, anger, stupidity, and fear. That means one way or another, the German people decided what the state became.