Two elderly people yelling at each other

I've been following the US election with interest, as usual. The American political fauna is somewhat weird. It's like a zoo with only tigers and lions. In practice there's only right wing and ultra-right wing candidates.

The ultra right GOP has now become more like populist right, similar to the Front National in France, UKIP in Great Britain ad Forza Italia.

There's no socialist party, no social democrats (except Bernie Sanders), and no left-wing radicals. Maybe they exist, but they are very marginalized (like Gary Johnson and Jill Stein).

This year the election is very discouraging. Two elderly people yelling at each other. I hope the younger American generations will come up with something better in the future.

It's scary that Donald Trump may actually become the President of USA. He appears to be totally incompetent for the job. He hasn't even admitted to respect the election result, unless he wins. I hope it was a joke. But this reminds me of certain leaders from the history books, the kind of leaders we wouldn't like to come back.

Just imagine a world ruled by Trump and Putin. Sounds surreal, like a crazy joke, but holy shit, it may become true.

Hillary Clinton is maybe not the best candidate either (Bernie was my favorite). There's too much shady business going on, in the Clinton Foundation and with her Wall Street buddies.  It reminds me of the quote by Otto von Bismarck: "No one should see how politics and sausages are made".

Hilary Clinton is at least competent for the job, very competent. Maybe she doesn't know much about mail servers, but she knows how to deal with the political systems around the world. That's more important for a president.

(Cartoon from the internet, made by Rob Rogers, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette )

Left is right

Today is election-day in our country. We're gonna elect members for our parliament and government for the next four years. I have to make up my mind about which party to vote for.

The election is serious stuff. That’s when we do our duty as citizens. We dress up in our best suit and tie and walk with dignity to the poll place. Not anymore. That’s the way my grandparents did it, the generation who had lived through the war, and really understood the value of democracy.

But it’s still important to vote, even though we show up in washed-out jeans and black T-shirts, to put the ballot in the brown envelope. I agree with the election analyst in radio who said: If you don’t vote, you effectively give half of your vote to the guys you don’t like.

Our political landscape Is quite different from e.g. the United States, where the options are only right wing (Democrats) and ultra-right wing (Republicans). We have a much richer fauna of political parties to choose from. We have the right-wing parties (two of them), the Christian-democrats, the social democrats, the socialist party, the left-liberal party, the environmentalists, and the communists.

Usually, but not always, I have voted for the social democrats, the Labor Party. They’ve been in the government office for eight consecutive years now, and I think they need a break. Some years in opposition would be good for them.

I support the general idea of a society of equal opportunities, free education and free health care, and just distribution of wealth and prosperity (and I’m happy to pay about 50% income tax). Therefore, I can’t really imagine voting for the right wing, or any party in their coalition.

So who should I vote for?

Maybe I should vote for the communists this time. I like some of the ideas of Marx and Engels, but experience has shown that the system doesn’t work very well in practice. Marxism doesn’t fit with human nature. I don't want to be ruled by the communists, but it’s good to have one or two of them in the parliament, as watchdogs and whistleblowers, when the bonds between right-wing politicians and Big Corp become too tight.

Yes, I think I’ve found a solution.

But wait, we have two communist parties; the China-communists and the real (Soviet) communists. Hmm … there’s still a choice I need to make.

And after all, the ballot is secret; I won’t tell what I’m actually going to vote >:)

(I took the picture last week, in the Russian ghost town Pyramiden. The Lenin statue is still there, more than 20 years after the fall of the Soviet regime. I guess nobody have bothered to remove the statue in such a remote location.)