Italy having an election - whore mongering Berlusconi a candidate and polling half decently - ok - and I’m supposed to take this country seriously? Why doesn’t northern Europe just get it over with and break away from the south, form a northern EU as it were, ‘cause the south is obviously lost, right? But wait, with the European socialist model falling apart everywhere France just went ahead and elected a socialist very much in keeping with that model - so maybe a Scandinavian/Bavarian EU? Oh my - but c’mon, Berlusconi? Really? This has to be something of a nadir for Western democracy. Electorates it seems are increasingly becoming detached from reality - it’s like politics has devolved into that feel good movie you go see in order to take your mind off your troubles. It’s hard to avoid the impression that Western democracies are at a crossroads where the tension between what needs to be done and what an ignorant, gullible electorate being pandered to by delusional politicians is willing to accept being done is slowly fracturing the system.
For example take the illegal immigration problem in the US - consequent to pressures which are nakedly political everyone now is basically accepting the liberal point of view that amnesty is the only solution - but what if amnesty is a mistake? What if the best solution is to throw all the illegals out of the country? I’m not saying that is the best solution - I’m saying what if it is the best solution for the long term well being of the country? Say you could step away from time and look ahead 50 post amnesty years and see that, yep, sure enough, amnesty was a real bad idea - if you’re a conservative politician having been granted this vision of the future and you went with your dire warning before the American electorate as it exists today, with the liberal media howling execrations down on you and Obama pontificating against your inveterate evilness as he lays hands upon his genuflecting minions, you’d be destroyed, your life as a nationally viable political force would be over and it wouldn't matter one little bit whether or not you were right.
Not sure about drawing a line from the clown Berlusconi to amnesty in America - but one sees the point - what happens if Western democracies have gotten to the point where what needs to be done cannot be done because there’s no way to convince a governing plurality of the necessity of these things being done? To me you can see that tension shaking our polities right now - and it’s really not hard to imagine things eventually turning quite ugly.
