Our Western Democracies are fragile

Two years ago a mob stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C., trying to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential elections in the USA. The mob was fueled by Donald Trump and his supporters, but also by right-wing media outlets and social media pundits.

To me this shows how fragile democracies are and how we cannot take Western democratic societies for granted. While our democratic processes are far from perfect, it still is the best system of governance there is. It is important to think about what we have achieved in the Western democracies in the last decades alone. Sure, lots of achievements took a long time and progress is slow, oftentimes it feels too slow, but it happens. And our democracies set important rules not just for our societies to function, but also for our economies to grow and prosper. Deliberation is a core part of the democratic process and produces outcomes that ideally people understand and that improve the lifes of the people. If not, than deliberation will take place to change that. It's not easy, it's not always fair, but it is the best model we have so far - and we need to contineously improve on it.

The rule of law is something amazing, when you really start to think about it. People came together and started to work together, to set boundaries and to respect each other. This is not a simple thing, it is an amazing accomplishment. We have constantly remind ourselves that our freedom in the Western world and our democratic values have to be safeguarded against those who believe that the stronger should have more power than the law.

What we witness in the last few days in Congress is a deadlock within the GOP forced on the political system by elected representatives who do not want to govern, who want to demolish the system. We have the same in Germany with the AfD and we have the same right-wing political parties all over Europe. People who want to destroy our political systems. The outcome is always bad, as we can see in post-Brexit Great Britain. What needs to happen is that the silent majority of those people who think that our political systems might not be perfect, but still the best thing we have, openly voice their opinions so that the fringe doesn't get all the attention that it gets at the moment. We need to be more outspoken for our democracy.

Our Western Democracies are fragile. And they are far from perfect. But they are a pretty good political framework that we can use to improve the living-conditions on this planet.