The idea of democracy wobbles, once we vote someone into power who does not aim to sublate differences but thrives on them. When you don’t beg to differ and disagree, but take it one notch further: triumph over, disdain, and despise. Civil war by words, that some take for real, that are real.
The idea of enlightenment, that with the right information and education, people make informed and better choices, faces a hurdle. Or maybe it came to an end? In times of the internet, no one can say they didn’t know. Re-electing that president is not the effect of an echo chamber or a filter bubble or of fake news. Everyone had that person already for four years, and everyone knows: the protective institutional guardrails, the ‘balance’ a democracy needs, will be attacked by that person. Democracy does not die in darkness. As once before, it dies in plain sight.
Humans have to look themselves in the face – in the end, we are by default bickering, selfish, and hateful beings that can – but not by default – also be sweet helping other people and animals and plants, all while overpopulating and consuming a planet. Capitalism is us. Where to take a stand?
What relations do we now need, what ‘we’ do we need in our current future? Still, there are several options, and things will be moving, morphing sideways. It will not end here. Not yet.
Mercedes Bunz 
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