I try to pay attention to what is going on and to learn from mistakes (Mine and others).
Recently I was pondering how the world has found itself in such a mess politics wise. Politicians seem to be able to convince the public that they are qualified to hold office and the public tends to believe them even when the facts indicate the opposite.
The Liberal government in Ontario (where I live) was in power for a number of terms making bad decisions and breaking election promises and the public kept voting them in. Is that because the alternative was worse or did the public actually believe they would do something different during their next term? When they were recently voted out, the people elected a leader that clearly has no ability to lead. He is making more bad decisions that will no doubt cause damage that will take years to fix.
In the United States the public elected “The Donald”. I’ve spoken to a lot of people since that fateful day and it seems there is a general mistrust of politicians in the USA. That coupled with a belief that their system would prevent political extremes, created a false sense of security. There are still some people who believe he was the right choice, but I think there are more that realize he was a mistake. Unfortunately his opponent was not considered to be a good alternative. You would think that in a two party system you would want the best candidate possible so you could win the next election. I find it interesting that both parties seem to be leaning towards running the same candidates. In the mean time, Mr Trump is trying he best to start so many fires his people can’t put them all out.
Then we have Venezuela. The people actually voted in Maduro because he managed to convince them that their country needed to distance itself from the influence of the United States. Venezuela had the highest standard of living of all countries in South America at the time. Once in power however he turned out to be yet another self important dictator who changed the rules to make sure he remained in power and bankrupted his country in the process. Large parts of the population have fled the country causing problems for surrounding countries.
In Colombia the people elected a new leader that has done his best to destroy the fragile peace that his predecessor negotiated with the FARC. He seems to be taking a hard line with the rebel factions and that has brought fighting back to the streets of Bogota. It is generally believed that he violated a Christmas truce to attack the remaining rebels. They in turn used a car bomb to kill police graduates at a ceremony in Bogota.
Then we have China, Russia and Brazil. Russia and China have leaders that changed the rules to make sure they stay in power and Brazil could very well be on a similar course.
Many countries have instituted laws to insure a separation of church and state. History taught us that religion is a powerful tool that can be used to influence governments against the people.
It seems that we have new problems now. The political parties are selecting leaders who are not qualified to lead and it seems that the people believe that they have to elect radicals to effect change.
I really don’t know what has to happen to put the world back on corse. I fear that crazy feeds crazy and there will be more chaos before the political world realizes what most of the public already knows.
“We all live on the same planet and we all come into this world and leave it the same way.
We are simply people, all born equal.
We may have differing opinions but there is no one right answer or way to do something.
We need to be considerate.
Governments need to make decisions that benefit the people they represent.
We need to treat each other with respect.
We need to all contribute to the betterment of the world to the best of our ability and not take advantage of each other.
We need to think like global citizens.
I am not better than anyone else and no one is better than me.”