How likely is she to be elected there in the next decade ? Would be quite ironic to have the officer who removed the today to welcome her in a decade
It’s a little counter-intuitive, but she probably feels like she’s more helpful in her current role than she would be in politics. A politician has to be a jack-of-all-trades, learning about a lot of different fields, dealing with education, military, civil law, budget, etc etc etc. Where an activist can specialize exclusively in one thing, gaining a lot of clout and helping provide leadership.
Global climate activism has long needed a leader, its own Mahatma Gandhi. Now its getting one, and it leaves her very, very influential. She can’t be thrown out of office either, she could only be assassinated, which would turn her into a martyr like Navalny. So, she’s steadily growing powerful and is virtually unstoppable right now.
She probably wants to keep it that way. Getting elected would derail that a little bit, and having these kinds of non-governmental civil leaders is actually very important.
Yea, everyone thinks politicians need those skills, but do the current bout of politicians even have those skills, either?!
There seems to be an assumed competency that doesn’t match reality.
I think a greater problem is that some of them actually are. In this case, they’ll know more than the average citizen about a given issue, with a certain understanding of the nuance and complexity that the citizen, with mainly just access to major media, lacks. This makes their decisions look strange to us, in the same way someone might wonder “why did the engineer design this this way? makes no sense to me.”
Additionally, since they’re also knowledgeable about a lot of other considerations, they’ll have to balance them against each other, where even a highly-knowledgeable specialist might not fully understand the reasons something cannot be done yet.
Lastly, they have to win re-election, so they have to balance all of that against normal people’s perceptions and ignorant opinions. All this balancing is going to naturally make them seem very out-of-touch with an average citizen.
And that’s just any good ones. You also have plenty of crazy ideologues running around these days, that actually want to undermine democracy and seize greater power, or want some unchecked laissez-faire system or whatever. People whose faith has blinded them to reason and rationality.
All that said, politics has always been messy and ugly, that’s inherent. The only alternatives open the door for unchecked corruption to run things, like Russia deals with. As Churchill said, democracy is terrible. It’s just that everything else is a lot worse.
The problem with politics is that it tends to chew up and spit out people with a modicum of honesty, integrity and a moral compass. They either give up, or become corrupted to the point that they can no longer fulfill the purpose that they went into politics for.
This is generally true, but there are also many notable exceptions. Here in Germany I could name:
- Gregor Gysi
- Of the left Party
- Always does what he thinks is best for the people
- Many political opponents tried really hard to stick dirt on him and failed
- Nico Semsrott
- Arguably not that long in politics
- Took a stance against Martin Sonnenborn (who is the very popular leader of a satirical party) in an affair and is now without a party (Yes this makes it likely he will not be in the next parliament)
- As far as I have seen votes always in favor of the people
- Patrick Breyer
-Pirate Party
- fights for digital freedom and privacy since decades
- Always follows the pirate paradigm: transparency. He publishes all his meeting with lobbyists.
- Helps to educate the public and discovered quite a few hidden legislative attempts to undermine privacy
Gregor Gysi
Gysi disappointed me massively when he defended Russia in the Nawalny poisoning and speculated about who might ‘actually profit’ without the slightest shred of evidence.
I have great respect for Gysi, and always did since I first listened to a campaign speech from him in the mid-90s. He’s a politician who has stuck to his principles and prevailed through adversities where many other people would have just given up. But, even if you disregard his flaws, blind spots around Russia, and the poor handling of the internal crises which have now led to a split of his party, he has hardly ever been in a position where he could truly make a change in politics. His party may have been part of the government in some German states, but he himself never has been. And this may sound cynical, but it’s relatively easy to be a principled politician when there’s not much at stake. It’s when you actually have some power and influence, that the wheat separates from the chaff - when you actually have to handle all kinds of pressure from all sides and see what your principles are worth to you.
This is not a defense of any other politicians - I wish there were way more who didn’t give up their principles at the first sign of pressure. I’m just saying that Gysi has rarely been in a position where he had to do that.
I am unfamiliar with the other two, but I would say similar concerns may apply there.
