After the Bundestag election: Our democracy needs passion

Shortly after the Bundestag election, many analyzes were again about the questions: Who can with whom? And why will everything be over soon? However, the wide field of the political culture of our country lies between the very specific and the very fundamental teachings. Although it is crucial for the practical future of our democracy, we lose sight of it too often. This has to change if democratic politics is to gain trust again. Some teachings of the past few months are already clear.

If political emotions flood the public, reason is urgently required, but ultimately is not enough. Anyone who insists on reason alone overlooks that this is also an emotional decision. Against fears before the future, statistics of the present alone align little. Of course, politics must not be emotionally, but if you rely on reason, you have to do it passionately. If you want to put on the facts soberly, you need a pathos that makes this sobriety something special. A democracy lives from the fact that it is not only possible to rationalize feelings, but at the same time reason must also be emotional.

The public conversation is essential on this balancing act. Here is the first access to the political. How we, as a society, talk about public issues is crucial for the solution competence of democratic politics. In the past election campaign, it often seemed as if we were in a competition for a description of social doom as possible. This may correspond to the rules of media attention, but it is dramatic by the expectations of a democratic public. If the public, especially in the digital, is only flooded with nonsense, more people are only still disgusting. If individual topics displace everything else, we also threaten to completely miss essentials.

The political debate urgently needs an orientation from the deficits of the present and towards the opportunities of possible future – in the long -term perspective as well as in the concrete implementation. Of course, the first thing is to analyze the situation. But without possible alternatives, all of this is worth nothing, because it only multiplies the daily frustration.

Nothing is currently missing our society as much as the feeling that it can or can be better or become. Hardly anything seems more impressive than the ability to change something with concrete decisions. It is exactly what politics constitutes and what democratic parties can stand up for: that politics works and that it shows where the journey can go. Instead, sociological analyzes of adaptation to the realities or the small steps provide the accompanying music for current despair. You may show the necessary, but you alone will not be sufficient for new democratic swing.

It is time for new political visions, for the desire for the future. If the problems seem as big and overwhelming as at the moment, the answers must be equal. This applies in terms of Europe and a new peace and security order as well as with a view to challenges such as climate change and migration, digitization, social security and prosperity.

The traffic light government has also broken by the fact that its political concepts always looked like the smallest possible compromise after long friction. And even that was often put on again enough. This was found by the citizens for too little. Of course, a new federal government will also have to compromise. Otherwise there are no majorities in a democracy. But these compromises must also be reliable. And you need noticeable and understandable ambition.

If the world is full of dystopias, the actual disruption would probably be a new utopia. In order for this to be thought, it takes confidence. This is the most important aspect when it comes to the culture of democratic. Democracy is not defended in a bad mood. She lives from the conviction that it can be better, and the desire to participate and shape things. It is not about blind optimism, but about recognizing that our current problems are the result of human decisions and that they can therefore also be addressed by other decisions. We just have to want that.

That is why it is so important not to give up central terms and concepts of our cooperation, but to fight them. Our society is currently experiencing a frontal attack on the silver silver of its democratic culture. Only if the friends of democracy keep against it, will we be able to redeem the promises of democracy. These are based on fundamental premises:

Freedom is more than the right of the stronger, without being able to say and do everything without consequences. It is based on the joint agreement to enable everyone to freedom.

Justice means more than satisfying individual needs. It demands for compensation and for interpersonal respect, after securing participation and after the willingness to share prosperity in such a way that everyone has something of it.

Solidarity, in turn, is no longer anything that is only entitled to those who are like yourself. Solidarity must be lived in a various society between the many and the different so that cohesion is possible.

Finally, democracy is not only the will of the majority, but also the protection of the minority and the acknowledgment that the circumstances can change and this change does not have to be harm.

Majorities are nothing in a democracy that could only be counted. Majorities arise in the social dispute between different positions. And if you don’t have a majority for your position, but in possession of the better arguments, you are well advised to bring these arguments into public. Where the majority of a society is where its center is – this is never certain, but decides almost every day. That is exhausting. But that also makes up the beauty of democracy.

These ideas can often be grasped in the cultural products of a society. They show how close we are in many aspects now, when everyone is talking about split and danger. Antonio Gramsci would probably consider a cultural hegemony, i.e. a firm conviction “of social and democratic ideas of society in his words”. But we also have to recognize and use them as citizens. Regardless of whether in the freedom pathos of modern pop songs, in cinematic meditations about societies close to the natural state or in the solidarity disorders on theater stages – there are always fragments, interpretation of interpretation, incomplete considerations, raw emotions that can be combined for a better coexistence.

It is these aspects that shape the culture of a democracy that must currently be defended. Against the bad mood of the present, which is specifically fueled by the supporters of autocratic politics at home and abroad. Against the power fantasies of tech libertarianism, which threatens to colonize our political culture through the digital platforms. And against the imagination of those who still think in our society in the majority and therefore want to go back to a supposedly homogeneous past.

The next federal government, indeed the entire political company of our country – in all cabinets, parliaments and city councils – is currently required to live the desire for democracy again. Respectfully arguing, marking differences, finding compromises and wearing Dissense into the public. Only a controversial society is a lively society. Only a respectful and uniform society is a sustainable society.

Politics will have to talk about these cultural aspects in the future if they want to make them publicly understandable and thus democratically relevant. Soberly pathetic. Passionately reasonable. Cultivated and lustfully compromise. Confident.