Congratulations, America! \o/

[luzula]

I love seeing all the joy pouring out on my flist.

It makes me all thinky, about the differences between my country and yours. We're so awfully sedate in Sweden. We do not have huge rallies with people shouting their hearts out. Everyone just goes in a quiet and orderly way to leave their votes.

Of course, in other ways I'm not envious of your political landscape--your whole political scale is shifted to the right compared to ours. The Democrats are a lot like some of our right-wing parties. We're far from being a socialist country, though--basically, we're a Social Democrat country, or we were for a lot of years. It's been eroding for a couple of decades, though, and economic neo-liberalism is making inroads, which sucks.

So yeah, I could wish for some of that fire. &hearts

Comments

[nos4a2no9.livejournal.com]

Heh, it's really disorienting to consider that political shift, isn't it? I keep having to remind myself that our current (Conservative) government would actually be considered quite left-of-centre in the US. And that quietly blows my mind every time.

Do you think the slow erosion of Social Democracy is Sweden is the result of less participation in the democratic sphere? The same thing seems to be happening in a lot of places, and it usually seems to be brought about by intense apathy. But then I start to wonder what causes the apathy and my head explodes.

[luzula]

We have a right-wing government too right now (but they are going DOWN THE DRAIN in the next election, grr).

Ooof, that's a hard question. The social democratic party was kind of hegemonic in Sweden for several decades. Basically, they entered into a pact with the owners of capital where they bought material improvements for workers at the price of peace on the factory floor. (I am restraining myself from giving you a political history of Sweden here, so let's let it go at that...: ) )

Anyway, hmm. Geez, I really don't know. I guess one theory might be that if your standard of living is good, you care less about where the power lies. But that doesn't explain why those who are worse off don't protest, I guess.