This will be my first and last contribution
to politics, probably in my whole life, because, admittedly, I am "but a young girl and know little of the ways of war" (Game of Thrones Reference, yay!).
When I was younger, I never cared about politics.
Maybe because I grew up in a family
where political discussions very often would trigger major lengthy arguments at
the dinner table. Arguments that a 7-year-old would consider boring and
attacking family peace (which they strictly speaking were, but never mind).
Maybe it was also because I never thought
that I would continue to live in Switzerland for much longer. I mean sure, it
has some pretty nice perks to it, like 200 different kinds of chocolate to
choose form, the best bread in the world, all kinds of weather, beautiful
mountains (dammit, Norwegians, it’s not a mountain when it’s only 700 metres high...) and the
charm of the underdog-team in a cup-league game (everyone likes the underdog-team in a
cup-league game). But then again, people are too stressed, there is no larger part of
land without someone already living there and finally, our language was never
made for poetic masterpieces – nor for flirting for that matter.
However, my opinion on politics changed. I
do care now. And it’s awful. Because caring about politics is nothing but stressful
and all you do is get annoyed.
I did change my mind, partly because I
realised that living abroad would not magically make the political discussions that
are happening around me, disappear. It would change them slightly, but all in
all it would still be the same: there is a specific problem, politicians talk
about it, people appreciate that politicians talk about it, people elect
politicians who talked best about problem.
When you are thrown into a new environment,
a new country, you learn pretty fast, what the every-day concerns are for the
people there. (Here it is the Vegetarian-Day in the Canteen (how dare they prescribe us when we should eat meat and when not?) and whether the light-rail
should be going over Bryggen...).
And, schwups, the magical problem-free zone that you had imagined while you were still sitting at home looking at pictures of beautiful mountains and stunning fjords and cute polar bears, disappears.
And, schwups, the magical problem-free zone that you had imagined while you were still sitting at home looking at pictures of beautiful mountains and stunning fjords and cute polar bears, disappears.
What’s left is a country that has the same discussions going on, the same arguments, the same problems that need fixing and the same parties that promise to fix them, which you were never aware of before. Of course, people who don’t live there only get the end-result, if they do indeed get something of it at all (no covering of Swiss national election in Norway, I’m afraid). It’s like with a sports team. As an outsider you see the teams win and lose, if you care to check the results, but for somebody on the inside, that last forward pass in the 59th minute of the game that decided everything, is shown in slow motion on national TV a hundred times.
So my imagination that it was better
“anywhere but here” (because “here” that’s where all the problems are) vanished
with experiencing the same thing happening outside of Switzerland as well. And
I realised that if I wanted to be able
to have an opinion about the future of the country I am living in, then I need
to a) know what’s actually going on and
b) contribute. (48 percent of people were voting on sunday. that is just sad.).
But I have to say that I was probably a happier person, when I did not follow
the election. There’s just to much stupidity connected with it.
For example, I can’t stand politicians who
say that the Fukushima catastrophe helped them gain strength in the last
election; that they were being “lucky”.
When you follow a green policy (as much as
I support green politics) then you should not self-satisfied smile when
something like that in Japan happens, whispering “I told you so” to everyone
nearby, hoping that they feel guilty and have a bad conscience.
Nor should you be happy when this is what
makes people vote you. Those are the votes that follow the “long absent, soon
forgotten” rule: your voters are going to forget you as well, as soon as the
event has grown grey hair and a new problem has appeared within their visual field.
On the other hand it's the people who base their
votes only on contemporary problems, instead of general values and common sense, and are
as easily changed as the weather (literally) who should maybe just for a moment
go on to think outside the box; think bigger than “what happened in Fukushima
is bad, therefore AKWs are bad and therefore I have to vote Green”, and instead think about why Fukushima could
happen at all: what is at the bottom of making energy with a super
dangerous side-effect called nuclear waste (sorry, no chemistry student here).
And instead of they being afraid that refugees take
over the country and as a reaction selfishly aiming to close the borders, they should
think of how lucky they are to have been born and raised in a country where
peace has ever since prevailed and that they never had to fight in a war.
But thus, they jealously protect their country
whilst thinking that living in it is their personal right: that they
miraculously were chosen and are better than everyone else, just because they
possess a red passport. And just for one moment they should imagine themselves
being forced to leave their home, pursued by bombs and gunfire. Maybe then they
would stop believing that it’s purely free choice and wish of a better (economic) life
that makes people flee form their home country, but consider instead that it
might be an unavoidable necessity to do so; because every alternative would
even be more life-threatening than putting oneself and one’s wife and children
into a boat to cross the Mediterranean. The right wing parties talk about the problem that we cannot accommodate every refugee, that instead, we should
try to solve the problem that’s causing the refugees. But it’s not that anyone of them has serious intentions of flying to Syria to try to “solve” the problem. Of
course not: it’s madness down there. And who would voluntarily set him or
herself in such a danger? (See the irony there?)
That is what I think when I look at the
results of the national election. It makes me pretty sad. At the same time I
can’t help but look at the bigger picture. I scroll down diverse Norwegian
Newspapers. Not a word. I walk along the main street in Bergen. Nothing. The
world here is still the same as two days ago. And I wonder what the haughty, pointy-headed and self-satisfied leaders of our (unfortunately) largest party would say to
the fact that 1500 kilometers north, and probably in most other places on earth,
too, nobody gives as much as a damn about them. It’s others that will make the difference, others that will make the change, for the
good or the bad. To me, at least, that's a slight comfort.
