Democracy

Nowadays, most people seem to think that living in a Democracy [solely] means that one can protest and speak freely against what the government and politicians decide and do. With the caveat that corporate media favor some discourses at the expense of the others, and influencing "public opinion" is a multi-billion dollars business - so actually, only the interests of the rich class are efficiently promoted.

This is a trap. Democracy is NOT just about protesting against decisions. Democracy means that the politicians, all who are elected by the people, must represent us in their decisions! We must ask from them to follow what the people wants, not take decisions in the interest of billionaires and against the interest of the people and then let us protest (freely and peacefully, and many times without effect) against these! They are our representatives and should act accordingly. Otherwise, if we are not active politically and just protest from time to time, the following three outcomes are inevitable:

- Our "threshold" of accepting decisions against our interests will inevitably increase - the natural effect of repetition and tiredness of protesting

- More and more frequently the protests will be ignored by the politicians. A good example is the one with the pension reforms in France few years ago, when millions protested, with no outcome.

- The rights to protest themselves will be progressively limited, while the Democracy will fade and regress towards an Oligarchy.

The solution: in our rapidly transforming world, we the people must exert control on our representatives in the Parliament and at the local/regional levels much more frequently than once every 4/5 years (during the elections, which are also crippled by misinformation). We must keep informed and push for implementing means of changing our representatives who are not speaking for the ones they represent - even monthly if it is needed. It may seem extreme, but it is the only way in which we can keep our representatives to really be our representatives - not following the interest of the big capital instead. And it is technically possible nowadays - but, as with all the rights, this will not come by itself, it has to be obtained.