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%% Title and pageno
F1 SF
565.3 30.0 M(1)S
56.7 30.0 M()S
56.7 704.5 M
F2 SF
(Democracy just doesn't look very epic)S
56.7 682.5 M
F3 SF
(Wednesday 12 August 2009 01:31)S
56.7 660.5 M
(Voting, for example. On some rainy day you head for some school in the hood and put a cross somewhere)S
56.7 648.5 M
(on a piece of paper and put that in a box which resembles the box you separate your trash in. Voting is an)S
56.7 636.5 M
(important thing to do, but everything about it makes it look unimportant. It's stripped down to the bare)S
56.7 624.5 M
(minimum, with the number of the voting office in black on white on your piece of paper and the same on)S
56.7 612.5 M
(some sign outside a school, the sterile efficient and neutral environment of the voting process intertwined)S
56.7 600.5 M
(with the flashback inducing desertedness of a school when the kids have gone. It's the anti-climax of)S
56.7 588.5 M
(democracy. Buying a postage stamp from a vending machine appears more exciting. And that's the active)S
56.7 576.5 M
(part of democracy.)S
56.7 554.5 M
(The passive part can be equally deceptive. Mostly because I'm saying the Piratenpartei are a bunch of idiots,)S
56.7 542.5 M
(I wanted to check if the FDP isn't, because otherwise it wouldn't make much sense to dis the Piratenpartei if)S
56.7 530.5 M
(all parties are idiots. So last afternoon I went to Lurup, for the Bürgergespräch with Katja Suding and)S
56.7 518.5 M
(Burkhardt Müller-Sönksen, MdB no less. Optimistique-moi glanced Google maps and decided one hour)S
56.7 506.5 M
(would be enough to get to the about 6 kilometer far target by bike. But once you get on the wrong way to)S
56.7 494.5 M
(Schenefeld there is no shortcut in the direction of Lurup. So a bit lost in the ghetto suddenly 18:00 was)S
56.7 482.5 M
(approaching fast and Böverstland isn't exactly on some crossroads that you'd randomly run into. Circling)S
56.7 470.5 M
(the area didn't yield much so then I just followed my sense of direction through the courtyard of some brown)S
56.7 458.5 M
(bricks, over a playground and there we were. Katja Suding on the parking lot of the Stadtteilhaus, and not)S
56.7 446.5 M
(even fashionably late.)S
56.7 424.5 M
(Those Hauses are something I can't get used to. I know the Barmbek Bürgerhaus from Balista meetings,)S
56.7 412.5 M
(and I don't know the background of it, but they've got some seventies communist look and feel to them. The)S
56.7 400.5 M
(location and situation within the neighborhood, the intellectual aspirations, café like atmosphere, like the)S
56.7 388.5 M
(¤¤¤¤¤ of post-war Germanies. The focal point of pre-revolutionary tension, the place where things)S
56.7 376.5 M
(are happening, where the AK-47's are stored in a dusty cellar and will be handed out when the time is right.)S
56.7 364.5 M
(Apparently from an era where architects were concerned with those things and provided the means to)S
56.7 352.5 M
(society to form itself. Meeting there with a dozen of FDP people could be considered surreal, or the other)S
56.7 340.5 M
(way round.)S
56.7 318.5 M
(But like with the voting thing which seems bizarre in isolation, it all adds up in the big picture. It's a step in the)S
56.7 306.5 M
(convergence to BundeskanzlerIn. This isn't an epic monarchy where future rulers behave like future rulers)S
56.7 294.5 M
(because they are predestined to be rulers, this is democracy where people without mythical powers can just)S
56.7 282.5 M
(be at the right time at the right place to make a difference. There's no magic, there's no gap, there's just)S
56.7 270.5 M
(people.)S
56.7 248.5 M
(And they're not idiots. Au contraire.)S
56.7 226.5 M
(by Roland van Ipenburg)S
56.7 214.5 M
(http://www.xs4all.nl/~ipenburg/blog/posts/dull/2009/08/12/democracy-just-doesnt-look-very-epic/)S
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