> But they aren't trustworthy. That is the point. The US system sucks.
That has been the discourse of Trump there for years. His platform was based on instillating further and nurturing this perception. Instead of encouraging Republicans to work themselves AND with the left to improve what can be, carefully, progressively, on a rational basis (which is ... the basis of democracy), they've gone full rogue and decided to break it. To rebuild it as a better democracy? Not what it looks like, given both domestic and international situation, and the history and discourse of the man. But I would love to be proved wrong here.
> Democracy is when the most votes wins the election.
No. That is only a part of what a democracy is. If 51% of people voted to kill the other 49%, that would democratic? Of course not.
A democracy requires a Rule of Law, and the protection of fundamental rights for all. It requires three, balanced, separate, opposed branches of power; executive (presidency) is only one of these, not above the two others. It requires protection for minorities.
If all you have is the expression of the majority of the votes, that's not one, that's the tyranny of the majority and that's a completely different, violent system.
> I don't think anyone wants corruption.
No one wants to be corrupted in the first place. Yet, it exists. That's precisely the reason for a democratic system where each branch of a government must have the tools to lawfully take down those from opposing branches that are corrupt or exceed the power they are given.
> I don't know much about France but it seems to be functioning democratically.
We'll see.
Reading you, I get what you're saying, as there are people on the right in France holding roughly the same view... Only... if the AfD wins, is it going to be so different than the previous far-right parties have done? (there, in France, in Hungary, in Italy, in the USA, in Russia?)
Rather than the fear of the loss of a grip on power, what I see the fear of the loss of democracy itself and basic principles. It's the so called paradox of tolerance, and the cognitive dissonance that goes with it, at play.
The curious thing is that you Germans always have seemed to be good at negotiation and consensus, at least, compared to us French, where preventive opposition seems to be a too common rule of negotiations. When did that capacity change on your side?
The only ways out I see is a left majority demonstrating actually to the country both: the advantages of immigration (if only for the democraphics that won't support the country otherwise) and the perils of it if not managed accordingly, and enacting effective actionable laws about it.
Why a left? Because the right is incapable of getting rid of hidden far-right ambitions (we have our owns here) that spoil any project or the discussion by getting to racist/supremacist/antisocial tropes.
Will it happen? In France at least, no, the left is not ready for that exercise. The far-left is not helping the left itself, being even more rigid and killing attempts to have a negotiated government.
Will a moderate right succeed to do it? Neither. They're too busy to find a way to survive.
So, a hard right or more likely a far-right? The problem here is that these extremes that acquire the power, even if they do succeed to improve some things, once in power, they will not concede it, they never did in history.
Ultimately, who does all that mess serve?
> Notice how on this topic you immediately stop talking about the constitution? You start talking about policy merits. What happened to the importance of respecting the constitution now that it says something you don't agree with?
I'm not playing ;) I shifted the point there to policy (I could have avoided, true, it dilutes the conversation) because that point of the Constitution is respected/not at stake at all, whatever happens to the state. Contrary to the fundamentals of a democracy.