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Paula Weiss's avatar

Thanks for pointing out the dangers of “stakeholder assembly.” I hadn’t really paid attention to the concept before and now I realize it gives a gloss of “legitimacy” to the enemy’s influence activities over a government.

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Judy Kaplan Warner's avatar

The numbers are shocking, but it's not actually undemocratic; it's what happens when seats are allotted geographically, which is the same as what we have in the USA. That system should be better because people should have a representative to look after their particular interests, but it doesn't work out so well when parties are corrupt, as is the case in your country and mine. Israel's elections are national, not localized, so there are many small parties that gain seats. This makes it difficult to get a majority and the large parties have to ally with small ones, often having to give in to their demands out of proportion to their numbers. Sometimes that's good and other times it's terrible. It's a rather chaotic system. There is no perfect one. But doesn't it mean something that Brexit got passed (for what it's now worth, which doesn't seem to be much)?

I think that much of your political problem is that you don't have the kind of freewheeling media that we do. Yes, our conservatives are censored, attacked, and mocked. But our government media like National Public Radio are just a small fraction of what is available, and conservative voices have had a huge influence. Rush Limbaugh alone changed the thinking of millions of people. This awareness of the people has led to big changes in the Republican Party over the years, though it's always the same fight you have -- the people against the corrupt interests. You don't seem to have any influence over the parties; it's all top-down. And now that Ofcom can censor everything, you'll have even less. If we had anything like that Donald Trump could never have been elected.

I'm not in touch with the details of UK politics, so I don't know if there are right-wing grassroots groups putting pressure on politicians. That's what we have in spades, and what you need -- though in your case it would probably mean lots of arrests and imprisonments, from what I can gather. I am very sad at the state of your country and hope you will find a way out of the mess you're in.

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