A loss of reality can only occur where bubbles create protected spaces within a social structure that are disconnected from large parts of social reality.

In the 21st century, this is particularly true of the people’s representatives, who have as much in common with their own people as the French nobility did shortly before the Great Revolution – nothing.

On the one hand you face your potential voters during elections, on the other hand you ignore them as soon as the election is over. After that, patronage politics will be pursued with the rich and powerful. The people themselves only have an alibi function here.

How can such a situation arise within a democratic system, when this system is supposed to prevent exactly the situation described above?

Several factors should be mentioned here:

• Political influence is tied to the party dictate
• Politicians do not require any proof of performance / quality or even examinations
• Politicians are insufficiently trained for their actual job – influencing systems
• Political structures attract a certain type of person – the deceiver
• Understanding reality presupposes living in this reality. Power bubbles distort the sense of reality
• Day-to-day business ties up so many personal resources that those affected can’t see the wood for the trees
• Complicated-artificial legal/social systems require too much time and energy
• Practicality and effectiveness are not checked and not corrected and improved retrospectively

In a modern, globalized world, stagnation or even an economic downturn will come on its own without action. The constant striving of others to improve while at the same time doing nothing leads to an ever-widening gap, which ultimately leads to creeping ruin. For some time now, Germany has found itself in the uncomfortable position of being overtaken in more and more areas by a wide variety of nations. At some point, it will no longer be possible to catch up. Only if society as a whole, including political and economic structures, becomes more competitive will it be possible to keep pace with the rapidly developing nations. Change comes from positive change, which is generally referred to as reform. However, as Germany has to reform many areas at the same time and should have done so a long time ago, there is talk of a reform backlog. The following areas are affected, although the list is not exhaustive:

• Legal system must be streamlined and simplified
• Political system must become more grassroots democratic and performance-oriented
• Administration must be efficient and fully digitalized
• Lobbying and clientelism must be effectively combated
• The school and training system must be completely changed to ensure that the content makes sense

All of these are highly explosive and highly complex subsystems of a society and must therefore be analyzed and described separately

Critics of democracy are often pushed into a certain intellectual corner. Anti-democratic, radical, dubious. To name just the most harmless.

This is a modern way of influencing opinions and steering them in the desired direction. The general suspicion here is that the masses are being kept lethargic and uncritical so that they can exploit the weaknesses of the system to their own advantage.

But anyone who criticizes the existing form of democracy and makes fundamental proposals for reform towards a better functioning democracy and society is in reality a democrat who stands out positively from the Pharisees of the current political establishment.

Democracy per se is not good or bad, it is the way it is shaped and how it is intertwined with society that can make a democracy dysfunctional.

There are enough signs of a disintegrating, dysfunctional Berlin Republic. Here is just a small selection:

• Reform backlog
• Lobbying and economic integration
• Clientele policy
• Loss of reality in daily politics
• Failure due to acute problems
• Consensus policy instead of solution policy

But the problems of the Berlin Republic go deeper and evoke the image of the Augean stables. These topics will have to be addressed in further articles in order to shed more light on Germany’s self-inflicted disaster.

First of all, however, it should be emphasized that a democratic reform, whatever form it may take, must always lead to a different form of democracy and not to a change in the system of rule!