Communism

It’s not my post, but the US is broadly considered a democracy by today’s standards when it absolutely shouldn’t be. Not even only governments, the amount of Schadenfreude I hear about Americans who are “getting what they voted for” is wild.

I only mentioned felony disenfranchisement, because it’s simple and I didn’t want to write a book, but there are a lot of ways in which the system disenfranchises poor, non white, queer, urban, and disabled voters.

German democracy isn’t perfect, but I got a special letter for service and medical industry employees about how to vote because I work at a Sonntagsbäckerei and they wanted to make sure it wouldn’t pass me by. It’s a college town with a teaching hospital, so medical and service industry employees are probably 25% of the town, so I guess it makes sense.

Then, my bakery closed early on Election Day! That’s obviously a private company, but it’s a huge contrast to the restaurant I used to work at in the US, where my old boss didn’t let me switch shifts for Election Day to coordinate with my university schedule because it was only a local election, and I was “too young to care about the school board.” Also a private company, but I complained and tried to raise a fuss, but got nowhere. If I made a credible accusation of voter suppression in Germany, every experience I’ve had here suggests they’d at least investigate it.