I have a fraught relationship with the country of my birth. I love it dearly. Inasmuch as one can love a country. Or rather the idea of a country. I expect better from it. Nearly every time, it lets me down. And yet, I have faith, respect and love for what is, possibly the most amazing idea on earth today. Not to put it above Alexander the Great's empire, or the British empire for that matter. Not to compare it to the Greeks or previous incarnations of a unified nation under various rulers, local, foreign (are any really foreign though?) or a mixture of something in between. No. Just the current and present form of the nation.
You may wonder why I say that. I am biased. I have spent more time outside of that country now, than I have inside the country. I have spent more time being aware of who I am (or at least watching myself evolve into who I am today) outside of the country rather than inside. I do live in a vast country. In some ways, it is a lot more diverse than the Republic. That such different people can live here in harmony and appreciate the truly great ideas that exist here is fascinating. It is beautiful in fact. To compare this Dominion to that Republic, children of the same empire, but with very different (and traumatic) births is a bit unfair. And yet, somehow, between that Republic of my childhood and this Dominion of my semi-adulthood, I still stand in awe of that Republic.
The Republic recently went through a massive exercise. The scale of this exercise boggles the mind. I speak of course of the federal elections that took place over the past couple of months. It is so large, that they actually take weeks to conduct this activity. That a nation so large, and so diverse can undergo this exercise as a version of democracy is amazing. There is one other Republic larger than this one. It is not a democracy though. In fact, it is a one-party dictatorship. One that seems to thrive and is looked at forlornly by investors and citizens of the Republic with a bit of fondness sometimes because of its economic clout. Between the democratic Republic and the People's Republic, there is no contest. In nearly every measure, the People's Republic is better. Now, better is very much a word that can be debated. But, the fact remains that their economy is vastly better, their military larger and their population, still massive when compared to the sovereign socialist secular democratic Republic.
And yet the exercise yielded something that is so rare in this world that I am amazed that people aren't more astonished that it happens. On a regular basis. In dozens of countries on nearly every continent, thousands of people have died, perhaps misguidedly, for this holy grail of human achievement. To be allowed to choose who represents you in some form of government on a somewhat frequent basis. One large functioning government contested an election, lost to the opposition, resigned, passed over the keys of the country to the winners and went on to become the official opposition. The folks that inherited the keys are in charge of running a country with over a billion people. That is a little over one-sixth of humanity for whom some decisions are made by, at the end of the day, one man. One man. Who represents them all. I don't know that even god, in all his incarnations and versions has that many people her/she/it can lord it over. And what a diverse group of people these are.
So, my dear Republic, take a bow. Pat yourself on the back. You did good. You showed the rest of the world, where people die hoping for this opportunity that not only is it possible for a country this large, this diverse, this unstable and poor to be a democracy, it can do it beautifully. I know it won't be perfect. The path to this election likely involved a lot of violence. I am sure there was voter fraud. I am sure many people feel disenfranchised. I am sure many will give up on democracy because their person did not win, or the new government does not build them all castles made of gold as promised during the elections.
For the most part though, this Republic accomplished something that so many others have such a hard time doing. You are surrounded by various dictatorships and feeble democracies. Kingdoms are not that far away. Absolute monarchies. Sheiks. Czars. Businesses who run countries. Die-hard dictatorships who send tanks to run over their citizenry. Or ones that drop barrels filled with shrapnel, oil and explosives onto their own citizens. In the middle of all this chaos, all this misery, you stand as a lit candle, one that is shaken by every breeze that goes by, but one that never goes away. Take a bow my dear Republic, I love thee.
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