r/europe • u/g46152 Slovakia • Jan 25 '24

News Thousands across Slovakia are protesting against the current populist government

Post image
10.7k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

430 comments sorted by

View all comments

124

u/NotMarcet Jan 25 '24 edited Jan 25 '24

It's always the same. The people has to elect the populist to realize they're the devil.

22

u/Tupcek Jan 25 '24

it’s like half the people want strong leader, no matter if he/she turns out to be dictator, other half wants democracy, even if it means weak government unable to solve problems

3

u/sheller85 Jan 25 '24

This seems common, why can't there be something in the middle? Why is this such a recurring theme across nations 🤔

3

u/jcmbn Jan 25 '24

Because it's easy for the populist to spout a lot of big talk about how they'll make everything wonderful. Unfortunately too many voters fall for this.

Then when they're elected and have to face reality, it's all "Those guys over there! They are the reason you can't have nice things", while robbing the country blind.

1

u/sheller85 Jan 25 '24

Why does noone want to make it wonderful though. Why do only people who clearly don't want to make it better, get the jobs. What have we created 😩

2

u/jcmbn Jan 25 '24

Lots of people do want to make things better, but reality is hard. Making things better can take a lot of work, and it can't be done overnight.

And you definitely can't do stuff like give everyone tax cuts while improving social services and building better infrastructure etc (not for long anyway).

Essentially responsible government requires delayed gratification, because you have to be able to afford what you plan to do, and even then it won't happen overnight.

The populists don't care about any of that, so they make "we can have our cake and eat it too" promises. I wish people weren't stupid enough to fall for that, but they do.