Rousseau! Back in your box!

You felt the earth move yesterday evening? No, you puerile lot, not in the Hemingway sense. In the political sense. Yesterday, Sunday 18 October 2015, a majority of the voters of Switzerland said, as Freddy Mercury so aptly put it, they wanted to break free.

The last ten years of politics in Switzerland have been seriously depressing, dominated by a dirigiste, centrist-green-left classe politique with a 'reform' agenda. Ten years is enough, even for the patient Swiss.

The executive summary for our busy readers

Yesterday the voters of God's own country hammered the left-wing parties – the Greens, the Socialists and, praise the Lord! the homunculus that is the 'Green Liberals'.^[1]They also punished the centrist parties for going along with the 'reform' agenda, particularly the CVP, a middle of the road, generally Catholic party.

The FDP, traditionally the party of Swiss economic competence, got off relatively unscathed: they had kept their distance from all this reforming zeal and even managed to shake off their image as the bankers' friend. Best not to be seen consorting with bankers these days.

The real reward went to the right-thinking knuckle-draggers in the SVP, who obtained their best result since 2007 and now even have a slender majority in Parliament: in the land of the 'Swiss compromise' a rare feat indeed. The equivalent of at least an 8.0 on the political Richter scale.

Bye bye, Energy Revolution…

And it gets better. The biggest part of the 'reform' agenda that, after Sunday evening, is now merely a decomposing corpse on the compost heap of political nemesis is the Energiewende, the 'Energy Revolution'. '"O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!" He chortled in his joy.'^[2]Give me a few seconds to recover my composure and read what the left-wing editor of the left-wing Zürich Tagesanzeiger wrote yesterday evening:

As a result of this election result the most endangered [measure] is the Energy Revolution. It was already shaky in the past, as the debate over the timetable for the exit from the use of atomic power in Switzerland showed. After the current election result it will be even shakier: large parts of the SVP believe Global Warming to be a propaganda fairy tale; shortsightedly, the FDP wants to avoid loading business and consumers with additional taxes; the CVP was not rewarded for the collaboration of its Energy Minister [in the Energy Revolution]; the BDP has stagnated, the Greens have lost [ground] – You don't have to be a political analyst in order to see the difficulties the Energy Revolution will have in the coming legislature. The memory of environmental catastrophe seems to be as short in Switzerland as it is in Japan. We have to fear that further catastrophes will occur and that the number of climate refugees will increase further until the seriousness of the threat sinks in. ^[3]

These stupid bozo voters supporting right-wing parties! They'll regret it! Excuse me while I pause and mop the tears rolling down my cheeks. Callooh! Callay!

…Hello, sensible Swiss democrats

As a result of their win, much rhetorical bile has been dumped on the Neanderthals in the SVP. A number of commentors on another article ^[4] in the Tagesanzeiger, this time by their chief political correspondent, Daniel Foppa, responded to all this talk of division, lost consensus and an end to 'reform' with: it's called democracy, get over it.

One sturdy Swiss free-market voice (Nora Martinek) pointed out:

Perhaps the left-wing parties underestimate the desire for freedom of choice. Why do we have to solve the refugee problem at the level of the state with tax money? It would be much better if those who want to accommodate refugees do so at their own expense without expecting those who are against it to assist in financing it. Why does everybody have to participate in the exit from atomic energy with its unforeseeable high costs? Those who don't want electricity from atomic energy should have the freedom to use ecological electricity instead and those who do should be able to use electricity from nuclear power. In my opinion the result of the election is a desire for less politics and state dirigisme and more self decision …

Another (Bernhard Piller) spiked the now dead 'reform' agenda:

It is not the case that every reform is progress. An Energy Revolution that shuts down atomic power stations, thus leading to the import of electricity generated from coal is in my opinion a bad reform. When the 'centrifugal forces', as the SVP has been called, stop such reforms then that is a good thing. A clear rejection of joining the EU can be interpreted as a brake on reform. Joining the EU however is not an unavoidable event, as many politicians like to see it, rather a bad option that has to be rejected definitively …

Another (Susi Müller) stuck up for democracy and its greatest characteristic, plurality of opinion:

Even one-party states are divided. As soon as there is more than one opinion you can talk of 'division'. The condition that is being criticised here is just as much a part of democracy as the lack of insight on the part of the losers who reject democracy.

These commentors all got a pile of likes in a left-leaning newspaper in the leftie-nest that is Zürich. Do excuse me, but the earth just moved for me once more: time for a post-tremble fag.

Did you hear that, Jean-Jacques, back in your box!

References

1. ^ Die Grüne Liberalen (The Green Liberals) are 'free market' Greens. No, me neither.
2. ^ Lewis Carroll, 'Jabberwocky' in Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There, 1871.
3. ^ Res Strehle, Chefredaktor, Tagesanzeiger, 18.10.2015. Migration und Unsicherheit trieben Wähler nach rechts
4. ^ Daniel Foppa, Ressortleiter Inland, Tagesanzeiger, 19.10.2015. Die Schweiz ist ein gespaltenes Land