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Apr. 18th, 2011 12:08 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
unikorentoToday has not started out well.
The parliamentary elections are over, and it seems that our brand spanking new xenophobic party of dumbasses has climbed it's way from the gutter to actually hauling in the third most votes. The three big parties now in charge of the country are Kokoomus (i.e the business is love and yay for "freedom of the individual" party), the social-democrats (i.e we've been in government since the war and are mostly interested in maintaining the status quo party) and perussuomalaiset (the lalalala we hate foreigners party).
Most of the time, I'm quite happy with the way Finnish government works. I far from agree with the agenda of all the parties, but I've always felt represented, if not by a party in government, then at least by a vocal opposition party. Mostly, it all works. Consensus is reached, and everyone gets a say. Slowly, but surely, advances are made in the more or less right direction.
Finnish politics is(was?) mostly sensible and boring, and focused on the issues themselves as opposed to the people around them. It's not perfect, but it feels fair. But this new party? This is not politics. This is... fear-mongering. Cheating, damnit! This is not how we do things! We do not haul in votes by freaking people out and pretending that your inability to engage in proper debate makes you "a man of the people". We do not do popular politics or use tear-jerking, pompous national romantic rhetoric to evoke an emotional response and steer attention away from the fact that you have nothing constructive to contribute.
Finland. I love you, but you disappoint.
And speaking of being disappointed. It turns out that the job I thought I had for this summer? I don't. I will not be going to Paris to work. The company over-hired, and... changed their mind. So. I'm fucked.
It's april. How am I supposed to find a job for the summer in April? There is nothing left. I'm going to have to call dad and tell him that I don't know how I'll make rent for the next four months. Dad, being dad, will say that that's ok, he'll help. He always does. (He'll also wonder how it is that this happened in the first place, and was I not paying attention to something I should have?) And then he'll ask if this means I'm coming home for the summer? And yes, yes, that's what this means. I'm going to Askola for the summer. I'm going to drive a tractor and pack bales of hay, and play receptionist for random tourists, and haul wood to the sauna and get stung by every flying bug out there, and generally be in the country side.
Upside is I'll get to hang out with my brother and maybe actually finish the thing I want to submit as my BA. If my options are between sweating in a field for 10 hours or typing up a few pages on Coraline, I might feel motivated to do something. Providing I'm allowed to, of course. Because sometimes bales of hay are more important.
But, why, universe, why do I have to make this phone call? It's humiliating. I had a plan. Everything was sorted out already. And I love my family, I do. But it's big. It's a tribe, not a unit, and when you're on tribe land, you're expected to fulfill your tribe function. And that's fine for a week or two, but... months. I'm going to have to be Jutta Maunontytär for months!
The parliamentary elections are over, and it seems that our brand spanking new xenophobic party of dumbasses has climbed it's way from the gutter to actually hauling in the third most votes. The three big parties now in charge of the country are Kokoomus (i.e the business is love and yay for "freedom of the individual" party), the social-democrats (i.e we've been in government since the war and are mostly interested in maintaining the status quo party) and perussuomalaiset (the lalalala we hate foreigners party).
Most of the time, I'm quite happy with the way Finnish government works. I far from agree with the agenda of all the parties, but I've always felt represented, if not by a party in government, then at least by a vocal opposition party. Mostly, it all works. Consensus is reached, and everyone gets a say. Slowly, but surely, advances are made in the more or less right direction.
Finnish politics is(was?) mostly sensible and boring, and focused on the issues themselves as opposed to the people around them. It's not perfect, but it feels fair. But this new party? This is not politics. This is... fear-mongering. Cheating, damnit! This is not how we do things! We do not haul in votes by freaking people out and pretending that your inability to engage in proper debate makes you "a man of the people". We do not do popular politics or use tear-jerking, pompous national romantic rhetoric to evoke an emotional response and steer attention away from the fact that you have nothing constructive to contribute.
Finland. I love you, but you disappoint.
And speaking of being disappointed. It turns out that the job I thought I had for this summer? I don't. I will not be going to Paris to work. The company over-hired, and... changed their mind. So. I'm fucked.
It's april. How am I supposed to find a job for the summer in April? There is nothing left. I'm going to have to call dad and tell him that I don't know how I'll make rent for the next four months. Dad, being dad, will say that that's ok, he'll help. He always does. (He'll also wonder how it is that this happened in the first place, and was I not paying attention to something I should have?) And then he'll ask if this means I'm coming home for the summer? And yes, yes, that's what this means. I'm going to Askola for the summer. I'm going to drive a tractor and pack bales of hay, and play receptionist for random tourists, and haul wood to the sauna and get stung by every flying bug out there, and generally be in the country side.
Upside is I'll get to hang out with my brother and maybe actually finish the thing I want to submit as my BA. If my options are between sweating in a field for 10 hours or typing up a few pages on Coraline, I might feel motivated to do something. Providing I'm allowed to, of course. Because sometimes bales of hay are more important.
But, why, universe, why do I have to make this phone call? It's humiliating. I had a plan. Everything was sorted out already. And I love my family, I do. But it's big. It's a tribe, not a unit, and when you're on tribe land, you're expected to fulfill your tribe function. And that's fine for a week or two, but... months. I'm going to have to be Jutta Maunontytär for months!
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 11:46 am (UTC)A lot of the perussuomlaiset are something of an unknown quantity at the moment. I mean a lot of them are known on a local level, but not a national one so it's not entirely sure what one should expect from them. And I don't beleive that all of them hate all foreigners indiscriminately, one can be urgh, I hate the term maahanmuuttokriittinen ('cause it's a neat way to gloss over things and I don't like it), but it's what I need at the moment so lets go with that. So yes, one can be that and not hate foreigners or be racist.
That being said, I wouldn't want to be associated with a party that goes about handling it's business like this one. And with figure heads like this one. So, yeah. And one thing this awesomest of awesome party also is against is any kind of sexual minority, that alone is enough to make me hate them with a fiery passion. :/
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 12:13 pm (UTC)No, you're right about that, not all of them. But many, unfortunately, do. (Quite a few also resent the swedish speaking minority, and the party leader doesn't approve of abortion.)
If one has to look for a silver lining (and you have to squint to see it, but it's there), then the upside of perussuomalaiset getting this many votes will actually force the governement to take up the immigration issue properly. Because it does need to be discussed, since everyone agrees that the way things are going now is not great.
Stuff needs to be done to avoid ghettoization, and to make sure that one of the great things about Finland (i.e the kohtuullisen pienet tuloerot) isn't lost. We're a fairly small population, and god knows there's space here for everyone, we just need to come up with an effective, realistic system of integration. (We're nordic, after all. Effective systems are what we're good at.) Perussuomalaiset have taken up the issue, and that's good. But I don't think that they'll be able to do anything constructive with it - that'll be up to the other parties.
As for not knowing what perussuomalaiset will do, you're right about that too. From what I know, most of them are very inexperienced in the world of government, and I'm not at all sure that they've heard of that little thing called puoluekuri. There's a good chance that the whole thing will implode once people realise how much they actually need to stay in line/compromise before anything happens.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 12:36 pm (UTC)And yeah, I think you're right that a lot of these people might not have any sort of realistic idea of how much/little they can accomplish and how to go about it.
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 07:07 pm (UTC)Oh, oh! And then there was this guy from Oulu, who actually got in, who didn't have a single thing to say about anything except maahamuuttopolitiikka. The quote I read in hesari went something along the lines of "suomessa pitäisi keskittyä turvapaikkamaahanmuuton sijaan työnhakumaahanmuuttajiin - ja itseasiassa niitäkään ei tarvita, koska suomessa on niin paljon työttömiä nuoria jo nyt."
And also, we now have the youngest, most inexperienced parliament we've had in several decades. In the middle of an economic crisis. What could possibly go wrong? :DDDDD
no subject
Date: 2011-04-18 07:24 pm (UTC)