Austria Votes: Small Parties Could Unsettle Vienna

By Walter Mayr

A grand coalition has ruled Austria for almost seven years and most of the postwar period. But rising support for upstart and populist parties could disrupt that trend after Sunday's parliamentary elections.  The best person to ask whether Werner Faymann is the right man for Austria is Faymann himself. Otherwise, you'd have to listen to what members of his cabinet are saying about him.

The interior minister has publicly berated Faymann as a "chancellor of lies," and the foreign minister has sharply accused Faymann's Social Democratic Party of Austria (SPÖ) of being especially adept "at spending money." Moreover, a state secretary related to his hooting supporters a quip reportedly made by German Chancellor Angela Merkel: "When he comes to my office, he usually has no opinion; when he leaves, he usually has my opinion."

The interesting thing common to all these disparaging remarks about Faymann in the run-up to the country's parliamentary election is that they aren't being voiced by the opposition, but by politicians within the center-right Austrian People's Party (ÖVP), which has ruled as part of a coalition government with Faymann's SPÖ since 2007. In fact, this has been the case for much of the time since 1945. For many Austrians, the grand coalition of Social Democrats and Christian Democrats is the almost natural manifestation of Austrian postwar democracy…..To Read More…..

My Take - The reason I posted this article is to emphasize this pattern is repeating all over the world. In the U.S. we have sections of Maryland and California demanding to secede from their states and create their own states. 

We see segmentation on a large scale in every political division in the world. People aren't happy; people are scared; people no longer have a sense of long term security. It's a Machiavellian principle. In his book "The Prince", he outlined this simple unassailable observation; (paraphrasing) there are only two groups of people in the world; the privileged and the common people. The privileged only want one thing; to maintain their privileges. 

The common people only want three hots and a cot, i.e., security! If either one of those groups feel threatened as a group....governments fall.  There are a great many feeling threatened.  What happens when the E.U. collapses?  What happens when the Mediterranean E.U. countries default?  What happens to the world’s banks when that happens?  We need to stop being delusional and recognize  that humanity is on a dangerous road - and there are man-eating lions at the end of that road.