Every election arrives with new energy and fresh horizons, even if our horizons are now about tax and mortgages and not so much about the grand dreams of liberty and freedom as they were in Delacroix’s revolutionary France of 1830.
In those days, the French were still trying to stamp out the smoking entrails of kingship and rule by decree.
So they had big things on their mind.
Nevertheless, as we cast our vote, it is worth remembering that modern democracy is still about the big things, even if our election cycles are crowded with small things.
Democratic governments are essentially like big parish committees where all sides get together and discuss how to plan and fund new park benches or deliver a road repair strategy.
There’s furious argument, table thumping, raised voices, insults and the occasional eloquent speech before a vote is taken, a consensus is achieved and the new park bench is either installed or put on hold, and the new road repair strategy is either delivered or forgotten about until another committee is installed and the park bench vs road strategy idea comes up again.
In other words, democracy is confusing, slow and indecisive and is as much about boring fundamental procedures like bills and agendas and points of order as it is about grand schemes.
It’s often a hot mess.
But it is a beautiful mess.
The alternative is rule by decree.
It’s much faster, slick, gets things done and is being trialled once again over there in the most powerful country in the world.
Unfortunately, the shiny machine of fascism is, like Mr Musk’s Tesla Cybertruck — just plain ugly.
For us, the past few weeks have been filled with increasingly loud chatter bordering on the hysterical as arguments about money and how to spend it grow more furious and unintelligible, and the race for power heats up.
Such is the landscape of modern democracy in a connected world.
The bedrock of this wild edifice is the right to vote, something that’s often dismissed because it’s seen as a pointless chore.
But the vote is a privilege denied to a large section of humanity and has been won through reason and sometimes paid for in blood.
It is also worth remembering among the noise that our country belongs to an elite club of safe, stable and peaceful democracies that manage to prosper without gross inequality, endless surveillance or land grabs.
We are not a nation divided by fear or jealousy or hate, as some of our aspiring or even well-established politicians would have us believe.
Appealing to base emotions to win support is an old trick and always signals a tired engine of ideas running on empty.
Of course, everyone, apart from the clueless and the deliberate donkey voters, will decide what’s best for them when it comes to standing at the ballot box.
We all have our different needs.
I’m an aged pensioner on a fixed income who has just paid $2500 for a new crown on a crumbling tooth.
I have a daughter still renting in her 30s, and a son who wants to be a present father and a model of kindness and respect for his young sons.
So my vote will go to those people and ideas I think can best help our family.
That’s the small stuff.
But my vote will also go to those ideas and people who consider the big stuff.
How do we lift up those less fortunate or marginalised?
What’s best for the nation?
What’s best for the planet?
That’s a lot of ingredients to pack into a single democracy sausage.
But it could be the single sausage that tips the balance.
