The dominant feeling I get from the US primaries is the waste and pointlessness. People with reasonably similiar points of view struggle to find distinction, endless debates rehashing and trying to find weaknesses. What a mess. It ought to be much shorter.

I have also been thinking about how the modern forms of democracy are limited in several ways:
-- the biggest tragedy is that it encourages confrontation and competition rather than co-operation. In India, its sickening to see opposition parties constantly carp and criticise and disrupt parliment for every issue, slowing down goveranance or bringing it to a standstill.
-- in many countries, the prominent recent example being Kenya, it seems that Western style democracy is not appropriate. It (again like above) pits tribes or subgroups against each other, and doesn't seem to work. We have to evolve more authentic and creative forms of democracy. Nobody seems to be doing much about this unfortunately.