Raylon

If anyone is interested in the state of things in Switzerland:

Our defense is in chaos right now. A scandal in our state-owned but public weapons manufacturer just broke a few weeks ago and shortly after the secretary of the departement of defense announced her resignation. We will see if the newly elected one will improve the situation.

The army is generally seen as somewhat of a joke, especially by people who served, which is more than half of all Swiss men. We like to call it a "Pfadiverein" (boy scouts association).

Even with all that, the right wing parties want to give a shitload more money to defense, and cut costs in social spending and foreign aid to compensate. Left of centre the need to improve defense is also accepted, but 1) before the army gets more money, they need to get their shit together and 2) more important than the army itself is integration with the european security Infrastructure (the left parties are also very pro-EU). The centre politicians usually mix blth stances and lean more one or the other way.

Also we still stand to buy fighter jets from the US, and only the left parties are calling to cancel the deal.

If you meant democrat vs republican just write that next time lol

Yeah the only option would be if SPD declares that they won't do a coalition if Merz becomes chancellor. But 1) that would require SPD to have some guts, which they don't have and 2) in that case the CDU would likely go for a minority government and work with AfD to push their cruel proposals.

So yeah, lile you say, realistically the GroKo is pretty much guaranteed.

Left vs right is literally down vs up

They didn't write communism, they wrote tankies. And while I won't equate tankies to nazis, they do share a lot of ideology, such as their love of strongmen.

In most places, if you're a child or spouse of the deceased, you don't pay any tax at all on it.

How are your gun laws structured? Could you briefly describe the purchasing process? Do private citizens have to store their firearms in a centralized location or can they keep them secured at home?

As a Swiss citizen, owning a gun is pretty easy. I'm not an expert and don't own one, but afaik to buy a gun, one needs to do a background check and have some basic training with it. You can keep your gun at home, but carrying (hidden or open) is only allowed in exceptional cases, e.g. for professional reasons, and must be allowed in a court decision.

I hope these answers cover it more or less, feel free to ask more :-)

How do you feel about Switzerland's semi direct democracy governance?

Now I'm not sure which part you mean, the direct voting or our parliament / government? In short, I think the biggest flaw which is directly a part of the system is our Ständerat and Ständemehr, which is basically like the US Senate, where the voice of a person from Uri counts 500 times as much as the voice of someone from Zurich.

Then there are the problems outside of it, where I'd say the biggest one is Corporate money influencing voting and elections.

And while sometimes misused, I still like our direct voting on issues. In the past 10 years we (from the left) were able to prevent multiple things decided by the parliament thanks to this system and even succeeded in winning a proposal to raise pensions for poorer people, which (winning a equality issue proposal) has never happened before in Swiss history.

As someone already commented, there is narrative that the free market is the reason for Switzerland's success. A narrative pushed by corporate media and burguois politicians of course, but imo also not completely untrue.

But I also want to point to a different reason, which is our value system. Due to historical reasons, similar to the US, there is a strong emphasis on personal freedom, usually overshadowing solidarity and equality. A big part of that is for many people the right to own private property and to play as little taxes on it as possible.

Then there's also protentatisms ideas about work etc.

Good lord Silberschmidt is probably one of my most hated persons in Swiss politics.

The country? No. But remember we've always been (majority) governed by parties that are right-wing corporate lackeys. There's a lot of criticism of these practices from the left and even the center (sometimes), but those critics are unable to get majorities.