From an American reader:

Surely there must be some way for the Netherlands to resolve its political difficulties without lurching from crisis to crisis and without violence.

If not, there's not much hope for the rest of us.

It seems to me that many European countries have consensus-style governments (either through formal mechanisms such as proportional representation or widely held social and political customs) that tend to produce paralysis through a combination of political fear and narrow self-interest.

The oddity is that such arrangements were designed in part to limit personality based politics; but in moments of paralysis and crisis that is exactly what they produce, because only a 'super-star' politician (or a demagogue) can cobble together a majority large enough and stable enough to push through needed reforms.

I hope the Dutch people will be able to find a way through these difficulties without settling into a fragile but stifling center-left consensus to do nothing, punctuated by growing violence and unrest, but it doesn't look good at the moment.

The outlook is bleaker than ever, in my opinion.