American in Spain

For a long time, I have been trying to figure out how conservatism and, in particular, the Republican Party in the United States, have married politically conservative and socially conservative ideals, and thereby successfully courted the vast number of religious voters. How does a biblical position like being against gay marriage and abortion correspond with reducing healthcare and welfare spending? And on the liberal side of the coin, how does being in favor of allowing gay marriage and abortion rights correlate with being in favor of universal healthcare and welfare?
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I will never forget the feeling of terror and exhilaration I experienced when I first moved abroad as a twenty-year-old IAESTE exchange student to Copenhagen, Denmark. I was so far from everything I knew, and was thrust into a society that had its own way of doing things. There were weekly meetings of other exchange students in which I could converse with other young people from Argentina, Brazil, Ghana, Turkey, Norway, Thailand, Japan, France, Spain, Germany, Russia, Scotland and Greece. It was incredibly mind opening.
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Yesterday, April 17, 2012, was Tax Day in the United States, they day when all citizens tax filings and payment was due. It was on a particularly odd date this year because the regular date, April 15, fell on a Sunday, and the Monday afterwards was Emancipation Day in the District of Columbia, meaning that federal employees at the IRS were off work. Thus, it fell on April 17, the 108th day of the year.
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The more I watch the media coverage of the GOP presidential primaries, the more I’m struck by just how different Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney are, physically. Newt’s got a pretty spherical noggin, and Romney’s is more oblong. My photoshop nerves are itching again, so I thought I’d try a face swap, like I did with Prince William and his bride. I searched around the internet for two high resolution photographs in which they are looking more or less in the same direction and are lit from similarly positioned light sources. Ideally for this, you’d have them both in the same photograph, but they don’t pose together that much. The result of my half hour of work is pretty mediocre, but I figure I’ll share it anyway.
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I recently came across this tidbit of local news. The conservative political party in my small town is up in arms because the ruling liberal political party is allowing the practice of “civil baptism”. Of course they are not arguing the reasonable point that the term is self contradictory; they are more concerned that the practice is offensive to The Church. I don’t think it’s offensive so much as it’s a reminder of the decline The Church is suffering in Spain.
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I’ve been very much enjoying the puppet show that is the GOP’s attempt to find a candidate that has any chance of defeating Obama in the 2012 presidential campaign. As the media’s interest in each candidate ebbs and flows, they are each shown to not really be a contender. The most recent fad in the race is the former Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich. As I watch the news coverage, I can’t help but chuckle to myself about the possibility of having a president with the same name as a species of salamander. I figured it was time to dust off my morphing skills and actually turn him into a newt.
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Several months ago, I was informed that we were to stop recycling plastic bottle caps of all kinds in our household because my mother-in-law was collecting them to give to a charity to help a sick boy. Immediately, I was skeptical and full of questions. I feel unsettled when I hear of a scheme like this and I can’t understand the motivations of all the parties involved. When beer or soda companies offer to support a local sports team if residents collect bottle caps of their products, that’s one thing; that makes sense to me. But this indiscriminate collecting? What could possibly be the motivation?
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It has become very popular lately to post photos of people with profound sounding quotations without thinking about what the words actually mean. If you use Facebook or Twitter or other social sharing sites, you will undoubtedly already know what I’m talking about. It’s sort of the visual internet’s version of a soundbite.
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A few years ago, I came to the realization that modern two-party democracies are like pendulums. Just as gravity will pull a pendulum down towards the center, building up enough momentum to push it to the other extreme, so human voters’ innate human ability to find something to be upset about will pull their votes away from one party and build up enough momentum until the other party has a majority. Rinse and repeat.
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My two year old now had the mental capacity to reason through simple causal statements like “Mommy is sleeping, because it’s night time, so we need to be quiet,” but the logical side of her brain isn’t yet powerful enough to override the emotional side enough to accept, “It’s night time, so you need to lie down in your crib, be quiet, and have the light off and no one else in the room with you.” She does, however, accept small bargains where good behavior results in her getting something that she wants. Lately I’ve been using this to my advantage.
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