It’s not my fault that you care what happens in my country or that you speak my language.

I recently noticed an interesting facebook status.

"Mi chiedo: ma quando hanno votato gli italiani, quanti americani se ne sono fottuti se avesse vinto Berlusconi o Veltroni?"

"I wonder: when the Italians voted, how many Americans [cared] whether Berlusconi or Veltroni won?"

Presumably an American reading this was meant to feel guilty or something like that. When I read it, I thought about the day I met this person. The first thing he asked me was which candidate I preferred in the election. As I recall, he had a very strong opinion in the matter.

I generally don't follow the elections of other countries, and if somebody chooses not to follow the elections in my country, that's fine. The fact is, though, that they do choose to follow our elections, and somebody who told me to get out of his (my) house for not voting for McCain has no right to complain that people in his country care about the elections in mine.

I feel the same way about English. If you don't want to learn our language, don't. Just don't ask my why everyone else wants to learn it. Somebody asked me why the whole world "has to" speak English, and not Italian. I told him it wasn't my decision. Evidently, my decision was to learn Italian, so I'm not the person to whom he should be complaining.

I should have told him that if the Italians expect the whole world to speak their language, it would be helpful if, as a sign of good faith, the whole country learned it first. The nice thing about English is that somebody from any part of the United States can have a conversation with anybody from England, Australia, Jamaica, etc. This country has so many dialects that the Italians have trouble conversing with people from 10 miles away.

Note: The picture with this post is not, by any stretch of the imagination, a complete list of Italian dialects. These are just the more commonly spoken ones.

Politics

I try not to write about politics on this blog. I have several reasons for this. If I had any readers, I have a hard time believing that they would have taken my opinions into account at all while voting. Also, I think that there is already more than enough political commentary on the blogosphere. Most importantly, Randall Munroe does not write about politics, and he is one of my heroes. That being said, I've decided that I can let politics slip into my posts when it involves my personal life, which is one of my main focuses (foci?) on this blog.

I am very bad at lying. I'm pretty good at keeping secrets, but when somebody asks me a question, the first thing that comes to mind is always the true answer, and I begin to fear that if I hesitate to think of a lie, it will be very obvious.

Thus, as much as I would like to tell people that I voted for Obama, I find myself unable to do so. My state was won by a margin of 2,431,940 votes. Knowing that something like this would happen, I decided that to vote for Obama or McCain would be throwing away my vote, and the most effective use of my vote would be for a third party candidate. Thus, as I predicted, my vote (or lack thereof, as you naysayers may call it) had absolutely no effect on the Electoral College but did have an effect on the number of votes my candidate received. If I lived in a swing state, I would have voted for Obama, but until we abolish the Electoral College, I want to take as much advantage of it as I can.

I feel confident explaining this thought process to Americans who are familiar with the Electoral College, but it becomes difficult with Europeans. People keep asking me if I voted for Obama, and I really do want to say yes, but most of the time, I can't.

A TV news crew came into one of my classes yesterday to ask the Americans about our views on the election. They asked if anybody in the class voted for McCain, and when nobody raised their hand, they assumed that we all voted for Obama. They then asked me why I voted for Obama, and I froze for a second before giving them an answer. Perhaps this would have been a good opportunity to explain the concept of third parties. I don't know if my Italian is good enough yet, but it could have made for good TV.

An hour later, some Dutch girls asked me if I watched the election, and asked me for whom I voted "let's hope you voted for Obama," They said. That would have been a very good cue for me to give the easy answer, but instead I found myself jumping into a boring conversation about why I voted for somebody they've never heard of despite the fact that my candidate had no chance of winning the election.

Maybe I should start telling people that I voted for Obama. It would save a lot of time. My fear is that when I hesitate, they'll assume I'm lying, and that I voted for McCain, and then they won't want to keep talking to me. Also, I don't want to have that conversation with my roommates who support Forza Italia and the Republican Party. More importantly, experience tells me that somebody who knows that I'm lying is going to be there and call me on it. In this case, is honesty the best policy?

Election

I went to the public library last night to watch the election coverage on CNN. It was filled with Americans, Italians, and many people from all over the world, most of whom were drunk. The local media was there interviewing Americans about our views on the election. The volume was very low on the TVs, and people were talking, so it was impossible to tell whether we were watching the coverage in English or Italian. The library stayed open all night, but I left at around 1:00 am (7:00 pm EST). I'm sure some people stayed until 5:00 am (9:00 PST), but I was tired and content to read the results when I woke up 3 hours after the polls closed. When I left the library, it looked a lot like Thomas E. Dewey would be our next president, but apparently Barack Obama won. I'm looking forward to four or eight years with him as our president.