Visit to Spain offers new perspectives
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Editor,
I see on the news over here in Barcelona, Spain, that we now have Donald Trump moderating a Republican presidential debate on Dec. 27, a collaboration of Newsmax Media and ION Television. I'm over here visiting my son and family and looking forward to the holidays, and while here am very interested in getting people's perspective on world affairs and specifically how they see America and Americans. Just think of it: While we celebrate Jesus' birth on Dec. 25, only two days later we might be having a “second coming” happening right before our very eyes in the form of Donald Trump speaking to the masses. Wow; you can't make up stuff better than this. Trying to play the part of “cub reporter” here, I find it interesting to get a sense of people's attitudes and thoughts about America's politics, particularly how they feel about the race for the White House going on in America. I get lots of smirks, tee-heeing, shaking of heads, and blank looks. So, not much different from what we see in the Mission Valley, actually. Herman Cain, of course, has already flavored our political reputation over here and Penn State's Sandusky has cast a long shadow over our college sports reputation, but every nation has just such morality problems to deal with, so one cannot fairly single out the U.S. in that regard. While most over here don't follow our politics that closely, they are reading accounts from our own political pundits saying that America has never seen such a weak bunch of presidential candidates as the present group. Hmmm, something to really look at carefully. I recently heard that what we call our "Occupy Movement" actually started in Spain. I intend to look into that a bit and possibly report on it. Possibly there are some things about this movement and its implications which go way beyond our borders and way beyond shallow thinking about what is truly motivating such a “movement.” We, as a nation, as a world, might just be in for bigger and more profound changes than we realize.
Bob McClellan
Polson
