Last games

I must start off by saying that this post is NOT an arraignment against American or Italian youngs: it's just a reflection on how politics is seen by them.

Last Wednesday, Serena and I skyped with Kelsey about elections in Italy and in the USA. For the scond time, after our talk with Leah, our nice interlocutor said that she knows quite anything about American politics and its election system. I don't know if their answers reflect the general situation in the USA, but the fact that only 54% of eligible voters really voted during the last four decades of presidential elections, makes me think. Why the first democratic country in the world reveals lack of public spirit? It seems to be a contradiction.

In Italy, things are a bit different, in my opinion: a lot of youngs, as in America, don't know very much about Italian politics, but our turnout is very high. This is another strange fact, isn't it?

Youngs' interest in the most important aspects of their own country seems to be discouraging, but I believe (and hope) that politics is going to become a more important part of their lives in their near future.

So, keep an eye on them, world, but don't worry: this is just a period, I think. They're (and what about me?) just playing their last games: all the toy trains and the dolls are going to end in a box in the storeroom soon and a new, more sinsible time is going to come...

Do we really know our own country?

This time, Serena and I talked with another Dickinson student: Michelle Mercaglione. Our issue, this week, was election systems in Italy and in the USA. Things are very different in these two countries from this point of view. Election system is not the same in the whole USA: American states are subdivided into proportional system states and winner-takes-all system states and people vote directly the politician they prefer. In Italy, on the contrary, the system doesn't change region by region and we simply count all the votes at the end of the elections to designate the winner. Then, the seats in the Parliament are assigned in proportion to the percentage of the votes received by each party. We can't vote directly the person we'd like to be the Prime Minister, for example: we just vote a party and if that party wins, its members chose the Prime Minister among them. However, in fact things are a bit different: in every political coalition there's a leader and we all know who really can become Prime Minister..

Michelle is just eighteen, so she wasn't very prepared in her election system and in politics in general. I think that this probably is a common characteristic of Italy and America. Youngs are often not vey interested in politics, but I think that we all should pay a little more attention on it because it's the base of our civilization. However, don't worry, Michelle, I think I knew anything about politics when I was eighteen...