Politics

Today was quite the experience for Jessie and her boyfriend Jackie. While we were eating lunch I got to introduce them to, wait for it, the American political system! But first, the background story…

Jessie went with her class to Dallas this past weekend to the Dallas Aquarium. Apparently she was not impressed. She described the Chinese aquarium she’d been to as a sort of tunnel. This tunnel allowed the visitors to through with the fish and other sea life all around you. A sort of inclusive experience, it’s understandable why she didn’t enjoy our installed tank exhibit as much.

They stopped by the Book Depository Museum in downtown Dallas, the legendary museum that walks the visitors through the assassination of JFK. While the group didn’t get to go into the museum, Jessie and Jackie were still very concerned as to why someone would shoot a president.

I explained as best I could, citing the drastic changes going on in the world at that time and how some people just don’t quite know how to reason their way through situations the best. I mentioned the fact that he was different than any other president. He was young, Catholic, and when he was shot he was a democrat in a largely republican area.

While his political affiliation was not such a major change in America at the time, Jessie was still curious to what exactly that meant: to be one party rather than another. After I explained that here we have a multitude of parties, but it’s more like we have two that engulf the surrounding parties.

Jessie explained to me that in China, they only have one party, The People’s Party. Everyone belonged to it, and while people voted, it was more like they voted to represent their “family” so to speak. There are about 56 of these “families” in China, with a 90 percent majority belonging to one. It was understandable then how our political freedom would be such a shock to someone.