Mexico?

[angus]

And you can't ing buy beer on election day in the whole country!  Well, you can, but it isn't legal, so you have to pay California prices for a beer in Mexico if you have the misfortune to show up on election day.  I was in Cabo San Lucas last July 5 and 6.  Had to get booze at outrageous prices on the black market.  what a ripoff!  At least their weed and coke prices remained stable during that period.  

[angus]

BCS = PAN country, verdad?  

the rest of the country seems more comfortable with a larger role for government than most US folks do.  Then there's that contrary doctor from the DF.  Nobody knows what he stands for.  Kind of like Bill Clinton.  Or me.  My guess is that he's good at walking the thin line between class warfare and keeeping the wealthy economic engines greased.  Not unlike the DLC, or what you might call a Rockefeller REpublican.  

You mexican?  I often say that's my favorite country in the world, next to my own.  I've been to 21 of the estados, so far, and my favorite remains Chiapas, leftism be damned.  Actually, in mexico it all makes sense.  I can understand impoverished chiapans voting Left, and displaced californians voting pan.  Here it's all weird, what with Mississippians voting for the GOP and Connecticut Yankees voting for Democrats.  But it's only confusing till you realize that the Democrats aren't really "liberal" and the GOP isn't really "conservative."  In that sense, the Mexicans are like the English and the Germans and everyone else.  It is we who have divided along some pretty bizarre lines, wouldn't you agree?

[angus]

then I was wrong.  but I've only been to 3 of the Landen in your country.  Actually we're mostly German here, not like the Aussies and Cannucks and Kiwis.  Goddamned Anglophiles there.  Not like us.  Maybe Berlin one day...  I do own lots of Black Clothes.  Did you change your name, by the way?  and your color?

okay, BC not BCS.  I do remember asking lots of locals for whom (or what party) they voted.  As I recall, the third party had a certain pro-business appeal in that part of the country.  I used to lament having two parties, till I met folks from Egypt and China, the oldest civilizations, who have only one.  Now I realize we ain't got it so bad.  Then, at the other end of the scale, you have the italians.  At least the Good Guys are in charge there.  Could be worse.  Like Germany.    And Mexico.    No shortage of Volkswagens in Mexico, by the way.  That Hapsburg influence goes a long way.  Note all the "Calidad Aleman" signs on garages in the DF.

What I'm learning is that partisan loyalty in Mexico, like partisan loyalty here, is dying.  That's a good thing, don't you think?  70 years of one-party rule has had the same effect on Mexico's economy as 80 years of one-party rule has had on Russia's economy.  Democrats don't look so bad next to those guys.  Neither do Republicans.  Actually, from what I read in my daily dose of Right Wing propaganda is that we're not too concerned with Mexico, as they've nowhere to go but up.  (yes, I think PEMEX was a mistake.)  It's our neighbors to the South that we're concerned with, what with the retaliatory remarks from Brazil (again, turnabout is fair play), and that embarassing and impolitic public support for the hooligans who wanted to oust Chavez in Venezuela.  

But then the thread is about Mexico.  Mexico, like the US and France, is classified by the UN as a "multiparty republic".  It's one of their eight forms of government.   That's what makes us, at least on paper, more like Mexico and France than like, say, Germany and Canada and England and Japan.  They're best suited for collecting statistics, and they do that well, not for maintaining peace, which they do not do well.  Might as well use some of their data (which we pay for) once in a while.  Mexico chooses its president and its congress separately.  As do we.  The Fox-Congress relationship is not unlike the Clinton-Congress relationship was.  Totally different that the Blair-Commons or the Schroeder-Parliament relationship.  Just to answer the question.

I have one of my own.  Was Fox an anomaly?  Unlike Bush, he was a successful businessman.  But still a businessman.  And a member of PAN.  His election was played up by US news media outlets as a "change of tide" in Mexican politics.  Do they see a more limited role for govt than they did in the past?  Is this evidence of a true Mexican nationalism forming?  Are the maqiulladoras affecting the polls?  Or is it just the tail-end of the world Clintonista legacy of electing economically conservative leaders?  Or is it an experiment?  Or is this such an anglocentric world view that it has no reasonably accurate translation into latinoamericano politics?  (like asking how does an electron get from one lobe of a px orbital into another lobe, even though they're separated by a node of zero-probability?)

[angus]

in some fantasy thread, someone (harry maybe?  I forget.) put up a map of all of North america.  A few months ago.  Maybe it has evolved into a Western Hemisphere map by now, with colors for (predicted or legendary) party control, etc.  Find out where he got that map.  

In the meantime, here are some "maps" of mexico that I use for other purposes.  You may find them interesting or useful:

http://www.maps-of-mexico.com/ (excellent highway maps)
http://math.ucr.edu/ftm/baja.htm (BC & BCS general info)
http://www.supermapa.com (highway map generator)
http://www.trace-sc.com/ (The Mexico Channel, good tourist information in English about govt, climate, etc.)
http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/photo.html#maps (incomplete but user-friendly collection of data and maps)
http://members.aol.com/felixhinz/PAGE2.html (some dead German guy's 500 year-old maps of Tenochtitlan, very cool.)

[angus]

There are some, in Spanish, but I have found none in English.  You can find blogs about Mexican politics in English though.  I have a reporter friend in DF who may be able to tell me whether there are any.  She can't say the word "Fox" without hissing and spitting.  I'll email her and try to find out.

By the way, I liked Camejo in 2002 when he ran for governor, but by the time the special election came around in October 2003 he was nothing more than an apologist for the Davis Administration who began flipping from Green to California Democrat, like Davis (very conservative, like Clinton, but without the winning personality and cool exotic accent of a Southern Democrat.)  At some point, you gotta wonder if he stands for anything other than whatever the Sierra Club's flavor of the week is.  Good thing VP choices don't really matter.

[angus]

this is a bad habit of mine.  MarkDel calls it Joycean writing.  Yeah, I just noticed the signature line of KucinichforPrez and commented on it.  Very inappropriate, given that it has nothing to do with the original thread.  Only point was that Camejo was a major attack-dog biting at Davis in November 2002, yet somehow evolved into a Davis lap-dog over the following 12 months.  You gotta wonder how anyone can pay lip-service to both sides and come out smelling like a rose.

Let me know if you turn up any sites like this one about Mexico, in English.  I'll do the same.  I haven't learned about any yet though.  I've noticed that this site gets restructured whenever interests and demographics dictate.  Dave Liep seems to stay on top of that sort of thing.  If enough Mexico pops up under International, Mexico may get it's own little forum.  Not sure though.  Most foreigners who post here are from Western Europe or those bits of Western European pockets of influence around the world (e.g., Canada and Australia), and that most Americans aren't interested in American politics, much less foreign politics, it may not be likely that such interest would materialize.  Still, you have a fairly interested and well-informed bunch that posts here.  I think we're seeing an interest in Mexican politics primarily due to the elections.  But this is likely to wane over the coming months.

[angus]

Lewis, thanks for correcting my German.  I tried very hard to find something to correct in your English, but couldn't.  What you have, unlike US, France, and Mexico, is a weak President.  You have a strong BundesKanzler (sp?) instead.  For whatever reason, the CIA factbook (www.cia.gov) lists Germany as a Federal Republic, not just a Republic like the others.  I really don't know what formal differences there may be.  Japan and England are, of course, Constitutional Monarchies.  Canada is a democracy.  There are some really nifty governmental forms in the near east, like aristocracies and such.  Very medieval.  

The US media (ABC, CNN, Fox, etc) often reports that Gerhard, a rabid anti-US bigmough, rose to power on a wave of anti-US sentiment which started in the 80s under the Reagan Administration ("We begin bombing in five minutes.")  Never having heard anyone contradict that, I believe it.  Funny still, as in all my trips to Germany, I was never the victim of outright bigotry.  But then I usually hung out with a fairly well-educated white-collar crowd of Germans.  On the other hand, that's the demographic of Eurotrash most often accused of abject anti-Americanism.  Either our newschannels are feeding us Baloney, or everyone just waited till I was out of the room to start talking nasty about Reagan and Bush.  What do you think?

[angus]

That was the short answer, now for the long one...
The early '80s saw a lot of protests against the stationing of more nukes over here in Europe (it's funny - back then the Left blamed it on Reagan though the accords were pushed through by Carter, after the collapse of the Soviet Union the Right agreed too - and now it's the accepted way of thinking of the era) which, in the public memory are linked to the more important protests against nuclear dumps and new nuclear plants of the same period, largely because the same people were involved. The rise of the German Greens, Schröder's coalition partner, is definitely tied up with those events. (This doesn't sound right - correct my English, please. )
Schröder was the chairman of the Jusos, the SPD's youth organization, at the time, and was one of the earliest propagators of Red-Green coalitions within the SPD. He also ram against Nuclearphile State PM Ernst Albrecht (CDU) twice in Lower Saxony (losing in 86, winning in 90), and formed the second Red-Green coalition on a state level after that. (The first had been here in Hessen.) I guess that with a bit of selective memory, a bit of guileful misrepresentation, you could easily turn that into an Anti-American record.
And in 2002, the issue of a possible Iraq war suddenly arose in the middle of the Election campaign, and it certainly helped Schröder win reelection, though the floods on the Elbe were more important by far.

As to your personal experiences: It's not as if we spend all our lives talking about Bush. I can think of thousands of nicer topics than that guy. The issue is bound to crop up from time to time, and you'll find few people who can see anything positive in Bush. I guess you could have got some kind of conversation on the topic going by mentioning that you dislike Bush. But then that would have been a lie...
Germany may be a Federal Republic to the CIA because our states are older than our country (like some of yours) and all have different constitutions (like all of yours) - there's lots of other countries with some sort of "states", but most of them might be described as fake federacies - ie the central government set up the states.

Oh, and to set that point from your post before straight: Last time I checked there were more than half a dozen parties in the Egyptian parliament. It's just that one of them always wins...

Thanks Lewis, it was actually more of a rhetorical question, I think.  Nothing wrong with the grammatical construct in question, by the way, except its reliance on colloquialism.  Yes, to be fair Egypt is a one-party state the way Mexico was for 71 years, but not in the formal way China is now.

I could go on very long and clarify the point I was trying to make about there being a misimpression among US persons about anti-US sentiment abroad, but I'm too tired.  I'm not sure I made the point very well, but nevertheless, you grossly misread my personality.  It would be truer to say that I'm the sort of guy that would pretend to like Bush, if I didn't, when I find myself surrounded by Germans, than to say I'm the sort of guy who would pretend to dislike Bush, if I really did like him, when I find myself surrounded by Germans.  I am generally apt to find out what position everyone in a room takes, and claim that I take the minority position.  It is much more fun.  I'll even avoid eating certain foods if they become fashionable.  I am NO Lisa Simpson.  I like to think I'm more Bart Simpson.  Not that that is relevant, I just wouldn't want you to think I'm not the sort of person who doesn't thoroughly enjoy making others unnecessarily exasperated and sitting back and just laughing at them.  In fact, that's the purest and most delightful entertainment I know.  Maybe that's why I never see anti-US sentiment.  Maybe I see it and just don't recognize it as such, because during such moments I'd be enjoying myself too much, and moreover, I'd assume the others were simply playing the same game, and enjoying themselves too.  

[angus]

Hey, Angus.
That might be...or maybe you just read dislike of Bush as "dislike of Bush" rather than as "Anti-Americanism"...

Here's a German poll I found funny...
do you think it would be better for improving Germany's relations with the US if
-Kerry won 49%
-Bush won 3%
-makes no difference 39%
-don't know 9%
That everybody agrees they should improve was apparently taken for granted by whoever crafted the question.

I wonder what percent of respondents would chose the option that relations shouldn't improve.  I have to admit I'd be in the 39% group on this one.  And, yes, my point was that our media is, in fact, selling anti-Bush propaganda as anti-American propaganda.  Still, you gotta admire the fact that Schroeder's been about as anti-USA as anyone, and wasn't shy about it, and became chancellor.  Probably that's all just coincidence.  

[angus]

Hey, Angus.
That might be...or maybe you just read dislike of Bush as "dislike of Bush" rather than as "Anti-Americanism"...

Here's a German poll I found funny...
do you think it would be better for improving Germany's relations with the US if
-Kerry won 49%
-Bush won 3%
-makes no difference 39%
-don't know 9%
That everybody agrees they should improve was apparently taken for granted by whoever crafted the question.

I wonder what percent of respondents would chose the option that relations shouldn't improve.  I have to admit I'd be in the 39% group on this one.  And, yes, my point was that our media is, in fact, selling anti-Bush propaganda as anti-American propaganda.  Still, you gotta admire the fact that Schroeder's been about as anti-USA as anyone, and wasn't shy about it, and became chancellor.  Probably that's all just coincidence.  

Hey Angus and Lewis, I've been enjoying your deep exchange about perceptions of the United States in Germany but, don't you think it shouldn't be on the "Mexico" thread?
Although at least it keeps the thread alive... I'm still expecting more people to ask me about Mexico.

My apologies.  I spent most of the summer of 2001 in Mexico, and came away wondering how Fox could possibly have won there.  It'd be like a Martian spending most of the summer of 2001 in Honolulu, I suppose.  That martian would no doubt go back to mars wondering how Bush could possibly have won 271 votes.  Since that time, I've visited Mexico maybe ten times, mostly in more economically successful areas such as QR, BCS, and the northern deserts.  Mexicans love to discuss politics with me.  At least that's my impression.  And unlike US people, who like to waste all their time discussing trivialities like homosexuality and pregnancy termination, Mexicans like to discuss the important stuff, like jobs and education and transportation.  We can learn alot from Mexico, if we listen.  With Bush, we thought we had elected a listener.  Seems that his priorities changed after September 2001.  Can't say that I blame him, though.  Tough break for Fox, that was, wouldn't you say?