A ray of hope

Having toured a good part of Spain last Spring, my interest in the country peaked, and I decided to pick up James Michener's Iberia, a personal tour of Spain written in the late 1960s. I remember when the book came out and was a great success (at least among my friends), but I never got around to reading it then.

In any event, as far as I can tell, the Spain Mitchener writes about is virtually unrecognizable in the Spain of today. Mitchener's Spain is largely poor, somber, suspicious of everyone. It's people hide inside their homes and peak out through peep holes at the world going on before them. It is ruled by a less than benevolent dictator, and no one dares talk politics. The Church rules, and everyone is a faithful Catholic (in the Spanish version of that word), going to church at all the prescribed times and occasions. Women wear modest clothing -- long skirts. Arms, legs and heads covered at all times. Courting is only done through family arrangements. Teenage lovers don't just meet on the streets and go to the movies. The economy is backwards, agrarian, and bumbling.

Now, I can't really pretend to "know" modern Spain after a mere three weeks there, but the Spain I see today is almost the exact opposite of that depicted by Michener. The economy now seems to be thriving. Construction is going on everywhere. Some of my companions and I even joked about buying an interest in a Spanish construction company, there's so much building going on. While about 85% of the population are still self-described Catholics, only about 15% attend mass regularly. The government is relatively progressive, democratic, and more or less stable. The mood is upbeat. The nightlife raucous. The girls dress in shorts or mini-skirts and tank tops, belly buttons proudly on display. Lovers fill the parks. The people no longer seem moody and suspicious. With some exceptions, politics is discussed openly.

All of which brings me to an observation Michener makes about three quarters of the way through the book -- that countries and societies regularly reinvent themselves every few decades, and what once was the rule in a country, thirty years later is often the rare exception. The more I think about that, the more true is seems even though I can't quite apply it to my own country. Perhaps I'm too close to home here and can only see the trees and not the forest. But, think Russia, Germany, Italy, even the U.K. and compare where they are now to where they were in the mid-1960s.

All of which gave me a bit of pause as a political blogger here in early 21st century America. I and many of my friends tend to see the disaster the Bushies have brought on us in almost apocalyptic terms, as if it has destroyed the America we knew and loved for generations to come. But, perhaps we're putting too much stress on the present day gloom and failing to see how completely things may have changed by 2040. By then, who knows? The entire political paradigm may have changed; perhaps for the worse, but quite possibly for the better. As gloomy as things look right now, perhaps there's something in this that shines a ray of hope for the future.