politics!

So first off, Belgium is really split into two (technically 3, but for all intensive purposes, I'll leave Brussel out) groups: the Walloons- from Wallonia, they French-speaking south, and the Flemish- from Flanders, the Dutch-speaking north (ie. where I am). Despite both being a part of the Kingdom of Belgium (the official name for Belgium), a country that is only about 4000 square miles larger than the Bay Area, these two groups not only have their own political parties, news stations and languages, they also have separate Parliaments. But they are both part of Belgium and therefore both participate in national elections/ decisions etc.
Secondly, Belgium is a multi-party system. Granted, my opionions may be (read: are) biased, but I think that the way the multi-party system works, the parties spend too much time making what we call a kartel in Dutch (basically a block) against other parties by working to get enough people/ parties to out-vote another. This in turn seems to take time away from other issues at hand.

I may have a skewed view of the political interests of teens in the VS (JSA can do that sometimes), but overall, they are much more involved/ interested in politics than teens here- everyone is actually. At risk of sounding cliché, the government of the United States really is the people's government (relatively speaking at least).  It's amazing to me how little Belgians feel connected to their government.  There is really an "us" and a "them" attitude about their elected officials and what they're doing.  This is especially apparent amongst teenagers.  While they are pretty much aware of the main parties and some key current events, we never talk about current events or politics or philosophy etc either in or out of class.  I think a lot of this difference is that in the US, it's a cool thing to be aware of what's going on in the government, to have opinions about decisions or ideas and to discuss/ debate them with peers.  So far, I haven't found that here.  So while we learn about the political parties (of which there are many) in history, we don't discuss their party platform, or the decisions that are currently being made.  

I'm sure this will be a constant discussion here, but I actually want to post this and stop sitting around, thinking about what else to say.  So for now, I guess it will have to end with a to be continued...