Spanish Joke

Some time ago, I heard a joke that was applied to Spain, but could be used in other countries as well. The joke goes like this:

"When God was creating the world, he divided it in countries. In each country he put different people, and he decided to give two good qualities to the people of each country:

-Germans will be hard-working and efficient, English people will be polite and educated, Italians will be passionate and funny....

The list of countries kept going, until it was the turn of Spain:

-Spanish people will be intelligent, good and they will vote the party from the right.

Of course, the angels around God thought that it was a little bit unfair that Spanish people got 3 qualities, and they mentioned it to God. God answered:

-What you say is true. Therefore, Spanish people will be able to choose any 2 of the 3 qualities that they want.

That is the reason why, in Spain, you will find good people that vote to the right party, but they won't be intelligent. You will also find intelligent people that vote for the right party, but they will not be good. And finally, you will find good and intelligent people, but they won't vote for the right party."

I believe that this joke says something quite true. Of course, it defines things in a very "black and white" manner: How can you assess that somebody is "good"? Some right-minded reporters mention that supporters of the left would like to make right ideals illegal, and this kind of joke may give such an idea.

However, I would say that if you replace "not good" for "selfish", "self-interested" or a similar meaning, this is spot on and perfectly realistic.

In general, what does the right parties support? They have always supported tradition, religion, censorship, discrimination, power and money for the already rich and powerful, ignorance among the lower workers, kings and queens (or CEOs), patriotism, repression, more military and more participation in wars, less rights for the people, less freedom for the people, more work for the lower classes, and less money for the lower classes. In Spain (and other countries) you can add fascism, racism, sexism, dictatorial governments and other things that are usually limited to extreme right parties, but that in Spain is part of the main right party.

It would be simplistic to consider all that "bad", but it's easy to consider it "selfish", as in things that may give you some benefit while others get a worse situation.

And who would vote for these things? Well, there will be lots of low-class people that will vote them for their defence of patriotism, religion, tradition, sexism, racism, military issues and discrimination. For example, lots of lower class people may think that immigrants are taking their jobs, and therefore they vote right parties believing they will put a stop to illegal immigrants. Or they may feel that the other parties are not patriotic enough, or that this party will put women back were she belongs, at home in the kitchen and taking care of kids while men go to the bar and drink and smoke. It could also be something more simple and that it can be considered "good", which is to defend their religious believes.

All this clearly shows a lack of intelligence on the lower class part, since intelligent people will notice right away that there is a larger problem here: The fact that this party will basically screw the lower class as much as possible, which should be the main concern. If you think that a government that defends tradition is more important than being able to eat or to have a house, your priorities are wrong, and therefore it marks you as stupid. Same with religion, you can be a nice person, help the poor, try to support your community and all that, but if you vote a party because they support your religion without considering that the same party will multiply the amount of poor people in the streets and the cases of hunger, you don't have your priorities straight and you don't grasp that this party is not following the original meaning of religion, which usually is to be nice to each other. Again, this means you're basically stupid, sorry if it sounds harsh but it's true. Finally, you could believe the right party's messages that say they will make things better for everybody and vote them. This again shows you're stupid, since the right parties have always defended the same, which is benefits for a very few rich and powerful people while screwing everybody else.

However, there is intelligent people too that may vote for the right party. If you're high class it's evident that this party will protect you and your family, and your interests. If you're middle-high class you can also think that this party may not affect you that much, or that you share some of its ideas an the policies that are more repressive and violent will not affect you. This does not make you a "bad" person per se, but clearly more "selfish": You're supporting the repression, the censorship, the decrease in rights, since you're not really affected by it that much and you can more or less maintain your lifestyle.

Being selfish it's not really bad, you need to be selfish in some degree to achieve a certain happiness. Otherwise you'll always be miserable thinking about the things that you could do for others. However, when such selfishness affects such a big proportion of the population, making their lives so much worse, it cannot be considered good. Specially if you can still be perfectly happy and maintain your lifestyle while paying more taxes or keeping your ideologies at your home.

Of course, if you directly vote them to get a lot more richer and to exploit to the lass drop of blood all your workers and lower class, or to impose your morals by force to people against their will, I will directly consider you to be bad. However, I don't believe that there are that many cases of this in Spain, and it's more like the case I explained of indifferent people that gain something while not losing much or not being impacted much.

That's why this joke is so true: If you are smart enough to have your priorities straight and to understand what each party offers and does, and you care enough about other people that you would like to improve rights and freedom of everybody even if it will not affect you that much, I don't see how you can vote for a right party.

One last comment: Right parties are known for his acts, not for his speeches. If a party defends a huge amount of the things the right parties defend, even with some concessions, that party is from the right, even while claiming to be "centre" or "left".

Therefore, in Spain one needs to be careful, since most big parties are rather "right-ish"....