Dear Kai, John and Jaga,
Thank you very much for your replies and explenations. As you know from me and Karl, I come from an area of Europe which could be compared with the progressive, liberal and cosmopolitan North-East of the USA (New York), and the South-West of the USA (California: LA/Hollywood, San Francisco, Dan Diego, Fresno and Sacramento ). I understand why Polish Americans voted Democratic traditionally. I Have Polish-American family myself in
Chicago and
Milwaukee, with
Ukrainian-American and I
talian-American elements in it via partners of my cousins.
They are more conservative and in some sense more traditional than me. I love them, I respect them and am fond of them and my nieces and nephew. They are very nice, relaxed and good families. Typical American Middle class, living in suburbs of their cities. I don't know which party they vote for, but think that they would probably vote Republican. I think they would have a voting patern like
John. I don't know, because I never discussed politics, religion or Polish cultural issues with them. When we meet as family we have a cosy social time together. And I (especially me, yes) will avoid heavy, controversial and difficult subjects, questions and critical remarks about for instance about
the USA or
Poland.
We have blood ties, we share dna and genes, that is what matters. When both of my cousins were in the Netherlands I met them in Amsterdam and showed them around like a (family) tour guide. I loved showing them around and seeing them. Because we seldom meet. I stil have to go to
Chicago and or
Milwaukee for the first time in my life. I had a long correspondence with
uncle Wodek, the Ukrainian-American husband of
my Chicago Polish-American aunt (like my mother and her first husband, she was 100% Polish, born and raised in
Poland, having studied in
Poland, and having worked in
Poland). So both my Polish-American cousin were raised in a very conservative, traditional, Polish household in the USA, where Polish was spoken (my aunt and her first husband, my uncle spoke Polish at home). It was a Polish home of Polish immigrants in the USA. My cousins are typical succesful, nice, friendly, Polish-Americans. Very, very American, but in the same time
connected to Poland,
the Polish diaspora in the USA (having Polish-American and
Polish friends in
the USA and in
Poland, where they go on vacation, meeting family and friends there).
I know that
Chicago is nearly a Polish city with the huge Polish-American community of nearly one million people. I read that in
New York somewhere there is a Polish neighbourhood with 60 thousand people, where Polish is spoken in shops, restaurants, bars and community centers and Roman-Catholic churches, next to American-English. I believe Roman-Catholics voted Democrat in the past, because
the Kennedies where Roman-Catholic Irish-Americans. Did the Roman-Catholic Italian-Americans, Irish-Americans, and Southern Baviarian German-Americans also voted Democrat?
And how about Slovak-Americans, Czech-Americans, Russian-Americans, Ukrainian-Americans, Croat-Americans, Slovenian-Americans, Serb-Americans and other Slavic Americans?
My Ukrainian-American
uncle Wodek from
Dixon Illinois (whom I never met in person) was
a Republican. I wrote many letters and cards to him (sometimes with drawings or photo's of my paintings from the art academy added to them) and received letters back, sometimes with a dollar bill of $ 20, or $40/50. That was nice for me as a teenager and student in his early twenties.
Uncle Wodek said, buy some beers for yourself and your friends, enjoy yourself. He was a psychiatric and a workaholic who loved American football in his spare time. He once send me an ad about his political preference. A leaflet of '
Ukrainian-Americans for George W. Bush' . He was a good shrink and I respected him although we had different political views. I was critical of
the fast collapse of the SovjetUnion in the early nineties, and
the very fast independence of Ukraine and other former Sovjet republics. I feared chaos, corruption, crime and civil war back then. That partly became true and partly didn't.
Uncle Wodek wrote to me that I should respect the Ukrainian Patriotic, democratic and Free will to be independent, autonomous and to have a sovereign state of their own. It was in the time of the final stages of
the SovjetUnion, the violent
Red army invasions of Lithuania and the time of
the coup in Moscow.
Today I sometimes wonder what
Uncle Wodek would have found about the situation in Ukraine. I could have learned about his opinion and his knowledge of Ukraine, but he died before the conflict, so I couldn't and can't ask his opinion. The husband of one of my cousins is half Ukrainian and half Sicillian (Italian-American), and he is so American, that he knows little about Ukraine, because his family are Ukrainian-Americans and not Ukrainains. Jaga, I know from the Dutch-Americans, and Dutch immigrants to Australia, Canada, New Zeland and Australia that they are very nostalgic too, and melancholic about the time they left the Netherlands during the late fourties or early fifties. Many of them were conservative christian (both Calvinist and Roman-Catholic) farmer and middle class families who fled Europe, because they espected that after the Nazi's a Sovjet invasion would come sooner or later. They didn't want to live under Communist rule in a 'socialist peoples republic', so they left for the USA, where many of them settled in towns or villages with names like '
Holland', '
Zeeland' or '
Friesland'. Many of them are conservative Protestant
Republicans today. Like the former American Congressman
Pete Hoekstra (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pete_Hoekstra ) I don't know much about the Dutch Roman-Catholics. I have only read or heard stories about the Dutch Reformed Calvinist immigrants to the USA.
Like the Polish-Americans of the third generation these Dutch-Americans probably would vote very conservative or even far right in the Netherlands, because most Dutch political parties would be to liberal, center or moderate. They would probably vote for the Christian Fundamentalist
SGP party in the Netherlands. Geert WIlders Party of Freedom would be to less christian for them.
So I have the view of Americans with a European heritage (not the Americans with European ancesters centuries ago, but the Americans with European parents of grandparents, or the Americans who came to the USA as European kids) that they make up their Walt Disney, or history book, family album of the fifties of Europe. Many Dutch Americans who visit the Nehterlands don't recognise themselves in the multi-cultural and densly populated place the Netherlands is today. They love the old towns, villages and cities anf the typical Dutch landscapes, and the Dutch products they love.
The same will be with those nostalgic Polish-Americans, who will probably will vote
Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (Law and Justice) of
Jarosław Kaczyński, or the National Conservative and National Catholic
Solidarna Polska (
United Poland), which opposes abortion, euthanasia, gay marriage and the EU's climate change policy.
Cheers,
Pieter
