So many of us expats still have election fatigue. We are tired of the questions about the endless U.S. election season, the surprise ending to the long, dragged-out story, and the each-day-more-depressing-than-the next feeling to the news we wake up to each morning. I hesitated to write about the Dutch elections, fearing that no one - not my expat friends nor my family and friends in the U.S. - wanted to hear about the parallel election universe in the Netherlands. And yet, after droning on and on last month about how important it is to learn to speak Dutch, I decided it might be just a tad hypocritical to say I don't want or need to know what's going on here politically. Necessity is the mother of invention, according to some unknown person. I figured if I set off to write about the election, I would actually force myself to sit down and learn more about the political system. I realized it wasn't enough to have a vague notion that the Dutch celebrate some form of democracy. And where does the king fit into the picture? I needed to know enough to weigh in. For my readers who are Dutch, or married to a Dutch man, this blog post will undoubtedly have some laughable mistakes. Sorry. I'm an American girl. I've held off for so long on including this song, but it's high time, don't you think?

I suspect that in years past, expats were not asked by their family and friends in the U.S. about the Dutch elections. Let's be honest: no one really knew or cared what went on here politically, or any-which-way. This year was decidedly different. For the past two weeks, the New York Times has diligently covered the election, pointing out that the fate of Geert Wilders - often described as the Dutch Trump - would function as a worldwide referendum on the Trump ideology. This year, there seemed to be much more at stake for all of us in the election outcome in this tiny country of only 17 million people. Who really belongs here? And who should be allowed to move here in the future? These are two questions the Dutch are grappling with. Just like in the U.S., there is a debate over the haves and the have-nots. The gap between them is growing. Other big issues: the economy, the future of the E.U., and the relationship between the Netherlands and Russia, and the Netherlands and the U.S.

This was my favorite sign at the Women's March here in January.

The Dutch were fascinated by our election, and stunned by the result. In case you haven't seen this video, it's worth watching. The Dutch are not exactly known for their sense of humor, but this really hits a comedy home run. The voice of Mr. Trump is performed by an American from Boom Chicago, the American comedy club here. Alumni include Seth Meyers and Jordan Peele. I love it there because they skewer the Dutch and Americans in (almost) equal doses. Despite the laughs this video engendered, there was a genuine sense of worry here about the havoc the new administration could/would wreak on the rest of the world.

Before I take you into the story of the Dutch election, we need to go back in time just a bit. For those of you who don't know, I have a long family history of political activism. My mother is and always was an ardent Democrat, a supporter of Hubert Humphrey in 1968 and George McGovern four years later. McGovern was the Bernie Sanders-like anti-Vietnam War candidate. I remember passing out buttons and flyers with my mom near our house in the suburbs. I doubt there were many takers. My mother was way ahead of her time. She made sure we had anti-war posters hanging in our room, and got us those POW/MIA bracelets that were so popular. And she talked a lot about the candidates at dinner time and how most of them were going to ruin our country (and the world, while they were at it). At the posh private school in Princeton I attended, I remember we held a mock election in class. The teacher tallied up the votes and the score was Nixon 19, McGovern 1. My mom was proud that I stayed loyal to the Democratic Party, and wasn't swayed by the prevailing Republican winds in my class.

Does anyone else remember these bracelets? I just couldn't get over the fact that men were missing and might never be found.

Then came the presidential election in 1980, when my sister and I both decided to write-in a vote for the Independent candidate: John Anderson. We probably knew less than nothing about his stand on the issues. I was 20, and she was 22, and we probably just liked the concept of voting for someone who was Independent, since we hadn't reached the stage of life yet where independence kicked in. We set off for the polling place together, and to her utter embarrassment, I couldn't figure out how to get out of the booth after casting my paper vote for Mr. Anderson. The kind voice of one of the volunteers at the make-shift polling spot next to the Loth Linoleum store finally succeeded in coaching me to find and pull the exit lever. I emerged from behind the velvet curtain with my head down. On the walk back home, my sister expressed (yet again) her disbelief in my sad inability to independently get out of the election booth. When she was finished with her ridicule, she asked how the election officials would know she had voted for John Anderson. It was then we realized that when presented with the slip of paper on which she was supposed to write-in the name "John Anderson", she had instead simply signed her name. In other words, she had voted for herself. My college roommate Sarah's father Percy loved this story so much. He wanted to have a t-shirt printed with "Jennifer Vine for President" emblazoned across the front.

After that fascinating peek into my past, let's get back to the Dutch elections. There are some important differences between the U.S. system of government and the Dutch. For one, there is a king here. In the U.S., we just have the Kennedys, the Bushes, and the Clintons. Also, there is no president of the Netherlands. There are two "houses": the Tweede, like our House of Representatives, and the Eerste, like our Senate. There are also many political parties (28 ran in the current election) and there has to be a coalition in order to govern. In other words, people in the government need to compromise and work together with people who have very different views from their own. Imagine that.

Here is just a quick listing of some of the political parties in the mix this year. There's the VVD, Volkspartij Voor Vrijheid en Democratie (People's Party for Freedom and Democracy). I've told you before about the Dutch love for a good long word, and that love appears to extend to the naming of their political parties. The current Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Mark Rutte, heads up this party. They believe in small government and economic "freedom", but also support what we would consider liberal social issues like universal health care, pro-choice, and same-sex marriage. In a move that some likened to a Trump attempt to appease the right, he recently took out an ad telling folks to, "Doe normaal or ga weg,". That roughly translates to, "Act normal or leave." By "act normal", the Dutch mean to follow the accepted norms of behavior in the community. His words signaled - at least to the media here and in the U.S. - that Rutte was trying to appeal to the increasingly xenophobic feelings spreading not just across the Netherlands, but Germany, France, and elsewhere in Europe. He also took a stab at the people who point out that the Zwarte Piet blackface costume that some wear during Sinterklaas is a racist tradition that needs to stop. This article describes the continuing debate, stirred up by Rutte in his letter, over who decides whether something is an "innocent" tradition or racism. Thank you, Rachel Drucker, for sending it my way.

Even the billboards are different here. Each individual poster is slapped together into one giant coalition poster.

Here are a few more parties who were in the election mix: the Partij van de Arbeid (PvdA) or Labor Party. Truth be told, when I first saw the party name, I confused the word "arbeid" for "ardbei" which means strawberry. The Strawberry Party? The Labor Party seems to have a Bernie Sanders-type platform, focusing on jobs, healthcare and education. I'm not sure what the platform of a Strawberry Party would be, but it has interesting possibilities. A focus on better desserts? Affordable smoothies for everyone? The D66, or Democrats 66 (the year the party was created) is responsible for introducing some of the liberal social policies the Netherlands is known for: the legalization of gay marriage, euthanasia and prostitution. There is, of course, Geert Wilders' PVV Partij voor de Vrijheid (Party for Freedom). Apparently his brand of freedom applies only if you are white and were born in the Netherlands. Mr. Wilders, who rode to fame on an anti-Islam, anti-immigration horse, even dyes his mane a startling shade of blond, like our own fearless, fear-mongering leader. Less controversial and more thoughtful are: the Groenlinks (Green Left) party, which focuses on the environment; and Denk (which means "think" in Dutch). It's known as a pro-immigrant party, and is focused on eliminating racism and discrimination, and promoting the integration of refugees. The leaders are of Turkish origin, and a former Miss Netherlands is their Communications Director. I was somewhat perplexed that in this majority-secular country, the Christian Democrat Party (CDA) is also a big player. My Dutch history class teacher explained that rather than push aside right-wing parties, the Netherlands believes that if you give them a little power, you defuse their control. It's an interesting concept.

And there is my personal favorite, the Partij voor de Dieren, PvdD, the Animal Party. I would like to propose this wise, kind, exceptionally hungry resident for a leadership position in the party. — And there is my personal favorite, the *Partij voor de Dieren, PvdD,* the Animal Party. I would like to propose this wise, kind, exceptionally hungry resident for a leadership position in the party.

The Netherlands clearly did not want to make the same mistakes made by the Brits during Brexit, or the Americans during the Trump election. They recognized here that the "youth vote" was an important ingredient in the anti-populist movement. For those who prefer not to hear four-letter words repeated often and loudly, you can skip the upcoming video. For the rest of you, the salty language represents an interesting attempt to reach out to the youth vote. I have noticed that the Dutch don't seem to attach the same meaning to the f- word as we do in the U.S. It's not nearly as bad as the Dutch curse, wishing cancer on someone. I kid you not.

I'm sure many of you have already read about the election results. I tried to build up to the climax of the story, getting you interested first in the issues and the players. And the winner was? Although the paper ballots - yes, you read that right - haven't officially been tallied yet, the centrist VVD, the current party in power, earned the most votes, garnering 33 seats. Two pro-EU parties, D66 and the Green Left, both did well, especially among young voters. The Christian Democrats also had a strong showing, tying Mr. Wilders' party for second place. I wonder if the Dutch kept track of the election the way folks in the U.S. obsess over their March Madness brackets. Now it's a math problem waiting to be solved. In order to govern, you need "half plus one" - or 76 seats out of the total of 150 seats (75 in each house) - to sit together at the table. Because of the way the votes were spread out over so many parties, that means four parties may have to join together to form a coalition.

In the end, I think it's in the Dutch DNA to resist doing what everyone else is doing. I suspect all of the press that Geert Wilders received from the media may have made the Dutch decide to run the other way. So, instead of a stunning rise in votes for his party, he received only 5 more seats - for a total of 19 seats - in the government than he had earned in the last election four years ago. That was well below the 40 seats he had been predicted to win several months ago. The election results caused everyone to breath a sigh of relief across Europe, and led to many more news stories, like this one in the New York Times about the implications for the rest of Europe in other upcoming elections. The Netherlands even received some congratulatory words from world leaders, proud of them for doing their own thing in the election. Once again, the Netherlands proved that rather than just do the expected, they prefer to forge their own path. They refuse to just holler back what they hear. Since the previous video flooded your senses with the f*** word, I chose the clean version this time.

More astonishing to this American girl than the actual election results is the voter turnout: a stunning 82%. When I started this post by saying this was a country of informed people, I wasn't kidding. I'm also astonished by the idea that after such a contentious election, the party leaders all sat around a table the very next day to talk about how to form a coalition. I just can't imagine that happening in the U.S. And would so many politicians wear that shade of blue? It's like the Delft blue in a Dutch tile. So cheerful. What's not so cheerful is the notion that there is only one women represented around the table. She is Marianne Thieme, the leader of the Animal Party. She doesn't even get to wear the cheerful blue. In a country that prides itself on its openness and diversity, the lack of gender and racial diversity in the government is startling. [Note: many thanks to Martha Canning, President of the American Women's Club of Amsterdam for correcting me when I initially reported that the lone woman was not an elected official, but rather the woman charged with creating the coalition. So instead of no women on board, there is actually one. It takes a village to write a blog.]

Those politicians look like an updated version of a Rembrandt painting.

Until 2006, one of the political parties, the SGP, didn't even allow women to join the party, and was opposed to universal suffrage. These women from the Dutch Golden Age painting by Frans Hals would not have approved of such a archaic situation.

Where does the Dutch royalty fit into this scheme, you ask? I ask myself the same question. It seems slightly out of character for a country that prides itself on its egalitarianism to also hold their royal family so dear. My Dutch History teacher provided one explanation. He said, "Royalty plays an important role in modern society. It unifies it." Hmmm. I guess that will have to do as an explanation for now. Indeed, without a king or queen, the Dutch would be left without their favorite holiday: King's Day (or Queen's Day, depending on who is sitting on the throne). That would mean giving up a full day of drinking and selling your old clothes on the street, so I think the royals may be here to stay. Here's the King and his family, first looking like a regular family, and then all dolled up in their royal garb.

In the end, I'm glad the world focused on the Netherlands for a little while. This wee slip of a country has to care about what happens in the U.S., because of how big and bossy we are. The Netherlands deserves to have someone else care about it for once. Maybe the interest in the Dutch election proves the U.S. is becoming a little less self-centered, a little less focused only on its own government. That's would be a good thing. We have only a few weeks to rest up before we will have to get up to speed on the elections in France, Germany, and Italy. Until then, I'm going to think about this "woman of a certain age". We saw her last weekend while celebrating Peter's birthday in Paris. At first blush, from a distance, it seemed like she might have been a slightly daft old lady who wandered in off the street to join the musicians. After we stopped to watch, we realized she was part of the act. There was something so sweet and uplifting about the way she danced with both determination and joy. And although I'm not sure I quite captured it in my short video, there was also something magical about the way almost every passer-by broke out in a smile when they glanced over at her. I'm not sure what the lesson is here, but it's something about the contagiousness of happiness. We could all use a little of that right now.

I know I shouldn't complain after the late-season snow and ice you have had to contend with in the U.S., but it does sometimes feel this way here. Never mind summer. I hope Spring is on its way soon, for all of us.