Visiting foreigners always bring a different perspective.
Alexis de Tocqueville's opus Democracy in America comes to mind, of course, but last week I spent the better part of two days in the company of a consultant from the continent, and at mealtimes and while traveling, our conversations ventured into his perceptions about the U.S.
Alvaro (to protect the innocent, I've given him a pseudonym) has worked in America off and on, so he had well-considered opinions formed over time.
Subjects discussed over local catfish one evening, and a barbecue sandwich at a well-known eatery the next lunchtime, ranged from lifestyle to government to crime to foreign relations.
Naturally, average American girth was an early topic. Obesity is a serious health issue here, but unfortunately something we have grown accustomed to.
Remarking on the enormity of people he sometimes encountered here in the states, Alvaro suggested two main reasons for the prevalence of American weight problems: what we eat and when we eat it.
"First," he said, "it is not healthy to eat late at night." In Spain, he noted, a big breakfast or lunch is much more common than a large, sumptuous dinner. Yet for Americans supper is frequently the main meal.
He also criticized the propensity for processed foods we have here, and the dietary mix in which sugars and carbohydrates figure prominently.
That did not stop him from enjoying, with colorful compliments delivered in accented English, some of Arkansas' delicious catfish filets and sweet-battered hushpuppies.
He was especially enamored of pickled green tomatoes, and learning that my mother often included them in her canning, requested her recipe.
Alvaro's work over the years has brought him in contact with large American corporations and industrial conglomerates, and he ruminated aloud about how "vested interests" often impede social and civic progress.
He said Ike's 50-year-old warning of the "military-industrial complex" threat was never more timely than now.
"The main problem in America as I see it," he said, leaning in as if speaking confidentially in a cafe full of strangers, "is that it is becoming a government of the people, by the professional politicians, for the special interests."
His play on words stems from an American presidential phrase (Lincoln's Gettysburg Address), but he noted the problem to be an international one, plaguing his own homeland and other countries as well, though he perceived a noticeable change in recent decades here.
He lauded the Meeting Hall in colonial times as an example of an engaged citizenry that kept government close and accountable to those it governed and their interests.
He acknowledged the drastic differences in scope and scale when comparing the U.S. and European nations. Spain is geographically similar in size to Montana, and yet its census is 48 times Montana's population and 8 million more than California (our most-populous state).
The American heritage is vastly different from that of long-established monarchies as well, producing very divergent mindsets on a number of philosophical points as they relate to nation and citizenship, and rights and responsibilities.
Some high-profile shootings were in the news during his visit, and Alvaro ruminated aloud about the "crime problem" in America.
I explained that while our national and state crime rates had all come down from their peak in the 1990s, in some violent categories the rates were still, inexplicably, multiples of what they had been 50 years ago.
Crime is local, and there are many neighborhoods in America that are as crime-free today as they were in the 1960s. But there are also many places where the crime rate is off the charts by every historical measure.
America is so large and diverse, I reminded him, that crime varies greatly when analyzed demographically, geographically and behaviorally.
Factors including education, drug and alcohol abuse, family history and structure, economic situation and employment, and other social criteria all dissect and criss-cross 320 million Americans--more than the combined population of the top five European Union member nations--to create a shifting tapestry with pockets of crime gathering in areas where multiple factors converge and congest.
In those spots, we clearly haven't solved an unacceptable crime problem. But in spots where those factors are mitigated, generally so is crime.
Alvaro's job has taken him to the Mideast, where he said attitudes toward America are essentially based on core fundamental realities.
"The Americans have the weapons and the money," he said.
But unlike the British, who sought to better understand the cultural distinctions in the area as vital to business and governmental relations, Alvaro said Americans seem content to remain uneducated about the region--even though such an attitude causes unnecessary and costly foreign-policy mistakes and flawed decisions.
I couldn't disagree. Most Americans lump Arab nations together when they are very, very different in social, historical and religious ways.
That's ignorance by any other name, which is often perilous in international affairs.
Alvaro made a point to say, as we drove back to the airport, how much he liked and admired America. And how he hoped that whatever challenges she faces, she prevails.
Gracias, friendly visitor.
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Dana D. Kelley is a freelance writer from Jonesboro.
Editorial on 09/04/2015