Whoa, I thought. It’s one thing to be intellectually aware that modern Dutch society is pretty calm about people having long-term relationships and raising families without the sanction of old-fashioned marriage. It’s another thing to see a rising center-right Catholic political leader using, as the acceptable storyline to explain a resignation, his desire to spend more time with his family by a woman to whom he isn’t married.

It’s these little moments of eye-opening difference that make PPK’s blog coverage of Dutch politics so fascinating to me.

Patrick Nielsen Hayden explains why the things I take for granted about Dutch politics may be absolutely fascinating to outsiders.

Or as Abi Sutherland explains in the posting that Nielsen Hayden responds to:

We’re in an election cycle here in the Netherlands, after the government fell (and fell hard) in February, and it’s like nothing you’ve seen in the English-speaking world.

We have a controversial figure who tries to make the entire conversation about himself. We have two major-party resignations on the same day, both to spend more time with their families. We have parties moving left and still picking up right-wing polling numbers, witness parties both religious and animal-rights, socialists, greens and populists.

And best of all, we have someone explaining it all in clear and accessible English.