The Loose Cannon

I'm sick of our Premier now. Italy has become the spa of the world, like my favorite columnist Severgnini declared in an interview to the Italian Vanity Fair launching his new book entirely dedicated to try to explain the Berlusconi factor. And so, while all Geoge Clooney lookalike plumbers talk philosophy and make love in this wonderful country, like portrayed in the Eat, Love, Pray movie, our democracy is pissing.

We live in a country guided by a man whose constant sexist jokes only bring out the squalor that lies below the surface of his rotten government. For those of you who don't know about his buffoonery yet, here's a resume of Berlusconi's worst gaffes, as reported in the Time.

1. "We can't think of deploying a large force. We would have to send as many soldiers as there are beautiful girls. And I don't think we would manage."

2. "Italy is now a great country to invest in...Today we have fewer communists and those who are still there deny having been one. Another reason to invest in Italy is that we have beautiful secretaries."

3. "For those who love to conquer, the joy and the most beautiful satisfaction is in the conquest. If you have to pay, I ask you, what joy is there?"

4. "I trust the intelligence of the Italian people too much to think that there are so many assholes around who would vote against their own best interests."

5. "What's his name? Some tanned guy. Ah, Barack Obama! You won't believe it, but the two of them sunbathe together because the wife is also tanned."

6. "Read The Black Book of Communism and you will discover that in the China of Mao, they did not eat children, but had them boiled to fertilize the fields."

7. "We should be conscious of the superiority of our civilization, which consists of a value system that has given people widespread prosperity in those countries that embrace it, and guarantees respect for human rights and religion. This respect certainly does not exist in the Islamic countries."

8. "I know that in Italy there is a man producing a film on Nazi concentration camps. I shall put you forward for the role of Kapo. You would be perfect."

9. "Mussolini never killed anyone. Mussolini used to send people on vacation in internal exile."

10. "I am the Jesus Christ of politics. I sacrifice myself for everyone."

 source

As if this wasn't enough, his countless gaffes and scandals don't hide the country's problems anymore. Unemployment, labour precariousness, deaths at work, women's discriminated work, unpaid work for researchers and lecturers, deplorable civil rights, extreme social inequity and dilapidation of education are only some of the realities behind his obscene clowning. And there seems to be no one  able to stop this uncontrollable and unpredictable guy.

Only his former wife Veronica Lario had the nerve to denounce his political impunity. "Through a strange alchemy, the country concedes and justifies everything to its Emperor", she told La Repubblica last year, before divorcing from him, disgusted by his plans to run a state of television showgirls and expressing her suspicion about his relationship with a business associate's daughter, whose 18th birthday party he had recently attended.
 

The situation makes me sick. I don't even want to know all the details about this last Moroccan 17-year-old. It's clear the man likes wild parties and beautiful women. His business, of course, but he happens to rule this country, he represents us, so he can keep going with his promiscuous life. Away from the political scenes, though. 

And I can't accept anymore that, while he's having fun in his Bunga Bunga parties, his Government was preoccupied passing a law that would limit publication by journalists, a measure widely seen as aimed at helping Mr B preserve his image. 

The image of who, then? The late Mussolini who was gradually abandoned to his fate and who, although his party was disintegrating, he still had a charismatic relationship with the masses? This is crazy and Marx was so right. "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."

We better admit it and fast, then. We're near to moral and financial bankrupt. The Banana ministers insist it's not true. They denied the data from their own National Bank. Mario Draghi, its governor, proved that the country economy is hardly growing. Emma Mercegaglia, President of Confindustria, and organisation which groups Italian employers, questioned the quality of the current financial policies. 

Moreover, garbage is piling up on the streets of Naples,  protests against the government's cuts to arts delayed the Rome Film Festival, teachers strike 2 times a week to protest against privatization of universities and general dilapidation of education.

But the worst thing of all is that, since the Emperor doesn't seem to want to quit his throne, we're forced to choose between a strong center-right government that does exactly what it wants or a divided centre-left coalition. Right now a new party emerged, after the split from Mr B's co-founder of the Part of Freedom, but he's a post fascist leader! What an alarming perspective, huh? :(