Italy: Spinning Its Wheels; Going Nowhere

This essay is dedicated to my beloved Sarah who has been an unfailing infuence in the creation of it...

I have lived in Italy since 1 May 1983, and so much sincerely interested in
my environs, I have come to defne myself as an “Italianist.” I very much
enjoy having to fgure out how things and societies function, and Italy has
stirred up my curiosity the years I have lived here. Further, before coming
to Italy, I lived (31 December 1975-1 May 1983) in Caracas, Venezuela;
eight years in “northern” and “southern” Florida in the DisUnited States;
one year in the jungles of Vietnam; and, twenty-one years in New York
where I was born. My Italian observances, then, have so often been
differentiated among others, and this method of mine, in large part, refects
this short, pithy paraphrased statement by the Scottish philosopher, David
Hume (1711-1776): “Knowledge is the assurance arising from the
comparison of ideas.” I have many sentiments foating in my mind
concerning my “lives” survived in the DUS, Vietnam, Venezuela and Italy.
With these mental objects, I have been able to mix all together my
experiences in order to understand better Italy—and myself!—and qualify
it more sophisticatedly. This has not been easygoing mainly because Italy is
a complicated nation—aren't they all!—one that vaunts a long cultural,
political, religious, and economic beingness.

Italy is passing away. It is in via d'estinzione. The Italians, candle-bearers of

the wicks of the Roman Empire and the Renaissance that are now dripping
away into obscurity—ravished by the digital phenomena and the quest for a
global economy fair for all—have been mowed down by dog-eat-dog
capitalism and their unsuitableness to confront the modern world. Italians
are prisoners of their Past, and they refuse to attempt to escape from it.
People from all over the globe come to see The Aging Continent, and
Italians have a good business going for them—tourism is Italy's main
source of income—catering to the whims of foreigners who want to
photograph ruins, rubble, and rundown churches and cathedrals. If you are
planning a visit to Italy, it might be wise to bring along a hard hat! (Since
January 2018, eleven municipal buses, in service in Rome, have caught fre
and have been burnt to a crisp. No one was injured. Who? Why? Where?
What? When? Just a string of miracles?) The Italians are fghting with all
their might to be part of the bigger picture; but, this battle is killing them
off—they cannot even regenerate their race. They have become sterile,
plasticized.
When I lived in Caracas, Venezuela, I experienced something that is very
much in common with Italy today, and that is the sense of anxiousness—
sometimes panic—that characterizes daily life in Italy as it did the same in
Caracas in its heydays of graft and corruption. When oil prices skyrocketed
for the Venezuelans in the 1970s, the country went on a spending binge
that was not only reckless, it fnally came to bring down any sense of
stability the Venezuelan people perhaps might have nourished had they
been more judicious and rational in the perpetuation of their political and
economic policies. In fact, riots and death came to obsess the Venezuelans
as a sort of punishment for their obstreperous, lawless comportment.

In the late 1970s, the population of Venezuela was about 13,000,000, still
60% of that number was under the age of 18. Today, Italy has a population
of about 60,000,000, and 22% of that amount is over 65. It is not necessary
to explain in detail here the enormous strains both of these demographic
circumstances have presented to the respective governments of Italy and
Venezuela who have had to juggle through intense balancing acts to keep
their countries on an even keel. The sheer weight of these two statistical
quandaries have caused more than a headache for many politicians and
economists, and it is easy to notice that both Venezuela and Italy are in the
throes of horrible systemic disorders that are inducing excruciating
wretchedness for both their peoples.

People are proud. Venezuelans less so, but Italians will go all out to show
that they are in control of their situations when in fact they really are not.
Italians are specialists in “look.” They fake it well, and will cook their books
to cover many realities that they do not wish to be out in the open for
others to discern. I would bet on the Venezuelans to come out as survivors
simply because they know how to live with little. Mangos y amor. Italians,
now about double the present Venezuelan population of 31.57 million
people (2016), are another story. They are soused in the juices of Hedonism,
greed, and corruption. If someone, or some event, would shut the spigot of
unrelenting borrowing that the Italians so irresponsibly depend on, chaos
would be the result. Not Fascism. No. Instead, an atrocious Anarchy. Italy
will never explode into war with others. How could it afford to do so being
in such straight-jacketed debt? Italy will implode upon itself, within its very
own borders.

I wish now to present two of the symptoms that both Venezuela and Italy
had and have in common—those indicants that characterized Venezuela's
downfall and now portend, for Italy, its ruination.

The frst is a societal restlessness that can be observed in the behavior of

the Venezuelan and Italian peoples. In Venezuela, and now Italy, citizens
are running amuck with a desperate lack of hope, without employment, and
especially without the means or desire to invent, to create—skills for which
Italians once shined across the globe. Thousands and thousands of Italian
youth, some of them with university degrees, are leaving Italy to fnd that
work not afforded to them in Italy. The nerves of the Italians are frazzled.
They race in their cars to the next red traffc light. They fx things when
they break. They do not plan for the future because their presents are so
unpromising. Desperate, those who have to live in Italy, have one door
closed in their faces after another. There is a large segment of the Italian
population that has even given up looking for a job—social parasites who
often are forced to enter into lawless affliations in order to survive. La
Dolce Vita has ended. It has been dead now for decades. Some people are
scurrying and anxiously seeking to fnd their place in the Italian world—if
they have not already given up in frustration—yet even these poor souls,
subsidized by their parents and grandparents, are living on borrowed time.
The nervousness of these individuals is seen daily in altercations that
frequently happen in the streets or buses where Italians are shockingly
reminded that it is not them who are regenerating future “Italians,” but
Peruvians, Senegalese, Romanians, Albanese, Nigerians, Philippines,
Moroccans, and Tunisians. Italians are running to and running away from
whatever might even appear to give them some semblance of hope—hardly
ever realized. Italians are panicky and panicking.

Another crass exemplar of Italy's despair might be sighted in the way the
Italian language is enunciated in public places and on television programs.
Italians like to shout. Pizzerias and restaurants are always flled with nerve-
wracking shouting and raucous laughter. A late-morning TV show, Forum,
is extraordinarily violent with arguments gone amuck and insults and
denigrations handily levied at opposing parties. Nevertheless, it is the TV
talk shows, particularly those with political themes, where the true colors of
Italian debating comes to the fore. Guests speak in loud, machine-like
blasts that are more often noted for their thoughtlessness than for their
causative infuences. The speed of the voices of the speakers is rapid-fre,
and it is often diffcult to get the gist of a conversation because the speaker
has passed through his or her essential points so quickly. What was
intended to be stood for is lost in the vapors of not understood speech.
Fifty-seven-percent of the Italians possess a high school diploma, and they
just are not up to attempting to understand what politicians and their
representatives are relaying to them. Politicians are quickly scoffed off as
corrupt criminals without viewers even able to take in what they the pols
are trying to say.

So, we have two down-to-Earth examples of how a society can react when
their economic stability is askance. Common sense does not rule for the
good of all. Illogical thinking and verbal violence bring dissidents to act
even more violently between themselves. Talk show hosts are often left
helpless trying to separate the hostile sparring partners out to score points
for their association or political party. Intelligent debating just does not
exist in Italy.

Authored by Anthony St. John

12 June MMXVIII
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior
Twitter: @thewordwarrior

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