The Venezuelianization of Italy

This essay is dedicated to Bertrand Russell who has been an unfailing infuence in the creation of it...

When I arrived, escaped (1 May 1983) to Montecatini Terme, Italy from a

lawless Caracas, Venezuela, where I had lived since 31 December 1975, I
had already in mind the idea for a book about Venezuela that had been
given to me be a Russian friend who had been there a school teacher: Men
Without Honor, Women Without Love. Montecatini, at that time, had turned
out for me to be the perfect place to blueprint my manuscript, and detox
from the stress of surviving in one of the most violent cities in the world—
something which I had done before when I had returned to New York from
Vietnam, in August 1968, where and when I had served with an infantry
company as its artillery liaison offcer (forward observer). Montecatini's 19 th
century ambience had been kept immaculately pristine and cordial for
wealthy tourists coming from all over the world to visit and relax in it. I
ftted in well not because I was moneyed, but because I was an American!
Another price I would have to pay! Americans are not as well thought of in
this world as they would like to think!

I had read in Caracas that Bertrand Russell (1872-1970), when asked how
we should cope with our rapidly changing world, had suggested that one
should shy away from pe r s e philosophy and concentrate on mass
psychology and political history and philosophy. The idea for my book was
to concentrate on representing the reality of Venezuela as it was interpreted
by the Venezuelan people themselves. Howard Zinn (1922-2010) had done
something similar with his capolavoro, A People's History of the United States.
I represented no government agency, no newspaper, no magazine, no
university. I was free to draw my own conclusions, and I was not trained or
coached by someone or something that had had infuence over me. My aim
was to describe what was happening in Venezuela and how its people were
not being cared for, abused. I had no political affliations.

My manuscript was selected by a Zürich literary agent, Paul Fritz, who

represented many well-known literary giants including John Cheever,
Stephen King (Did I say “literary giant!”), Gore Vidal, Tennessee Williams,
Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe, Issac B Singer, and Ian Fleming. I was thrilled
then. My dreams fell to pieces when I learned that Paul had died of a stroke
while vacationing in Delray Beach, Florida. I had lost a kind friend, and I
now thought that all chances for my book being published were naught.

Nevertheless, I could not believe that my manuscript was worthless. When

my niece, Bernadette, who was a graduate of the United States Naval
Academy, Annapolis and a rather attractive woman who had been assigned
as the protocol offcer at the Sigonella NATO military base and visited me
in Italy, I gave her a copy of my manuscript and asked her to “buck slip” it
up to the Central Intelligence Agency. I had hoped that the observations
made in my book would convince the State Department to look upon
Venezuela in a different light, and I had wished it would explain to those
government agencies that there existed other approaches to making friends
and improving relations with the beleaguered Venezuela and its
downtrodden people.

The manuscript came to 483 typed A4 pages. I edited them, and then made
a second, fnal copy. This effort entailed almost three years of work, and I
enjoyed almost every moment in creating it, although I must admit there
were some rough emotional spots in the tome for me to confront.

I did not realize it at the time, but the subconscious thoughts about
Venezuela fxed in my mind as a consequence of what I had written and
stored away—I had thought maybe forever—began to act upon my thinking
about what I was then experiencing in Italy. I remember one day—after
have been living in Italy for almost three years—I exclaimed to myself that
“the Italians are doing exactly what the Venezuelan people did to lead
themselves to political, economic, and social disorder.” I checked myself
immediately. How could I have such thoughts when I had lived in Italy not
even three years? Anthropologists say one needs to live in a country for four
or fve years before one can feel acclimatized in that post. Yet, that feeling
kept its grip on me. I was resolved to “study” Italy, and bring all my
impressions into order (another book?), struggling to go to the heart of the
Italian quandary. (After living in Italy for more than thirty years, I am
beginning to itch to write a book about Italy that I have thought about for
years now: Italy: The Dissolution of One European Sovereign State.)
Nevertheless, I see very little hope for Italy coming round to pull itself out
of its political, economic, and social nosedive. (Bertrand Russell said that
hope is rational.)

I would like, now, to offer two beliefs why I think Venezuela and Italy have
in common two defects that have promised for the Venezuelan people a
horrible destiny, and predict that the Italians are on the same road to
political, economic, and social turmoil.

The frst of these notions is that both countries possess a meritless source
of income that has led them over the years—even over the centuries as is
the case for Italy—to a paralyzing state of political, economic, and social
complacency. For the Venezuelan people, this generator of constant,
meritless income is the vast petroleum resources they possess; for the
Italian people, this generator of constant, meritless income is its largest
industry, tourism. In both countries, the bulk of the profts extracted from
these generators of meritless income have been exploited by the greed,
corruption, incompetence, and ignorance of their political and business
classes, and rather than using the lucre they have amassed and employ it to
contribute to the economic and social progress of their countries, these
criminal factions have stored away their earnings in Swiss private banks,
off-shore accounts, and Miami fnancial institutions. Worse, they have set
the example for other members of their societies to monkey them likewise.
Will Italy follow in the footsteps of the disaster that now has become
Venezuela? Probably....To be continued....

My other opinion regards what I think is the most insidious of the two: the
state of the educational levels of the Venezuelan and Italian peoples. When
I lived in Caracas, I could see young children roaming the streets hoping to
sell some tissues or cigarette lighters, begging whenever they could to bring
home some cash to their indigent families, and even stealing when the
opportunity presented itself. There were no schools available for them. In
1983, in Venezuela, 60% of the 13,000,000 or so population was below 18
years of age.

There are schools in Italy, but plaster drops from the ceilings onto the
desks of the students, often there is no water in the bathrooms, kids bring
their own toilet paper to school with them, and 57% of the Italian people
have a high school diploma. One American ambassador has said that the
Italian school system is a national disgrace. Italians are so uneducated one
European economist, Professor Anders Aslund, has stated that the dismal
level of learning that Italian citizens possess, will result in causing Italy to
fail to maintain an elevated standard of living. This is now happening to
everyone's dismay in a struggling-to-survive Italy.

In both Venezuela and Italy, I have never seen a concerted effort to

improve the intelligence of the Venezuelan and Italian citizens by offering
them sound educational platforms from which they could learn, and then
help their countries to progress and prosper. It is as if the Venezuelan and
Italian systems of rigid social stratifcations characterized by heredity status,
endogamy, and social barriers sanctioned by custom, law, and the Roman
Catholic church, have been designed to keep Venezuelans and Italians in
an everlasting state of ignorance—to guarantee the perpetual hoarding of
the Venezuelan and Italian wealth for the cult of the privileged classes who
dominate these political, economic, and social aggregations....To be
continued....

It might seem bizarre at frst to opine that there exist non-contrastive

elements which do not always distinguish differences between Venezuela
and Italy. If an individual lives in a country for a protracted period of time,
he or she will accumulate impressions of that environment that can be
verifed with repeated experiences—knowledge being the assurance that
arises from the comparison of ideas (David Hume [1711-1776]). I learned in
Caracas that the Venezuelan people lacked schools, hospitals, decent
transport systems, and many other public utilities that might be considered
de rigueur in modern metropolitan areas that are found in the so-called
“developed” cities and nations. (Have Venezuelans found other ways to live
their lives in the manner they wish to do so? (Mangos y amor?)

How could Italy be analogous to Venezuela? How could that be possible?

Italy is an ecological disaster. Every year its territory crawls its way towards
an immense desertifcation. In the autumn, Italy becomes the Land of
Landslides with damage to homes and transportation areas costing €
billions and € billions of damage. Half, 50%, of Italy's olive trees were
destroyed by adverse weather conditions in 2018. The Italians have almost
no sagaciousness to work to prevent disaster by preparing for it. They fx
things when they have been broken.

Schools, museums, churches, and public buildings are crumbling before

the eyes of the Italian people. The country's hydraulic system is defcient
and ineffcient. Waste from run-off is atrocious. Faucet water is often
declared unsafe to drink. Pieces of stone are always falling from the ceilings
of churches and museums. One male tourist from Spain was killed in a
Florentine cathedral when a jumbo chunk of stone fell from the ceiling and
killed him instantly. Hard hats for tourists?

The Venezuelans have not a lot. The Italians have a lot but they have not a
lot. Much of what the Italians possess has to be either replaced or
restructured. Which is worse? I am not an architect or building
constructor, but I do know that tearing down what is unusable and
reconstructing it anew would cost more than furnishing, say, Venezuela
with the same facilities that the Italians possess but cannot use because
their assets do not function expeditiously. Where would you invest? To
build a country afresh or to rebuild a country afresh? Another United
States ambassador has warned Italians that American businessmen are
reluctant to invest in Italy.

Look at Italy losing its mind...Look at Italy spinning its wheels and going
no place...Look at Italy falling apart at its seams...Look at Italy once a
Comedy of Errors now a Tragedy of Errors...Look at this medieval
smorgasbord aplenty with confusion and contradiction...Look at Italy
singing the Middle Ages Blues...Look at these ridiculous gothic ones
making money off the Past, a Past that does not pertain to them any
longer...Look at the Italians drowning in their medieval muck and
counterfeit hedonism subsidized by extravagant bank loans...Look at their
snobbism and their belief that their culture is superior to all others...Look
at them scratch, desperately, for a return to the glorious days of the Holy
Roman Empire—the Roman Catholic Church now saturated, all over the
world, with criminal, pedophile priests—even Irish ones! (Oh! Excuse me!
Did you think all the Irish pedophile priests had gone to the United
States?)...Look at unschooled Italy squirming in its stupefaction at not
being able to compete in a world that has left it in its murky backwaters of
ineptitude...Look at three of the twenty Italian regions, Lombardia, Veneto,
and Emilia that produce 54% of Italy's total export commerce comprising
40% of the nation's entire Gross National Product, while the remainder 17
regions take stupid pills and look at themselves all day long in the
mirror...Look at Italians arrogantly blackmailing the European Union
claiming that Italy is too big to fail, that Italy is the seat of Western
Civilization, and the headquarters of Vatican, Inc...Look at Italian
politicians fnally coming to understand the meaning of Mussolini's
prescript that it is not impossible to govern the Italians; it is useless...Look
at Italy fall through the slats and seep deeper into the Black Hole of its
Greed, Corruption, Incompetence and Ignorance.

Authored by Anthony St. John

5 January MMXIX
 Calenzano, Italy
anthony.st.john1944@gmail.com
www.scribd.com/thewordwarrior

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