FATHER FRANK’S RANTS - Italy’s Monsters

Rant Number 464 15 November 2011

O Italy, you slave, you house of grief, rudderless ship in mighty storm, mistress not of provinces but a brothel! Dante

Yes, Dante was and is right. Italy is all that. And the poet was not the last to lament his country’s woes. ‘The land of the dead’, the French poet Lamartine dismissed Italy. Meaning her touristy reliance on a dead past. ‘Italy? Italy is geographic expression’, the Austrian Chancellor Metternich quipped. For him Italy was not even a country. But it gets worse: this brothel, this museum, this phoney nation is nearly broke,huh!

Two questions: 1) Whose fault is it? 2) What is to be done?

La Dolce Vita. Sweet easy life. That clever magician, Silvio Berlusconi, mesmerised Italians into believing they could enjoy il dolce far niente, doing bugger-all - and still live well. At least according to a journalist called Barbie Something writing in Newsweek. Not a bad line. Pity Barbie spoils it with droll rubbish about machismo and oppressed Italian women. By the way, has she seen Fellini’s classic movie which immortalised La Dolce Vita phrase? Its modest, dated orgies were arguably the forerunners of Berlusconi’s own shenanigans. But watch out! The film ends with the washed-out revellers on a beach staring at a revolting sea monster – a pretty transparent metaphor for their own sad state...

The Italian crowds you watch on TV cheering the departure of monster Berlusconi hail mostly from the PDS, the ghost of the old Communist Party. Their loathing of Silvio is a priori, visceral and ideological. Fair enough. Hatred is a right. Still, the pinks were in government before and solved nothing. The soft Left’s own rule might be a tad more extravagant – maybe a bit of gender-bending, girls out, boys in – the players would change but the music would stay the same.

Problem is, Italy never had a Maggie Thatcher – may God not bless her. She broke the Trade Unions’ power. Made strikes difficult. Saw off the miners. Privatised utilities. Won a war. A successful monster. But Berlusconi could never do a Maggie. Italians would never vote for that. Imagine a PM who abolishes la tredicesima – the extra month’s wages every Italian gets at Christmas, pensioners included. Or cuts the pension (75% of your final monthly wages) you get at retirement. Or make inefficient workers sackable. A revolution would destroy the politician suicidal enough to do that. And yet those are amongst needed reforms. It is not only ‘the economy, stupid’ but it is partly the economy.

Are Italians the problem? Their ungovernable national character, that is. It looks a bit like that. The priest’s people are an anarchic lot. (It is not just Southerners, the eternal scapegoats in Italy.) ‘I had enough of this shitty country!’ Berlusconi apparently emoted. An unfortunate, un-clever remark. Because he too is Italian. Also, it echoes something scatological another frustrated monster, Mussolini, once said: ‘I have been trying to make Italy with shit!’ Like Silvio, Benito was Italian, all too Italian. The theatricality, the rhetoric, the showing off, the ultimate emptiness – the leaders share them with the led. The people’s faults are also the rulers. ‘Every country has the governments it deserves’, the great reactionary Joseph de Maistre wisely pointed out.

Still, it is a partial, distorted picture. The individualistic & chaotic Latins in 1860, after 1500 years of disunity, achieved the miracle of Italian independence, the culmination of the patriotic Risorgimento. (Thanks also to England – oh, well, she can’t always be wrong, can she?) Up to WW1, Italy did not do too badly. Things went pear-shaped after that.

Debacle of WW2 over, the victorious, generous Yanks helped to put the country back on its feet. Post-war prosperity in 1960 even caused people to speak of Italy’s ‘economic miracle’. The hiccup of 1968 student unrest was essentially about free fornication – malgre’ moi, I must agree with the world’s greatest opinionated historian, Niall Ferguson. But in the end neither puritanical fascism nor permissive democracy has succeeded in fixing Italy. Fascism perished violently, under arms – democracy is peacefully but inexorably imploding, it seems.

The remedy? How can the poor priest pretend...fools rush in where angels fear to tread...but wait a minute. One of my favourite Italian gurus is a political scientist, Ernesto Galli della Loggia. A clear-headed, sensible bloke. He contends there is a problem between governments and available resources. With universal suffrage, in a party-based, parliamentary democracy those in power must perforce get more votes than their opponents, if they are to stay there. How so? In a consumer society the answer is obvious: to spend more, to satisfy material needs of voters more. But spending more means taxing more - money does not grow on trees, as my friend Valery used to blame me for repeating. Spend with one hand and tax with the other, simple.

To generate consensus and get elected parties must play that fatal game. Fatal because, when the economy slows down or the producing system does not permit sufficient fiscal depredation, the process gets unsustainable. In the end, ‘the markets’, finance become in effect the lords of states and governments....oh, rats, I am cribbing this from Galli della Loggia’s articles in the Corriera della Sera. Check it out yourself.

Prescriptions? To get back to the primacy of politics, real politics. Against the one-dimensionality of economics, real politicians – not merry Silvio nor his tired, ‘pink’ opponents – must create a new consensus. Based on a new vision. On the core values that are at the heart of any strong, vital, cohesive nation. Such as work, faith, the family, justice, altruism, self-sacrifice. Add your own pet ones – it is democracy, isn’t it?

And Europe? Our Ernesto speaks golden words. It is clearly a misnomer. ‘Europe’ in practice means France and Germany. The two nations decide. The others have to follow suit. Even in that momentous phase of politics – war – it is France and Germany who determine whether boys of the other nations will fight in Libya or anywhere else. Europe, whatever it is, is not democratic. And Europe does not exist, anyhow. We don’t even have a common language!

Monstrous, anarchic conclusion? But of course. The scholar is Italian after all, no? Nonetheless, I like him.

Revd Frank Julian Gelli