Italy: Free fall

A year after the constitutional referendum of December 4th, 2016 that saw the victory of the NAY and the blatant defeat of the government front that had proposed the referendum, it can be said with certainty that the trauma for the defeated is now past. But there is still fear in them, not so hidden either, that the 5 Star Movement, the great architect of their defeat and genetically self-predisposed to the fight against corruption and misgovernment, can finally express its Prime Minister to the government. A new electoral law has been launched that seems to be oriented more to the ungovernability than to political stability and there is a great deal of noise on the so-called fake news. The intent, ill-concealed in my humble opinion, is to hit with the censorship the communication channel typical of the 5 Stars: the web and the blogosphere.

The actors on the Italian political scene are always the same. There is Silvio Berlusconi, back in the limelight but again on trial for something and for the moment still forbidden by political activity from an old sentence that has become final. There is the Italian Democratic Party (former Italian Communist Party) that is in full electoral bleeding and does not know what to invent to reverse the bleeding ... Maybe disappear permanently? Then there is the Northern League that is experiencing a kind of political transformation thanks to its new top man, Matteo Salvini, here in a photo of some time ago when he started taking the reins of the League and building a political figure presented as different from those around him.

After an entire political existence begun in 1989 under the banner of the secession of the northern regions from the rest of an Italy abandoned to itself on a different road, Northern League (or its modern chrysalis) would like today to have also the votes of the southerners Italian. For this reason, at least a part of it tries to change into something like "Together for Salvini". I wonder if I'm the only one to remember how the inhabitants of southern Italy were apostrophized by the Northern League from its very early origins: lazy, scoundrels, mafia, corrupt and dirty, people unwilling to work and wash. If I am the only one to remember all this and the relative "solutions" proposed for the Southerners, then it is certain that Mr. Salvini will have his good share of votes at the next general election and his party will have an important presence in Parliament. But maybe it will not be like that. In any case, he will not have my vote.

And then there is him. Who shoots big. The bomb, as his classmates at high school called him. I would call it "El Magnifico", Spanish-like, as George Clooney said in a famous television commercial, but perhaps it is excessive. So I will simply call him ... Matteo Renzi. His was the attempt to change the Italian constitution at the orders of Brussels, a city that I do not think is in Italy if not for those that "we need more Europe here!". His was the blatant promise, urbi et orbi, to withdraw from politics in case of defeat. These are the words used by our Matteo: "In the event that I lose the referendum, I would consider my political experience to be over. I deeply believe in a value that is the value of dignity. I am not like everyone else ".

No. Of course not ... There was a defeat and evident, like 60% of NAY. Better: NAY!!!! But he did not withdraw and, after the initial stun, he decided to stay. At the very end, what is a promise? Recently he has been campaigning in some regions of Italy to convince Italians to vote again for the Democratic Party (formerly the Italian Communist Party). He moved by train, Renzi's train. After a few steps, the police made secret the journey because people gathered at the stations to wait for him to insult him in a fierce manner as soon as he get off the train. What do you think he's going to be Prime Minister again? Or maybe he just want to experience the thrill of being the head of a government finally elected by Italian voters and not appointed by others who are not in Italy, maybe those who consider us a colony to be administered? Who can say? I gave Matteo Renzi an article just after his inauguration as Prime Minister. I titled "Blood's a rover" inspired, for an obvious reason, to a novel by James Ellroy. I repeat it to the readers: I have only corrected some typos and inaccuracies.

I recently finished reading Blood's a Rover by James Ellroy. It is the third and final chapter of his American Trilogy and I think the best of the three. Ellroy writes of flesh and blood, heart and feeling and always of human beings. With the old James, the roads that lead us from one corner of life to another, are never straight but a convoluted mess in which you lose yourself and you can find yourself sometimes back sometimes later. Ellroy is a master to describe them.

And then, there are Wayne Tedrow as an experienced former police officer in Las Vegas now working for the Mafia, Don Crutchfield as a young private detective shabby voyeur and loser from the City of Angels and the French Mesplède, as professional murderer. They are in Santo Domingo to build casinos in which to recycle Mafia's dirty money. Mesplède is the sniper who shot Kennedy and Crutchfield should be dead: he knows too much about the murder but he saved himself with an amazing dance. He says he has audio recordings and who did the work that cursed day in Dallas, spoke too much and too clearly. True of false? No risk for the moment, let's get him with us. But they call him you little shit and pariguayo, what does upholstery, so it is clear how much they consider him.

And then, there's this scene in the mid-novel, just in Santo Domingo. Wayne introduced himself in the suite where Crutchfield lived and see stuff on the table. Porn and weapons. scattered clothes, thrown to the rubbish. A Polaroid and stacks of photos of women. Also the necessaire to test heroin. The blood goes him to the head. He sees RED as a bull.

Crutchfield arrives at that moment. Above shorts wearing a belt with a Colt Python, has acne and licks an ice cream cone. He smiles and holds out his hand: how you doing Wayne?

Wayne comes up to him and twisting his fingers. Then.... BAAM! He kicks him in the balls that doubles him over, gasping. No heroin! They are not there for the drug but to make money with gambling. He tells him he will kill anyone who tries. There is also Mesplède but the French is a real tough guy and pretends not to notice. Ḉa va Wayne, ça va. The French always responds well. Ok Wayne Ok, enough of the drug. I'll take Crutchfield. Do not worry Wayne, ça va.

Mesplède has a fixation: CUBA. Cuba is nearby. He brings the boy to arrange Castro's barbudos. Mesplède hates communists. Hates Castro. Hates the REDS in ALL their forms. It is him who wants to sell drugs to buy weapons with which to kill rojos.

The first time they arrive in Cuba by boat and kill some guards on the beach. Then they do the scalp. Crutchfield does not want. He Vomits. Mesplède is angry bad and puts the knife in his hand. Crutchfield makes the SCALP to a dead barbudo.

Another time they fly over Cuba with a little airplane. Crutchfield has always sickness, airsickness, seasickness and all three together. Not for nothing in Los Angeles a fag told him that he was not as tough as he thinks be. He sends down Dramamine like candies and drinks hard stuff with amphetamines. Shoots from the plane. Uses modified dumdum bullets: rat poison instead of the explosive charge. Kills Communists. In the hotel's hot but Cuba is really HOT. They have their own personal apotheosis when they can get their hands on an old torpedo boat: Crutchfield takes it out on a rock: torpedo 1, rock 0. I'm sorry Old Man of the Sea, your time had come. Pure madness.

And the story unfolds, the characters live their roles, their metamorphosis.

I love Ellroy, his powerful writing, his endless prose. His literary devices leave me breathless. The intensity with which he describes the feelings and passions leaves me exhausted. It's like a Michelangelo of the word. Sometimes he does not just write but instead draws painted murals on blank pages. Other times he need just a few lines to define a microcosm, like when the honest cop asks the corrupt police officer how much he had been paid. Answer: a thousand. And he walks away saying nothing, leaving that single word hanging in the air to seal everything.

The scene of the hotel is iconic because even a Mafia man must have poise and Crutchfield behaves like a child, not as a man. A voyeur and irresponsible child who can send down the drain business for millions of dollars and lose their lives.

I hope the old James forgive me if I used him for this long introduction, but I happened to see our current Prime Minister with an ice cream cone in his hand. And who has not seen him, at least in Italy? You can see him here:

 

Internet is full of those images. What a leader. What a man. Who cares if no one has ever voted him and elected him to be the head of our government, just like the two that preceded him? In this our post-atomic era, neoliberal with a free global market why become burden by that hated girth called democracy? If in Ukraine Nazi phalanges are back without the worries of United States and Israel, we can also keep a Prime Minister with an ice cream cone in hand. If you look well at him, don't you feel the irresistible urge of... BAAM! Buying immediately another one? So far, he has had many amazing ideas all went to empty and with just only one ice cream cone in his hand. Imagine with two.

So you wonder why you like Putin, maybe shirtless and with a gun in his hands. Even Putin sipping tea in his office is a more reassuring figure than Matteo Renzi close to the ice cream cart.

Blood's a rover, teaches us Ellroy. Wayne is not just a Mafia fixer but falls in love with a black woman. He died trying to help her. Crutchfield finishes the job, finding her son ran away in Haiti: the pariguayo will prove himself tougher than he seemed to others and in two or three years he grows older of a lifetime.

There will not be a similar fate for Italy. There will not be a ruler who will prove to be different from the man with an ice cream cone in a hand. We are a country in free fall and our current political class does not have the ability to revive the fortunes of the Nation. We must look elsewhere.

 

So I ended the article not even two years ago: look elsewhere. But where? I was thinking of the 5 Stars Movement but something has changed since then? No. Everything has remained the same if not worse. The only alternative to the current corrupt system and unable to defend the interests of the nation (and precisely for this traitor) is just the 5 Stars Movement. Political movement, even now not political party. Still with a non-statute instead of a political status. People honest and loyal, sincere in their intent and able to prove it with the facts. Before them, I had never seen Italian politicians cut their salary of parliamentarians and put the quota in a shared fund to help small business-men in difficulty. And yet these people, whom I will vote in the next general election, seem to me to be anything than what our beloved country now desperately needs: chiefs. Military leaders. Honest commanders with a straight back. No coincidence that the word HOMELAND! never comes out of their mouth. As if telling it, is a heretical blasphemy or something that does not fit into their cultural horizons. I'm sorry to say it but I'm afraid that in any of them there is the strength of a De Gaulle, for example and just to not always quote the usual name. Or that of a Haakon VII who, as King of Norway, refused to surrender to the Nazi invaders when everything was against him and his people and took refuge on the frozen mountains with his army to continue the war.

No, 5 Stars guys: you are nice and I will vote you in the next elections because I believe to your inner honesty but you do not get to wield the sword of the warrior or the blade of the daring. They do not find a place on you. Not in your eyes there is of the knife the fierce flash. For your and our misfortune, you hold the pen of the accountant, the fountain pen if we are lucky. At the end of the day, your inner honesty will be as certain ointments: it will not prevent what will come next. You will read budget forecasts. You will submit proposals You will defend social rights. But you will do it as accountants. Honest, loyal and sincere as you want but still and only accountants. And you are also the maximum that today the best Italy can offers: this is why I say that we are a country in free fall. At the end of the day, however, the bottom will come inevitable.

********************

Costantino Ceoldo - Pravda freelance

Original article about Matteo Renzi:

https://english.pravda.ru/society/128905-blood_rover/

Photo: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Colosseum_in_Rome,_Italy_-_April_2007.jpg