Beach policy

The leap was sudden, unexpected and violent, from tens of thousands infected with Covid, we suddenly passed to millions, one official, three presumed; shock statement by experts in print and on TV; a different, frightening apocalypse, but so great that we no longer fear it. Perhaps it was the desired result, the culmination of a studied strategy, the reckoning with the virus, society coming to terms with reality.

After the time of slowing down, suspension and fear we have returned to the time of typically Italian indifference, that magical aura in which each of our compatriots feels free to do what he wants, quietly not caring about the rules, good manners and very often even the simple common sense … The torpedoing of Draghi teaches. When the examples come from above, it's easy to navigate collective idiocy, going on holiday without the current government "oppressing" us makes us feel freer to express our widespread ignorance, to fire free-wheeling judgments and sentences with the umbrella companion, to freely acquit or condemn anyone without the cumbersome embarrassment of a comparison, of a simple reasoning, much less of a sensible self-criticism.

Just like the government, Covid (despite the numbers) also seems to have dissolved to clear customs for a summer without thoughts and worries. The times and ways of Italian holidays have changed but absolutely not the approach, not the consolidated habit of throwing everything behind in the hope that on return someone will pay off the debts, cover the overdrafts and take back the reins of a policy to be too much time adrift. In a democracy, elections are the instrument appointed for this purpose, but in our country it is not the instrument that causes serious concern but those voters, the same ones who a month earlier, in costume, pontificated on the beaches about the ills of the world and about the systems to solve them. Unfortunately, the politicians who will express are the translation and embodiment of their thinking and the autumn that awaits us, I fear, will not be in good hands.

Michelangelo Dotta

NP Agosto-Settembre 2022