Update: the crisis is over

A few years ago a beautiful film was made – Black Hawk Down – about an episode which later caused the U.S.A. to exit the conflict that had covered Somalia in blood: a helicopter transporting Delta Force special troops had been shot down, and in the resolve to “leave no one behind”, other helicopters which had come to the rescue were also shot down in a sort of escalation; the operation consequently developed into a dramatic defeat for the super-equipped American military.
“Leave no one behind” is a noble sentence which came to my mind when, after the earthquake in Emilia, those involved in territory management, in politics and in civil protection hurried to state that “no-one would be left alone”. And I shivered to think of the way things go in our Country, and how it might compare with what happened in Somalia. Let’s hope for the best.
On the other hand, impact sentences is what we are masters at; can you remember when the then premier Silvio Berlusconi, in a playful attempt to downplay the economic crisis, stated that “we are not so much in trouble: our restaurants are always full of people”? Well, we saw what happened.
I had the funniest experience (if I may call it so) in Via Monte Napoleone, the kingdom of luxury shopping: a gentleman was walking fast, cell phone glued to his ear, speaking in a loud, tense voice; as he walked past me, I heard him say: “The crisis is over”. “it’s a good thing that someone thinks positive” I thought to myself “poverty has started!”
Citing a famous quote, pronounced in a speech by J.F. Kennedy: “Ask not what your country can do for you — ask what you can do for your country”, we can answer that with our work, the respect of rules, our commitment to overcome difficulties, we do a great deal, and we wish the others would also stop talking and feeding us fables.
In an interesting article published by Corriere della Sera on 7 June, titled “The neo-language of politics is no camouflage for old vices”, Pierluigi Battista, speaking of the distance now existing between words and reality, wrote, among other things: “If the gap between words and facts becomes too wide, the political parties risk a collapse of their (residual) credibility. /…../ The untruthful language that calls “independent” the Authorities controlled by political parties, defines as “reimbursements” the state financing of political parties which had been repudiated by a deliberately ignored popular referendum, edulcorates as “governance” the spoil system, has come to the end of the line.
This is the time for seriousness, and – who knows? – these negative experiences may have finally taught us something.