Comment on the vent
(… the "Sfogatoio" post has attracted a lot, too much attention. I thank everyone and will give a collective response here, then I'll give individual ones calmly …)
I watch with Olympian indifference as the gap widens between the interests of the author of this blog, which necessarily constitute the blog's topic, namely economics (which, with all due respect, you don't understand much about), and the interests of the blog's community, namely politics (which, with all due respect, you don't understand a damn thing about, but I'm grateful you come and teach me for free)!
It shouldn't be difficult to understand the whys and wherefores of the referendum result.
I didn't say it publicly beforehand , I just said it in a private situation. to one of you (with whom I won a bet) in the presence of three other people (a regional councilor with his assistant and a public manager), and it wasn't at all difficult to understand. It should also be easy to understand why I haven't said it publicly to all of you: it's what another friend told me is called "the auditor's paradox." There are roles in which you can't afford to issue a prophecy because it risks being self-fulfilling, or simply exposing yourself to the unfortunate reputation of being a doomsayer. Faced with this risk, the empty vanity gain of adding yet another QED or VLAD is completely irrelevant (and, besides, the latest edition of our annual conference was also a way to end it with QEDs, whose utter political irrelevance we have noted, because, as a speaker at the next annual conference told me: no one lives in a counterfactual ).
However, those who have been following the blog from the beginning had (would have had) the elements to understand how it would end.
The referendum vote was not a vote for the judiciary (which, as we have understood, barely half of Italians do not trust anyway, something the judiciary itself, after the vote, is aware of ), or for the Constitution (the origins and content of which nine-tenths of Italians legitimately ignore), and it was not even a vote against the Government (which 99 percent of Italians cannot distinguish from Parliament).
The referendum vote was, like many previous votes (referendums or not), a vote of hatred towards "politics", that is, towards parliamentarians, that is, towards the representatives of the people (because for Italians, "politics" is Parliament, even though it is right before their eyes that politics is made in other places: in Brussels, in the ANM and in private markets , with respect to which Parliament could offer a minimum of guarantees).
The outcome was fairly obvious; one only had to examine historical developments. The Italians:
- they voted (or did not vote) to reduce the number of parliamentarians in 2020;
- then they did not vote to reform the justice system in the referendums promoted by the Radicals and the League in 2021 (a clear sign of the irrelevance of the problem in their eyes, with the paradox that at the time the issue was so relevant that even the PD felt obliged to address it by proposing the establishment of a high disciplinary court );
- Then in 2025, from 200,000 followers, we managed to extract just 2,000 signatures in support of the restoration of Article 68 of the Constitution.
Two points are enough to identify a straight line, but when three points line up along the same straight line, that of the punishment of the hated politics, the idea that the fourth could be an outlier is a pious illusion.
The Italian electorate is now ensnared and captivated by the anti-political narrative: first Clean Hands, and then Grillo's movement, with the support of globalist governance appendages like Transparency International and the like , have confirmed the average voter's single certainty: that their worst enemy is their own representatives. The synchronicity of Clean Hands with Britannia should make us understand who benefits from disseminating and entrenching this belief, and we've talked about this a lot here (you've talked about it especially, for example here , here , here , and countless other times). Moreover, those reading me from a PC will see that the first entry in the tag cloud is "propaganda": it's no coincidence that we've been interested in social conditioning techniques from the very beginning, and that among our welcome guests and protagonists in our dissemination efforts are the authors of La fabbrica del falso and Gli stregoni della notizia . It is no coincidence that this allowed us to predict things that were far more difficult to predict than the referendum result (which on Polymarket had been losing since March 3 , as a friend of ours pointed out to me earlier ), such as the union between the PD and the 5 Star Movement , which today we all take for granted, but which in 2016 was only legible to those who had our analysis tools.
Before I go any further, however, let me make a necessary clarification: I wouldn't want this factual statement (the subservience of the Italian people—including the elite—to the self-racist and anti-political narrative) to be mistaken for the usual, stale radical chic recrimination against the people who vote badly, my lady!, because they're ignorant or misinformed (by Russian bots or by the media controlled by big financial capital, it makes little difference). If I'd ever wanted to continue to think this way (I don't think I've ever thought this way, actually…), I could have remained on the left! The people's hatred for their representatives may seem like that of a child kicking the table leg he's hit his head on, and perhaps in some rare cases it is even that. But we must not hide the fact that in reality this hatred, however counterproductive it may be (like any self-hatred), is in fact a perfectly rational response to the fact that in the context we have placed ourselves in (allegedly by the will of that same people), the representatives, for the people they represent, cannot do anything, and consequently have done nothing!
Among the many things that others don't know and we know, there is this:
The red dot corresponds to the date I wrote Orthoptera and Ducklings , the post in which, after an inadvertently enlightening statement by Grillo (who left the scene in the way you know, by the way…), according to which the problem was not the euro but the public debt, I commented:
But if even then the little Dr. Livores, rotten with envy and social hatred, were legion, how many more are there after fourteen years in which the rules of enlightened European governance have allowed virtually no one to significantly gain ground? Moreover, although I don't believe it was decisive, the graph on real wages, which we last saw in December, updated with the data released on March 4th, looks like this:
Growth stalled in the winter, and that certainly didn't help. But even leaving aside this economic data, the number of little Dr. Livores certainly hasn't diminished over the last fourteen years! Each of us knew one, and now we know dozens. Any attempt, including this one (assuming it wasn't the only one), to channel their justified resentment (a €602 billion hole in real GDP is no joke…) towards something less self-destructive than self-hatred (or, for that matter , hatred of one's own representatives), we can confidently say has failed. Part of this failure is the inability to make people understand the shame graph, but another part consists in the fact that that graph, even if not understood, is felt to the marrow of the bones by the vast majority of Italians, who ultimately don't even know why they're sick, given that they don't know how long they've been sick, and who's responsible for them. The answer to this malaise, as serious as it is difficult to pinpoint because it has developed over time, creeping forward, in the form of stagnation, not recession, is obviously itself a blurry response, aimed at an indistinct target: politics.
Now, I started this blog to help those who were hurting (and I failed) by making myself understood (and I failed), and it's certainly not time for me to change my mind and blame the recipients for my (and their) failure! This is to avoid the "blame the voter!" complaint, but not without remembering that the voter, as an adult, is objectively responsible for the results of his or her choices or inactions, so much so that he or she pays the price if they are wrong.
I would like to add another clarification.
You, dear friends, are a people in the legal, constitutional sense, you are a part of that people to whom sovereignty belongs, but in sociological terms, by the simple fact of being here, you are an elite and, I assure you, you know less than a third of a fifteenth of half a damn thing about the people (said with affection). What "the people" think, I know, I who every day get confused and mixed up in it, I, who every week, in Pizzoferrato, in Sant'Omero, in Villa Santa Lucia, or wherever the destiny I have chosen spits out at me, "I then move to the street, to the inn; I talk to those who pass by, I ask for news of their villages; I understand various things, and I notice the different tastes and different fantasies of men" (and naturally "I get naughty all day long playing cricca, trich-trach, and I vent this malignity of this fate of mine, being happy for it to trample me in this street, to see if it would shame it.")
(… a warm thought to those schooled in the 21st century who will have to Google …)
Now, of course, the referendum was being talked about, and so I too, "at the villa," talked about it "at the inn" with those who knew who I was, and with those who, thanks to the attentive offices of the Abruzzo public service, didn't know at all: different men, but their fantasies were singularly coincident (and coincident with Polymarket's prediction), the idea they had of the referendum was one and only one: that their enemy (the parliamentarians) had found a way to get away with it, to escape the axe of justice, and that this had to be prevented at all costs.
Miscarriages of justice? They happen, and they won't happen to me (just like the needle, right?)
The total impunity of those who commit them? Who cares, it won't happen to me anyway, and anyway, it's better than politicians sitting in the palace doing nothing.
The subversive desire to impose a political direction that diverges from the popular will (obviously expressed in a way understandable by a Marrucino or a Frentano or a Marsicano: "Excuse me, but how can the police guarantee safety if you lock them up and they take them out?")? Yes, fine, this is a scandal, you can't leave your house anymore (in L'Aquila!), but the real problem is that they've eaten everything and want to get away with it.
We are.
Still.
Here.
Point.
The rest is pure mental masturbation of select members of affluent society , including our Valeriuccio and our Marcellino.
Having made this necessary clarification, I'd like to move on to a point that, banal as it may be, I don't think anyone has made, except me privately to some of you (up until what I'm telling you above, the third Feltri, Mattia, has actually reached this point). Whether we like it or not, Giorgia Meloni's success was also a success of anti-politics. In fact, I don't believe it was due, like Matteo Salvini's success in 2018, to the proposal of a different worldview. On the contrary! While I'm the first to say that social media is a distorting lens, if we pretend for a moment that there are real people behind certain accounts, or even if we step down a few decks from the first class of the Titanic, we can see that many of the prime minister's decisions, even though they were explicitly announced in the platform of the party with the relative majority, are met with some disapproval from his voters. However, they either haven't read the platform (the most likely scenario) or have held their noses and awarded Giorgia anyway. And why? Because she opposed Draghi, that is, (like it or not) politics!
Yes, I know full well that LVI isn't "politics" but "technique." I know it, you know it, but we are the elite. The "non-elite," there's no point in beating around the bush, saw in LVI yet another incarnation (or metastasis) of that dark, demonic power, fluid and indistinct, which here we colloquially call #aaaaabolidiga (with the five "a's" of the Five Star Movement).
And the "non-elite" had opposed this.
I'd add that, although I've never discussed the topic with the interested party, who certainly doesn't have time for such a slapdash analysis, I believe she was somehow aware of this, with her characteristic intelligence. Let me give you a few examples. We all know, including the author, that Delrio's provincial reform should be dismantled, not only because LVI requested it in the ECB letter ( point 3 ), but above all because it created a situation of unmanageability in the territory, which emerged tragically in its acute phase in Rigopiano, but has pervaded and persisted in its chronic phase everywhere (right now in Silvi, for example, a provincial road is collapsing…). The response seems to have been: let's leave everything as it is, otherwise Italians will accuse us of thinking about jobs! We all know that the 1993 constitutional reform severely altered the balance of power within the state, but the proposal (which, unlike the proposal on remigration, lacked popular support) to restore Article 68 in its original form met with considerable coldness from the party with the largest majority. The argument was, too, "Let's leave everything as it is, otherwise Italians will accuse us of seeking impunity!" I should add that, of course, throughout the legislature, there were rumblings of a reshuffle, but the argument was always: we mustn't make Italians think we care about our seats!
Now, let's be honest: I've had enormous respect for the current prime minister ever since Antonio Triolo introduced him to me—it'll soon be fifteen years. At first, though, these arguments irritated me, because I found them to be 5 Star Movement-style. Then I said to myself: Carlo Carafa wasn't a good guy, and in fact he met a bad end, but he did say one thing right: vulgus vult decipi, ergo decipiatur . Besides, that's what I always tell you: when you're clearly outnumbered, you have to exploit your opponent's strength, and if the majority of the people have chosen you as their enemy, to beat them you have to do (or at least say) exactly what they want. It's called demagogy, and it works (usually to screw the people, but also to help them, since both require the people to give you power as a necessary condition). Less bluntly, and perhaps more truthfully: Western democracies are in the hands of two simple people: voters and "the markets," that is, a few dozen idiot savants educated in Anglo-Saxon universities. These simple people need simple messages: for example, you might think the government needs a makeover, but how much more effective is this as a message to the markets (or voters): we have guaranteed five years of stability! And, mind you, I'm not saying this is wrong! On the contrary! Once the political prerequisites for consensus were in focus, these choices were exactly what needed to be made, and in fact, even when I disagreed (as a parliamentarian), I always remained respectfully silent, waiting to understand, and I understood. I'm still one of those who thinks that if we were to add a nice market storm to the mess we're in, we wouldn't have solved a damn thing, but that's just my opinion (which stems from the belief that the storm will come anyway—just look at how the ECB is distancing itself from private markets —and therefore it's better not to take responsibility for having caused it).
Naturally, on this basis, expecting the fourth point, the referendum on the "separation of powers," to fall outside the scope of the plan was a bit rash, especially since an "anti" mandate isn't exactly a mandate to reform the country, but to fight the enemy: Parliament. From this perspective, therefore, the so-called "premierato," to the extent that it punishes those treacherous turncoats among parliamentarians who dare take Article 67 of the Constitution too seriously, is, or would have been, a much more palatable reform (I'm sorry to point this out, but in Italian, "palatabile" doesn't exist, and it's a good thing it doesn't) than a referendum held "to escape the judiciary" (because that's how it was understood).
What is it?
So everything is fine and it's the people's fault?
No, not everything is going well (it seems obvious to me) and it is not the people's fault.
I have argued sufficiently that the fault does not lie with the "people", I can even repeat myself, but it seems more useful to dwell on the rest.
The first thing that didn't go well, once this rash choice was made, was the narrative of the reform. And the accusatory rite, and the inquisitorial rite, and the founding fathers, and the Vassalli reform, and all the things that most people cared nothing about, when it could easily have been told like this:
that is, in a "logical-cultural" way, as my friend Mario used to say, starting from the assumption that there are certain categories of people, such as doctors and magistrates, who in order to do good must do harm (cut, incarcerate), that this harm must be done with serenity in the interest of all, and that any errors committed must not be demonized but must be managed: it makes no sense to arrest a surgeon for assault the very moment he cuts the skin to go and see what's underneath, but it also makes no sense for a magistrate who forgetfully leaves a person in prison for months, or a magistrate specialized in trawling (after all, there are no innocent people, only guilty people who have gotten away with it) to live in the certainty of impunity.
Mistakes are human, but in this case, there's a risk that they'll be above average, and the risk stems from the fact that the trial doesn't guarantee the judge a serene judgment, because the judge's career advancement depends on a body that might include the prosecutor or his friend. Hence the call for career separation. Not the functions, which are already distinct in the trial, but the careers, the judgments on the performance of magistrates.
Impunity, in turn, depends on the fact that disciplinary power is entrusted to the same body that exercises administrative functions. If you get a fine you believe to be unjustified, where do you go to contest it? To the city council? And why should the person who installed the speed camera be held responsible for it? Obviously, go to the justice of the peace (within 30 days), for the simple and obvious reason that you'll avoid having to address the party involved. Conversely, when a magistrate mishandles his or her duties, the person who installed them is the one who is called upon to judge their actions (a bit like asking the mayor to verify whether the speed camera he installed to raise money is approved…)! It's clear why it doesn't work, right?
On top of all that , due to an electoral law from 1975, well after the Constitution, CSM elections are held using the proportional method in a single national constituency. This means creating gigantic electoral committees, ranging from Aosta's "A" to Agrigento's "A," which are used to decide who to put on the list and in what position, and to organize the electoral campaign, a campaign that, like all campaigns, is obviously based on the question "what will you give me if I vote for you?" Here, politics plays a role, in the worst, party-political sense of the term, and to solve this problem, there is only one method, the one the orthopterans proposed: drawing lots.
2589 beats.
Point.
When he spoke, the prime minister told it like this. Could or should he have done so earlier? I don't know. Were many counterproductive things said? Certainly. I'd add that since the ultracaste has revealed itself, it would have been enough to let her speak. But unfortunately, there is a right that, in its desire to be or appear better than the left, intends to surpass it in everything, even in communication errors.
Amen.
The most serious problem, however, is and remains another, the solution to which risks being postponed to generations of a future that is now very distant, because I am increasingly convinced that this solution cannot but involve a very painful transition: the problem of how to rebuild a world in which the people's representatives are free to represent the people with even a modicum of effectiveness! The solution to this problem involves a process of emancipation for the country, which, we know, is not within the left's reach, and therefore requires the right to enter and maintain power, naturally demonstrating its deservingness, and respecting the rules (since those who can afford not to respect them have won!).
And here's where the right falls, not only because it didn't reflect carefully on the nature of its consensus (this concerns everyone, including us), but above all because it didn't carefully select the people it wanted to represent, as the left did and continues to do! We've said this many times here, haven't we? The Marie Antoinettes of the left gave, in no particular order , same-sex marriage, the schwa, inclusion, kleema, the vote for young people, migrants, children, and so on to the people who wanted bread. In doing so, the Marie Antoinettes built an electorate in their own image and likeness , which worked very well because it allowed them not so much to choose the soldiers to fight with, but the terrain on which to fight! Not the issue of income distribution and social justice, where, if someone on the right were even slightly malicious, they risk being held accountable (see the €602 billion hole above), but the issue of many identity battles that, however minority, and indeed precisely because they are minority, are likely to attract strong "pro" involvement, the only one capable of overcoming, or rather circumventing and directing, the widespread "anti" involvement. This shift in focus is evident: ultimately, choosing Schlein over Bersani made sense, and this was the sense (whether intentional and conscious or not). Because yes, in the towns with names no shorter than four syllables like I wander among, but also in the sub-proletarianized tertiary sectors, that is, among the famous "people" (in the sociological sense), the vote was against #aaaaabolidiga. But, of course (the pollsters will certainly have measured it), this vote against politics was joined by a vote against the government, that is, against fasheesmo, that is, for the kids, and so on. What makes the demands of the colorful left compatible with the endemic indifference here is, after all, precisely the fact that those demands don't seem (and in fact perhaps aren't) political, that is, they don't seem "political."
And this explains the celestial correspondence of loving feelings between those who voted against their real interests and those who voted for their perceived interests!
What can we do?
I'm going straight ahead and I keep thinking the same way I did fourteen years ago:
We must continue to resist, without ignoring an awareness that I believe we have all reached by now—or at least I have, by studying history more closely, particularly that of my constituency: those who decided to risk everything back then, in most cases, did so because they had nothing left to lose. In other words, it remains tragically true that for the beloved Italian people, like so many others, to begin loving democracy again and reject the lure of anti-politics, they must experiment a little with the alternative. In short, it's the usual story, a bit paternalistic but no less valid, of the Chichijima effect : every now and then, when no one succeeds, something needs to make those born on the right side of the income distribution reflect that peace and democracy must be daily achievements, that they are achieved neither by the slaughter of representatives nor by the tyranny of minorities. I've been making these considerations for a long time, and I see them no less timely after what has happened.
We must resist, but we must definitively abandon our Enlightenment faith in the saving power of truth. The claim that truth can set us free can only be made known to those with very good recommendations, and even then, it doesn't necessarily end well (so the story goes)! Of course, this blog still rests, in part, on this wonderful illusion. Making those who don't live in a counterfactual understand that another world is possible is an arduous and thankless task. In doing so, you know you'll make enemies (for example, the ECB and its local branches ), but perhaps you don't consider that your most bitter enemy will be the very person you theoretically wanted to help! That's fine. We don't even have to worry too much. While we're asking ourselves so many questions here, two forces are working to restore balance: one is the rejection of globalism now expressed by the majority of European voters (I'm limiting myself to these because they're the ones who can help us rethink the system we're stuck in), and the other is the violence of the markets. In the meantime, to hold our ground, we need to understand that "if I eat everything" is an unalterable biometric constant: you can't fight it; you have to find a way around it. I don't think this has anything to do with tax rates, or with projects large or small, unfortunately. I'll just point out one thing: this blog somehow anticipated the left's approach, because it created a conscious and angry minority (which I believe is more or less still around). Therefore, conscious and angry minorities, which are Kryptonite for anti-politics, can be built even outside the scope of messages permitted by the "left-wing" intelligentsia.
I won't add anything else for now, waiting for your revered comments.
(… to avoid any misunderstandings and spare you some unnecessary ones: I know full well that reducing the number of parliamentarians was also in the League's 2018 program. I learned about it later, to be honest, but I know it in 2026! So there's no point in telling me. It wouldn't be pointless to know whether it was a private conviction, or a way of exploiting the opponent's strength: but we'll never know that …)
This is a machine translation of a post (in Italian) written by Alberto Bagnai and published on Goofynomics at the URL https://goofynomics.blogspot.com/2026/03/commento-allo-sfogatoio.html on Sat, 28 Mar 2026 17:58:00 +0000. Some rights reserved under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 license.