Notes on journalistic garbage (and not only) in the time of the Coronavirus
Michael Magno's Notepad
No one is a liar like the indignant man, says an aphorism by Nietzsche. The Italians, also thanks to a brazenly indignant press campaign, were very indignant at the salary increase of Pasquale Tridico, the president of INPS . Of course, this has nothing to do with the poor evidence it has provided over the course of its management, particularly in the most dramatic periods of the pandemic. But political criticism is one thing, demagogy is another. As Paolo Branca wrote in "Striprossa", here lies the last paradox of the story: the self-styled champions of guaranteeing and anti-populism of the government majority alongside Matteo Salvini and Giorgia Meloni in asking for the head of a public executive on the basis of a newspaper headline. It is really true that the virus of populism now spares no one.
But let us return to Nietzsche's aphorism. Are Italians therefore liars? Let's say that their moral indignation is very selective. Many navigators, for example, although regularly paid by working little or nothing, have asked for and received the subsidy of 600 euros. The recipients of citizenship income, on the other hand, were "compensated" with the temporary exemption from the obligation to accept a job offer. But no one has caused a scandal. After all, according to ISTAT and INPS data, we are a country in which half of the pensions are supplemented by the treasury and 44 percent of potential taxpayers do not pay taxes substantially (apart from tax evaders) because too short.
A third world scenario, which, however, is contrasted by a reality that sees, in addition to the well-known saving capacity of our compatriots, 49 million smartphones, 40 million cars in circulation (one per inhabitant excluding minors and over 80s), eight out of ten citizens homeowners. A sensational contradiction, which a brilliant battutist like Marcello Marchesi might have explained as follows: the world is made up of stairs, but those who are smart take the lift.
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There are many customs of the Italians that in his elzeviri Ennio Flaiano was able to describe and anticipate with melancholy disenchantment, in the eternal awareness that in our country "the political situation is serious but not serious". In one of the most corrosive, he writes:
“Will is power: the uniform of this century. Too many people who 'want', full only of will (not Kantian 'good will', but the will to ambition); too many incapable ones who have to assert themselves and succeed, without other aptitudes than a hard and opaque will. And where do they direct it? In the fields of art very often, which are today the largest and most ambiguous, a West where everyone makes his own law and imposes it on the sheriffs. Here, their unbridled will can be mistaken for talent, for ingenuity, however for intelligence. Thus, these desperate people without quality of heart and mind, live in the thrill of arriving, of performing, they learn something easy, maybe they remake the verse of some of their elective teachers, who despises them. They then greedily manage their poor forces, follow fashions, keeping up to date, always afraid of making mistakes, ready for the fatigue of flattery, impassive in the face of any refusal, fierce in victory, pleading in defeat. Until the Fame decides to go to bed with them out of exhaustion, only once: just to get them out of the way "(Notebook 1951, in" Night diary ").
Seventy years ago he was a disconsolate and severe portrait of the literary society of his time. Today it could very well be that, faithful and crude, of the "nouvelle vague" of the citizens who once loved to perform festively from the balconies of the Roman palaces of power.
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In the summer of 1874, when Gustave Flaubert began writing the odyssey of the two copyists Bouvard and Péchuchet, he set out to draw up an inventory of human stupidity, a subject that haunted him from his youth. Published posthumously and unfinished seven years later, no one is saved in this brilliant philosophical novel that anticipates today's talk shows and reality shows. Its protagonists marvelously embody the "Anyone" who goes crazy on the Internet: equipped with a strong gregarious instinct, he is a gullible all-rounder who gorges himself on clichés and casually passes from one topic to another, unable to choose but convinced he get anywhere with little effort.
Flaubert uses the impassivity of the medical report to draw up a merciless indictment against a consoling and deceptive false knowledge. Stupidity angers him and, at the same time, fascinates him. He makes Pécuchet say that the bourgeois are greedy, the workers envious, the priests servile and the people vile and insipid; and to Bouvard that progress is a lie and politics a filth. The literary critic Ernesto Ferrero wrote that his greatness is precisely that of making art with such a degraded material, mounting a masterful treatise on the banality of evil, on the haughtiness of culture, on human mediocrity. If the author of "Madame Bovary" lived today, probably to tell the "bêtise" (idiocy) of Biscontian Italy he would mainly use the garbage produced, now in industrial quantities, on the mass media and on social networks by a political class always more embarrassing.
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"If a large part of the voters are on the payroll of the state […] If the members of parliament no longer see themselves as taxpayer agents but as representatives of those who receive wages, salaries, subsidies and other benefits taken from public resources, democracy is doomed ”(Ludwig von Mises).
Any reference to those who… now the Cassa Depositi e Prestiti intervenes is not purely coincidental.
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In classical culture black is associated with fatal days, death, the underworld. In the Judeo-Christian tradition the devil, prince of darkness, is personified in the Ethiopian who, for his "nigredo", surpasses even the Egyptian, the historical enemy of the chosen people. As “niger puer” the devil introduces himself to Antonio and Gregorio Magno, black is the valley of Dante's hell. In the “Chanson de Roland” a Saracen, with the significant name of Abyss, is “black as molten pitch”. Let's hope the politically correct de 'noantri ignore it. They would be able, in fact, to burn the Bible and the texts of ancient Romance literature.
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The Hermannsdenkmal is the largest monument in Germany. It was inaugurated by the architect Ernst von Bandel in 1875. It is made up of a base and a statue that are both twenty-seven meters high. It stands on a wooded hill near Detmold, a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, in the southern part of the Teutoburg Forest. The statue depicts Arminius, who in 9 AD exterminated the Roman legions of Publio Quintilio Varo. The Duce dei Cherusci holds a sword, seven meters long, facing west. Below, under the left foot, are an eagle and a bundle. On the base stands the inscription "Deutsche Einigkeit Meine Stärke" ("My strength is united Germany"). The monument, a symbol of the Teutonic national spirit, is a pilgrimage destination for nearly two million Germans every year. I prefer the over four million Italians (and foreigners) who, before the lockdown, visited the Uffizi Galleries every year.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/noterelle-sulla-spazzatura-giornalistica-e-non-solo-ai-tempi-del-coronavirus/ on Sat, 03 Oct 2020 05:10:40 +0000.