The Age of Suicide
Content
The Age of
Suicide
BEGINNING WITH THE ITALIANS
Anyone who has lived in another nation other than his or her own
—anthropologists suggest that one needs three or four or five
years to acclimate to a new environment—knows very well more
about themselves and the nation they were conceived in. David
Hume alleged that knowledge is the assurance that arises from the
comparison of ideas. Pitting one life experience against another is
sure to reap profit for the two-fisted character burning with
curiosity to know still more about herself or himself and others. It
is to be noted here that the extreme difficulty that the European
Union is at present experiencing stems, in part, from the
excessively modest cross border emigrations of its half billion
citizens who are not gratified with communicating with each other
as much as they are willing to forge commercial enterprises with
them. There exists in Europe a haunting, strongly paranoid residue
of the twentieth century during which, in two world wars, the
Europeans literally obliterated most trust others might have held
in them. For Europeans to coalesce and form a brotherhood, a
European Union, is something almost impossible to do at this time
and place in History; Europeans are still “shell-shocked”—or as it
is said in psychiatric parlance “mentally confused, upset, or
exhausted as a result of excessive stress”—from the desolation
that World War I and World War II inflicted on their now physically
and psychically expended, despairing continent.
My dear reader, have you noticed the bran-new way war is being
waged? It is really unparalleled. Nothing like it has ever been
before prosecuted. In “the old days,” artillery units and air forces
just fired away and bombed away to their hearts' content not
1
thinking, in the least, what the accuracy percentages of their
wipeouts were. Cities in Japan and Europe—to cite two far-famed
for instances—were unmercifully razed to the ground. Today some
“Chicago Boys” boast that this “creative destruction” helped both
the devastated Japan and Germany to “miraculously” redesign
their infrastructures to adapt to some laissez-faire Future without
remaining solidified in a Past reminiscent of today's
uncompromising Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain—the proverbial
weisenheimers, the “PIGS”—that war might be thought to be
something that the means of which justify its ends. Monsieur
Small-minded Machiavelli? Monsieur Buttoned-up Clausewitz?
Throughout the world, in present-day times, “little, itsy-bitsy wars”
are being combated with aplomb. Photojournalists and “war”
correspondents are feeding the world's media business
establishments with live footage of the mini battles they witness
after they have swooped into areas already smouldering with the
stench of dead bodies and the fearsome screams of the victims'
relatives. Their CVs are replete with “combat actions” from here
and there and over there! These diarists more frequently see the
consequences of an event rather than that outcome's causal
agency.
Television commentators, preposterously, continue to
debate the why's and when's and who's and where's and how's of
how these violent clashes will bear upon the peace of the world,
while arms dealers are cashing in, as never before, outfitting even
teenage boys and—you guessed it!—girls. The DisUnited States'
armed forces are scurrying left and right—globally!—from one
point on our planet to the next, with their unconvinced allies in
tow, knowing no limits to their virtuously biased desires to
inculcate a new-found international hegemony very often smuttily
Christenized. It is as if no one has read the Constitution of the
DisUnited States of America.
The implements of war's technological advances which these
“little, itsy-bitsy wars” employ would raise to the skies the
eyebrows of Sun Tzu. The novel methods of combating for what
powerfulness stands for is in real time a complicated,
sophisticated mixture.
The enormous world-wide industrial
military complexes of not only the major industrialized nations but
also China and the Russian Federation, are more than generous in
supplying militants—even the umpteen mini soldierlike factions—
with the technical savoir faire and versatility they demand for
2
providing what is to be used on the battlefield or on some city's
streets. On the sea and in the air, electronic military ordnances
are tremendously efficacious. Nothing and no one escapes their
detection if it has been decided to null and void some nailed
target.
If the progress in armament development is staggering, so too is
the forward motion that has influenced military tactics and
geopolitical strategy. There are too many instances which testify
to the fact that nations are not in the main fighting unfriendly
nations; rather, peoples are fighting each other in their own
countries.
Conflicts are not exploding outwardly; they are
imploding inwardly. Sun Tzu's dream come true? Political leaders
appear toothless attempting to balance the polarizations of their
citizenries, and in some body politics the tensions of the opposing
factions are so fierce, they are causing very formidable economic,
social and political troubles for all concerned. Government by the
people is becoming, more and more, an obsolete notion.
How are we to react to the significance of these “little, itsy-bitsy
wars”—if they have any meaning at all? To begin, we should
observe that probably only “20%” of all combatants—engaged in
all the wars that have ever been contended throughout History—in
reality harboured the “will to kill” and even went about doing so.
Any successful armed force earnestly depends on rear-echelon
emplacements where pacifists and corrupt supply sergeants and
relatives of politicians “courageously” serve their country. Of that
approximative “20%,” there are embedded combatants who will
either respect or not esteem those conventions defining the do's
and don'ts of warfare. Roughly “80%” of the soldiers who have
joined up to fight, when they have been finally trained to go into
combat, or have actually experienced what battle is about, regret
that they ever enrolled or were recruited, and they do all that they
can to avoid being killed or even waffle at killing the enemy—in
reality
one
of
their
confreres,
philosophically
and
anthropomorphically speaking! From a sociological point of view,
most of the “hoi polloi” living in any country are not individuals
who are looking for any form of conflict. These “couch potatoes”
might be enlisted to help wage a war, but they will not generally
react violently unless they are made to become part of the
“20%”—those “deranged ones” with that major affective disorder
to “terminate others,” and who are vigorously instructed to do so
3
after being carefully culled from their non-combative fellows.
But, if conflicts are occurring not between nations but within
them, amongst peer nationalists, the entire orientation as to what
war signifies must be put to the test. Any police commissioner,
with a PhD in sociology, will concur with that “20%” figure noting
that it is a so-so measurement but one that helps him collocate his
community's statistics of violence. (In Europe and South America,
the football stadium is the rectum into which the sociological
thermometer is inserted to measure the violent somatic sensations
of sports' partisans.) Police are required to zero in on those areas
of their constituencies that report the most grievous crime data—
usually those spheres where the poor and uneducated orbit. Law
enforcement agencies do not patrol university libraries or Sunday
church services—yet! “Little, itsy-bitsy wars,” evermore, are being
“contained” and “restricted” through the use of electronic
contrivances and the analyses of social media promulgation.
Police units are coming to look decidedly militaristic.
The ethical implications of this novel method of killing off human
beings are uncannily provocative, and the consequences of this
know-how must be vigorously debated. On one hand, we have the
point of view of the authoritative elements who claim that theirs
are those prophylactic measures that are impeding the outcome of
at least World War III—or, some kind of Universal War I. That
“little, itsy-bitsy wars” among recalcitrant factions—whether they
be considerably large in scope or mini in dimension—are being
checked, restrained. The authoritarians also contest that they are
in the right to even agitate confrontations—using clever diplomatic
ploys and social media networks to disseminate their doctrines—to
acerbate discords which “smoke out” the “bad guys” who are then
blacklisted in police and intelligence dossiers.
Psychological
warfare and Newspeak have therefore been raised to still a higher
level with the use of the Internet. To what degree are the despotic
ones responsible for their actions?
Are they?
Under what
concepts of jurisprudence do they operate? To whom must they
respond? At this writing, it appears that we are in an ethical freefor-all with no point of reference to achieve a sense of respect and
serenity for the binding customs and practices of a community that
we require to peacefully live amongst ourselves.
On the other hand, the heavy-handedness (“Might Is Right!”) of
4
the Surveillance State is desultory. Double-faced. For the most
part it spins its wheels not gaining traction. The SS imparts the
notion that it has under control the PCs and Smartphones of some
7,295,000,000 individuals (world population at the moment of this
writing, 16 February 2015). An insurmountable task. There is no
one who does not believe that he or she might be subject to some
kind of “police work.” All are living in a state of suspicion.
Children who go to high school cannot escape the thought that one
of their mates, freaked out on some violent electronic game, might
go crazy enough to shoot them. People travelling on commercial
airlines have to think—after extremely accurate security
procedures—that the worst is that their jet just might blow up.
What if you were a Jewish worshipper in some French synagogue;
or, a Roman Catholic in Libya or Nigeria? It is unrealistic not to be
uneasy. The SS makes certain that all are extremely fearful—that
our dread will make us alert, make us be sentinels in order to
make us report the questionable behavior of others.
Strapped to our backs is not only the yoke of psychical torment.
The uncertainties that plague the world's economic institutions are
still another subject matter that haunts us viciously. Corruption,
financial finagling and the unjust distribution of wealth in favor of
the few, are direct sources of pain and anger. Billions of people
want to share in a success that enables them to procure for
themselves and their families that which their more affluent
neighbors already possess sometimes in abundance. Already,
2,000,000,000 somebodies live on a mere $2.00 per day. It is
estimated that by 2050 there will be 10,000,000,000 persons
inhabiting our planet. Today, the seas are glutted with plastic bags
that are killing off marine life. Countries are threatened with
megadraughts.
Uncontrollable viruses are the unvarying
apprehensions of health officials in all corners of the world. There
is a horrible sense of precariousness even at a time when
civilization is at one of its highest, if not utmost, developmental
peaks. What is this price we must pay? Is this enormous toll
negating any sense of achievement we might have hoped for? Is
our victory one that brings down a devastation beyond the
accomplishments we have fought hard for?
Ample evidence already exists that our lifestyles—especially those
lived in the industrial nations—are flagrantly out of whack. The
use of licit and/or illicit drugs and medications, unhealthy dietary
practices, violent crime, addiction to work and/or play,
5
discrimination against women, racism...ad infinitum, put to
question the sanity of the way we conduct our lives.
Pharmaceutical companies have created a pill for more ailments
than we are able to count. The business of health is unhealthy.
The accumulation of wealth is not a gratification; it is an addiction.
People are in love with themselves more than they are in love with
others.
*
*
*
Perhaps Italy, the bellwether of so many other historic
phenomenon, can give us a clue as to what end we are in the
direction of as we bang along in our delirium. The Boot is a very
particular conglomeration of tradition and artistic endowment.
Once it was the fifth richest nation in Europe. Now it is the
nineteenth. Once it was in third place at attracting tourists from
all over the world. Now it places fifth. In March 2015, it is
considered one of the worst fifteen economies in the world. There
is an on-going decline not only in business opportunities—
economic growth has been receding since the 1990s—Italians, like
the Greeks, are horribly indebted, so much so that Italy is well on
its way to reaching the €3,000,000,000,000.00 liability tier.
11,000,000 Greeks x 5.4545454 = 60,000,000 Italians!
Let us refer, still further, to the Italian people.
There are
60,000,000 Italians...20% of the Italians are more than 65 years of
age...Italian debt, at this writing, is €2,595,933,000,000...Italian
unemployment, at this writing, is 12.9%...56% of the Italians have
a high school diploma...river beds and sewers are stuffed with
debris…there are fissures in foundations everywhere…roofs leak
in offices and homes…flood walls are in ruins…in the autumn, Italy
becomes the Land of Landslides…cigarette ashes are on the floors
of hospital delivery rooms…cockroaches scurry about on the
surgical wards…coffee cups are contaminated with microbes…
Italian cars begin to fall apart only months after they are
purchased…telephone, electric and gas bills are Russian
roulettes…trailer trucks zoom through residential areas and spew
black smoke in the faces of children…cars are upped on sidewalks,
cracked and broken…one arrives at an airport or train station
asking not when departure time is, but how late the plane or train
6
is…many cities in Italy are suffering an epidemic of clinical
depression...streets and highways are impregnated with breaks
and holes…lights in buses and apartment hallways are lit in the
middle of sunny days…monuments are crumbling; or, air pollution
is corroding them…downtown areas are gas chambers…school
bathrooms and heating systems often do not function…there are
not adequate sports facilities for children…Swiss ladies have
clauses in their health insurance policies to escape in an air
ambulance flight to Switzerland if they become ill…banks offer 3%
interest on savings then, after a month, decrease the interest to
1% without advising depositors…crooked churches threaten to
collapse…construction sites—left abandoned for years—dot the
countryside…floods, then droughts, damage crops…filth is in the
air and on the ground…stadiums are wrecked habitually by the
acts of violent fans…hills are polka-dotted with garbage…
supermarket shelves often are missing products…television
programming is the worst in Europe…thousands of companies are
in debt or going bankrupt…fountains are choked with scum and
refuse…repair work is shoddy…trees and plants are dying
whichever way you rivet your eyes…urban planning is nonexistent…motor scooters zoom to a standstill blocked in traffic…
50% of Europe's bank robberies occur in Italy...Italian teachers are
the lowest paid in Europe...Italy is a prisoner of its Past...only two
Italian universities are listed in the world's top 200...Italy is last in
Europe for the employment of women in managerial positions:
11.9%...Italian women are the most violent in Europe...one of
every five Italian fifteen-year-old kids is illiterate...30% of Italian
boys and girls 15-19 left school in 2012...7,000,000 of the
12,000,000 Italians over the age of 65 take at least four
medications each day...after Greece and Turkey, Italy is the most
corrupt nation in Europe...Italy's economic growth is the slowest
in Europe...50% of Italian youth between the ages of 30-34 live
with their parents...50% of Italian university students do not finish
their studies...40% of Italian business managers read a
newspaper...22% of Italian teachers are over 60 years of age and
are mostly women...the Italian judicial system is a syndicate of
criminal elements that fail to offer Italian citizens the satisfaction
of belonging to a nation that guarantees fairness and justice for all
its nationals...one of every three gasoline pumps in Italy is fixed to
defraud customers...Italian youth dream of having a sleek motor
vehicle and not a university degree...ad infinitum…
7
Henry Miller (1891-1980), American author, once narrated an
event during which an insurance salesperson sought to sell him a
policy. After explaining adequately the importance of protecting
his family, the broker began suggesting a list of insurance options
all of which HM accepted without hesitation. The agent was
perplexed. He asked HM why he was so cushy to transact with.
HM replied: “Do you think I care what will happen to me once I
am dead?”
No better analogy can describe Italy. Italians have not the least
interest about what might happen to them down the road because
today they believe there exists no hope for their country or
themselves. They are genuine predestinationists. There is this
mindset: Eat, drink and be merry because we will never be able to
pay off our debts!
There thrives the notion that the
insurmountable difficulties The Boot is confronted with are not the
concerns of the Italians. Some other thrust will have to assume
Italy's oppressive social and economical burdens simply because
Italians are not up to doing it themselves. As if to say “if no
solution is lined up for Italy, that is just tough luck for everyone
else.” In fact, most Italians believe that others must assume Italy's
quandaries—that even they should feel privileged to do so! (The
Italians are the creators of the political philosophy, movement,
regime that exalts nation and race above the individual, that
stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a
dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and
forcible suppression of the opposition. Notate bene: Since the
end of the Italian monarchy, seventy years ago, Italians have made
a burlesque of democracy—confirming their subconscious
reaffirmation of Fascism. There are 113 DisUnited States of
America military bases scattered throughout the Italian
peninsula.)
To just understand to what extent Italians have evolved to in their
masochistic revelries and ironclad determination to get their way
in these regards, we must reflect on the suicidal shenanigans that
are germinating these days in Italy.
Throughout the Italian
provinces, hospitals are overflowing with the elderly who have
been bloated beyond belief with licit and/or illicit drugs and
medications manufactured in England, France, the Americas and,
of course, Switzerland. These vegetating patients are so subdued
with synthetic pills, liquids and salves, they find it difficult to
8
locomote to hospital lavatories. Many of the decrepit ones are in
their eighties and nineties. (Central Intelligence Agency statistics
state that the average life expectancy for Italian males is 79.4
years, for women 84.8 years.) Cemeteries do not exist for the
12,000,000 Italians who are now over 65 years of age. As a matter
of fact, during the rainy seasons each year, landslides (Land of
Landslides) break open cemetery grounds and coffins are seen
floating all over the place. Sometimes, you can view a skeleton in
the muck. The response to this difficulty is, naturally, cremation,
but this act is anathema to Roman Catholic church canon laws,
and many religious Italians are ardently opposed, scared, at the
thought of being cremated. There are not many churchgoing
Roman Catholics left in Italy, nevertheless Italians can be counted
on to knee jerk to the medieval folderol of popes, cardinals and
bishops who blackmail the emotional states of Italians with guilt
and hocus-pocus. 79% of the Italians believe that they are
protected by a guardian angel.
An Italian doctor, even conscious of the Hippocratic Oath, will
secretly perform euthanasia if sufficiently coaxed and rewarded by
family members. The Italian judicial system will brand him or her
a “murderer” if push comes to push. The Roman Catholic church
will accuse the doctor of committing a sin—a mortal sin. The pope
will say nothing except “Let us pray.” (The only ones in Italy who
are praying are pious, non-violent Islamics who are frequently
victims of Italian racism and religious persecution.) There is
chitchat about an “underground railway” that illicitly transports
euthanasic candidates to Switzerland.
For those in Italy, who possesses a trace of dignity and courage
and would like to leave this world on his or her's own terms, there
exists another “extrajudicial” possibility. For €700, they will kill
you, burn you, and in Tuscany, the Cradle of the Renaissance,
sprinkle your ashes upon the Arno river, flowing through Florence,
where that residue will commingle with the cocaine and heroin
and other lawful and unlawful substances which are urinated each
day into the Arno and which consequently find their way to the
Tyrrhenian Sea where they there fuse with the plastic bags that
are choking off and poisoning the marine life upon which so many
Italians depend for a living. Naturally, Italians dress—excuse the
pun!—to kill for these occasions wearing the most elegant
Ferragamo shoes, toting the most exquisitely beautiful Gucci bags,
9
and Italian women are made-up to the hilt with their nails so
elegantly polished with an assortment of scintillating colors.
By the way, an Italian nurse is holder of the Guinness World
Record for serial killings. She is reputed to have killed off 90
elderly patients in the hospital where she was employed. Police
are still investigating to determine whether or not she sent even
more Italians to their Happy Hunting Grounds.
So much for Western Civilization I (Europe) &
Western Civilization II (DisUnited States of America)!
If you are thinking about taking a spin on a gondola around the
Venetian canals,
hurry up before it is too late!
And, bring a pair of galoshes—like those that reach your hips!
And, of course, have a nice nightmare!
Authored by Anthony St. John
The Ides of March MMXV
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribe.com/thewordwarrior
*
*
10
*
Suicide
BEGINNING WITH THE ITALIANS
Anyone who has lived in another nation other than his or her own
—anthropologists suggest that one needs three or four or five
years to acclimate to a new environment—knows very well more
about themselves and the nation they were conceived in. David
Hume alleged that knowledge is the assurance that arises from the
comparison of ideas. Pitting one life experience against another is
sure to reap profit for the two-fisted character burning with
curiosity to know still more about herself or himself and others. It
is to be noted here that the extreme difficulty that the European
Union is at present experiencing stems, in part, from the
excessively modest cross border emigrations of its half billion
citizens who are not gratified with communicating with each other
as much as they are willing to forge commercial enterprises with
them. There exists in Europe a haunting, strongly paranoid residue
of the twentieth century during which, in two world wars, the
Europeans literally obliterated most trust others might have held
in them. For Europeans to coalesce and form a brotherhood, a
European Union, is something almost impossible to do at this time
and place in History; Europeans are still “shell-shocked”—or as it
is said in psychiatric parlance “mentally confused, upset, or
exhausted as a result of excessive stress”—from the desolation
that World War I and World War II inflicted on their now physically
and psychically expended, despairing continent.
My dear reader, have you noticed the bran-new way war is being
waged? It is really unparalleled. Nothing like it has ever been
before prosecuted. In “the old days,” artillery units and air forces
just fired away and bombed away to their hearts' content not
1
thinking, in the least, what the accuracy percentages of their
wipeouts were. Cities in Japan and Europe—to cite two far-famed
for instances—were unmercifully razed to the ground. Today some
“Chicago Boys” boast that this “creative destruction” helped both
the devastated Japan and Germany to “miraculously” redesign
their infrastructures to adapt to some laissez-faire Future without
remaining solidified in a Past reminiscent of today's
uncompromising Portugal, Italy, Greece and Spain—the proverbial
weisenheimers, the “PIGS”—that war might be thought to be
something that the means of which justify its ends. Monsieur
Small-minded Machiavelli? Monsieur Buttoned-up Clausewitz?
Throughout the world, in present-day times, “little, itsy-bitsy wars”
are being combated with aplomb. Photojournalists and “war”
correspondents are feeding the world's media business
establishments with live footage of the mini battles they witness
after they have swooped into areas already smouldering with the
stench of dead bodies and the fearsome screams of the victims'
relatives. Their CVs are replete with “combat actions” from here
and there and over there! These diarists more frequently see the
consequences of an event rather than that outcome's causal
agency.
Television commentators, preposterously, continue to
debate the why's and when's and who's and where's and how's of
how these violent clashes will bear upon the peace of the world,
while arms dealers are cashing in, as never before, outfitting even
teenage boys and—you guessed it!—girls. The DisUnited States'
armed forces are scurrying left and right—globally!—from one
point on our planet to the next, with their unconvinced allies in
tow, knowing no limits to their virtuously biased desires to
inculcate a new-found international hegemony very often smuttily
Christenized. It is as if no one has read the Constitution of the
DisUnited States of America.
The implements of war's technological advances which these
“little, itsy-bitsy wars” employ would raise to the skies the
eyebrows of Sun Tzu. The novel methods of combating for what
powerfulness stands for is in real time a complicated,
sophisticated mixture.
The enormous world-wide industrial
military complexes of not only the major industrialized nations but
also China and the Russian Federation, are more than generous in
supplying militants—even the umpteen mini soldierlike factions—
with the technical savoir faire and versatility they demand for
2
providing what is to be used on the battlefield or on some city's
streets. On the sea and in the air, electronic military ordnances
are tremendously efficacious. Nothing and no one escapes their
detection if it has been decided to null and void some nailed
target.
If the progress in armament development is staggering, so too is
the forward motion that has influenced military tactics and
geopolitical strategy. There are too many instances which testify
to the fact that nations are not in the main fighting unfriendly
nations; rather, peoples are fighting each other in their own
countries.
Conflicts are not exploding outwardly; they are
imploding inwardly. Sun Tzu's dream come true? Political leaders
appear toothless attempting to balance the polarizations of their
citizenries, and in some body politics the tensions of the opposing
factions are so fierce, they are causing very formidable economic,
social and political troubles for all concerned. Government by the
people is becoming, more and more, an obsolete notion.
How are we to react to the significance of these “little, itsy-bitsy
wars”—if they have any meaning at all? To begin, we should
observe that probably only “20%” of all combatants—engaged in
all the wars that have ever been contended throughout History—in
reality harboured the “will to kill” and even went about doing so.
Any successful armed force earnestly depends on rear-echelon
emplacements where pacifists and corrupt supply sergeants and
relatives of politicians “courageously” serve their country. Of that
approximative “20%,” there are embedded combatants who will
either respect or not esteem those conventions defining the do's
and don'ts of warfare. Roughly “80%” of the soldiers who have
joined up to fight, when they have been finally trained to go into
combat, or have actually experienced what battle is about, regret
that they ever enrolled or were recruited, and they do all that they
can to avoid being killed or even waffle at killing the enemy—in
reality
one
of
their
confreres,
philosophically
and
anthropomorphically speaking! From a sociological point of view,
most of the “hoi polloi” living in any country are not individuals
who are looking for any form of conflict. These “couch potatoes”
might be enlisted to help wage a war, but they will not generally
react violently unless they are made to become part of the
“20%”—those “deranged ones” with that major affective disorder
to “terminate others,” and who are vigorously instructed to do so
3
after being carefully culled from their non-combative fellows.
But, if conflicts are occurring not between nations but within
them, amongst peer nationalists, the entire orientation as to what
war signifies must be put to the test. Any police commissioner,
with a PhD in sociology, will concur with that “20%” figure noting
that it is a so-so measurement but one that helps him collocate his
community's statistics of violence. (In Europe and South America,
the football stadium is the rectum into which the sociological
thermometer is inserted to measure the violent somatic sensations
of sports' partisans.) Police are required to zero in on those areas
of their constituencies that report the most grievous crime data—
usually those spheres where the poor and uneducated orbit. Law
enforcement agencies do not patrol university libraries or Sunday
church services—yet! “Little, itsy-bitsy wars,” evermore, are being
“contained” and “restricted” through the use of electronic
contrivances and the analyses of social media promulgation.
Police units are coming to look decidedly militaristic.
The ethical implications of this novel method of killing off human
beings are uncannily provocative, and the consequences of this
know-how must be vigorously debated. On one hand, we have the
point of view of the authoritative elements who claim that theirs
are those prophylactic measures that are impeding the outcome of
at least World War III—or, some kind of Universal War I. That
“little, itsy-bitsy wars” among recalcitrant factions—whether they
be considerably large in scope or mini in dimension—are being
checked, restrained. The authoritarians also contest that they are
in the right to even agitate confrontations—using clever diplomatic
ploys and social media networks to disseminate their doctrines—to
acerbate discords which “smoke out” the “bad guys” who are then
blacklisted in police and intelligence dossiers.
Psychological
warfare and Newspeak have therefore been raised to still a higher
level with the use of the Internet. To what degree are the despotic
ones responsible for their actions?
Are they?
Under what
concepts of jurisprudence do they operate? To whom must they
respond? At this writing, it appears that we are in an ethical freefor-all with no point of reference to achieve a sense of respect and
serenity for the binding customs and practices of a community that
we require to peacefully live amongst ourselves.
On the other hand, the heavy-handedness (“Might Is Right!”) of
4
the Surveillance State is desultory. Double-faced. For the most
part it spins its wheels not gaining traction. The SS imparts the
notion that it has under control the PCs and Smartphones of some
7,295,000,000 individuals (world population at the moment of this
writing, 16 February 2015). An insurmountable task. There is no
one who does not believe that he or she might be subject to some
kind of “police work.” All are living in a state of suspicion.
Children who go to high school cannot escape the thought that one
of their mates, freaked out on some violent electronic game, might
go crazy enough to shoot them. People travelling on commercial
airlines have to think—after extremely accurate security
procedures—that the worst is that their jet just might blow up.
What if you were a Jewish worshipper in some French synagogue;
or, a Roman Catholic in Libya or Nigeria? It is unrealistic not to be
uneasy. The SS makes certain that all are extremely fearful—that
our dread will make us alert, make us be sentinels in order to
make us report the questionable behavior of others.
Strapped to our backs is not only the yoke of psychical torment.
The uncertainties that plague the world's economic institutions are
still another subject matter that haunts us viciously. Corruption,
financial finagling and the unjust distribution of wealth in favor of
the few, are direct sources of pain and anger. Billions of people
want to share in a success that enables them to procure for
themselves and their families that which their more affluent
neighbors already possess sometimes in abundance. Already,
2,000,000,000 somebodies live on a mere $2.00 per day. It is
estimated that by 2050 there will be 10,000,000,000 persons
inhabiting our planet. Today, the seas are glutted with plastic bags
that are killing off marine life. Countries are threatened with
megadraughts.
Uncontrollable viruses are the unvarying
apprehensions of health officials in all corners of the world. There
is a horrible sense of precariousness even at a time when
civilization is at one of its highest, if not utmost, developmental
peaks. What is this price we must pay? Is this enormous toll
negating any sense of achievement we might have hoped for? Is
our victory one that brings down a devastation beyond the
accomplishments we have fought hard for?
Ample evidence already exists that our lifestyles—especially those
lived in the industrial nations—are flagrantly out of whack. The
use of licit and/or illicit drugs and medications, unhealthy dietary
practices, violent crime, addiction to work and/or play,
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discrimination against women, racism...ad infinitum, put to
question the sanity of the way we conduct our lives.
Pharmaceutical companies have created a pill for more ailments
than we are able to count. The business of health is unhealthy.
The accumulation of wealth is not a gratification; it is an addiction.
People are in love with themselves more than they are in love with
others.
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Perhaps Italy, the bellwether of so many other historic
phenomenon, can give us a clue as to what end we are in the
direction of as we bang along in our delirium. The Boot is a very
particular conglomeration of tradition and artistic endowment.
Once it was the fifth richest nation in Europe. Now it is the
nineteenth. Once it was in third place at attracting tourists from
all over the world. Now it places fifth. In March 2015, it is
considered one of the worst fifteen economies in the world. There
is an on-going decline not only in business opportunities—
economic growth has been receding since the 1990s—Italians, like
the Greeks, are horribly indebted, so much so that Italy is well on
its way to reaching the €3,000,000,000,000.00 liability tier.
11,000,000 Greeks x 5.4545454 = 60,000,000 Italians!
Let us refer, still further, to the Italian people.
There are
60,000,000 Italians...20% of the Italians are more than 65 years of
age...Italian debt, at this writing, is €2,595,933,000,000...Italian
unemployment, at this writing, is 12.9%...56% of the Italians have
a high school diploma...river beds and sewers are stuffed with
debris…there are fissures in foundations everywhere…roofs leak
in offices and homes…flood walls are in ruins…in the autumn, Italy
becomes the Land of Landslides…cigarette ashes are on the floors
of hospital delivery rooms…cockroaches scurry about on the
surgical wards…coffee cups are contaminated with microbes…
Italian cars begin to fall apart only months after they are
purchased…telephone, electric and gas bills are Russian
roulettes…trailer trucks zoom through residential areas and spew
black smoke in the faces of children…cars are upped on sidewalks,
cracked and broken…one arrives at an airport or train station
asking not when departure time is, but how late the plane or train
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is…many cities in Italy are suffering an epidemic of clinical
depression...streets and highways are impregnated with breaks
and holes…lights in buses and apartment hallways are lit in the
middle of sunny days…monuments are crumbling; or, air pollution
is corroding them…downtown areas are gas chambers…school
bathrooms and heating systems often do not function…there are
not adequate sports facilities for children…Swiss ladies have
clauses in their health insurance policies to escape in an air
ambulance flight to Switzerland if they become ill…banks offer 3%
interest on savings then, after a month, decrease the interest to
1% without advising depositors…crooked churches threaten to
collapse…construction sites—left abandoned for years—dot the
countryside…floods, then droughts, damage crops…filth is in the
air and on the ground…stadiums are wrecked habitually by the
acts of violent fans…hills are polka-dotted with garbage…
supermarket shelves often are missing products…television
programming is the worst in Europe…thousands of companies are
in debt or going bankrupt…fountains are choked with scum and
refuse…repair work is shoddy…trees and plants are dying
whichever way you rivet your eyes…urban planning is nonexistent…motor scooters zoom to a standstill blocked in traffic…
50% of Europe's bank robberies occur in Italy...Italian teachers are
the lowest paid in Europe...Italy is a prisoner of its Past...only two
Italian universities are listed in the world's top 200...Italy is last in
Europe for the employment of women in managerial positions:
11.9%...Italian women are the most violent in Europe...one of
every five Italian fifteen-year-old kids is illiterate...30% of Italian
boys and girls 15-19 left school in 2012...7,000,000 of the
12,000,000 Italians over the age of 65 take at least four
medications each day...after Greece and Turkey, Italy is the most
corrupt nation in Europe...Italy's economic growth is the slowest
in Europe...50% of Italian youth between the ages of 30-34 live
with their parents...50% of Italian university students do not finish
their studies...40% of Italian business managers read a
newspaper...22% of Italian teachers are over 60 years of age and
are mostly women...the Italian judicial system is a syndicate of
criminal elements that fail to offer Italian citizens the satisfaction
of belonging to a nation that guarantees fairness and justice for all
its nationals...one of every three gasoline pumps in Italy is fixed to
defraud customers...Italian youth dream of having a sleek motor
vehicle and not a university degree...ad infinitum…
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Henry Miller (1891-1980), American author, once narrated an
event during which an insurance salesperson sought to sell him a
policy. After explaining adequately the importance of protecting
his family, the broker began suggesting a list of insurance options
all of which HM accepted without hesitation. The agent was
perplexed. He asked HM why he was so cushy to transact with.
HM replied: “Do you think I care what will happen to me once I
am dead?”
No better analogy can describe Italy. Italians have not the least
interest about what might happen to them down the road because
today they believe there exists no hope for their country or
themselves. They are genuine predestinationists. There is this
mindset: Eat, drink and be merry because we will never be able to
pay off our debts!
There thrives the notion that the
insurmountable difficulties The Boot is confronted with are not the
concerns of the Italians. Some other thrust will have to assume
Italy's oppressive social and economical burdens simply because
Italians are not up to doing it themselves. As if to say “if no
solution is lined up for Italy, that is just tough luck for everyone
else.” In fact, most Italians believe that others must assume Italy's
quandaries—that even they should feel privileged to do so! (The
Italians are the creators of the political philosophy, movement,
regime that exalts nation and race above the individual, that
stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a
dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and
forcible suppression of the opposition. Notate bene: Since the
end of the Italian monarchy, seventy years ago, Italians have made
a burlesque of democracy—confirming their subconscious
reaffirmation of Fascism. There are 113 DisUnited States of
America military bases scattered throughout the Italian
peninsula.)
To just understand to what extent Italians have evolved to in their
masochistic revelries and ironclad determination to get their way
in these regards, we must reflect on the suicidal shenanigans that
are germinating these days in Italy.
Throughout the Italian
provinces, hospitals are overflowing with the elderly who have
been bloated beyond belief with licit and/or illicit drugs and
medications manufactured in England, France, the Americas and,
of course, Switzerland. These vegetating patients are so subdued
with synthetic pills, liquids and salves, they find it difficult to
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locomote to hospital lavatories. Many of the decrepit ones are in
their eighties and nineties. (Central Intelligence Agency statistics
state that the average life expectancy for Italian males is 79.4
years, for women 84.8 years.) Cemeteries do not exist for the
12,000,000 Italians who are now over 65 years of age. As a matter
of fact, during the rainy seasons each year, landslides (Land of
Landslides) break open cemetery grounds and coffins are seen
floating all over the place. Sometimes, you can view a skeleton in
the muck. The response to this difficulty is, naturally, cremation,
but this act is anathema to Roman Catholic church canon laws,
and many religious Italians are ardently opposed, scared, at the
thought of being cremated. There are not many churchgoing
Roman Catholics left in Italy, nevertheless Italians can be counted
on to knee jerk to the medieval folderol of popes, cardinals and
bishops who blackmail the emotional states of Italians with guilt
and hocus-pocus. 79% of the Italians believe that they are
protected by a guardian angel.
An Italian doctor, even conscious of the Hippocratic Oath, will
secretly perform euthanasia if sufficiently coaxed and rewarded by
family members. The Italian judicial system will brand him or her
a “murderer” if push comes to push. The Roman Catholic church
will accuse the doctor of committing a sin—a mortal sin. The pope
will say nothing except “Let us pray.” (The only ones in Italy who
are praying are pious, non-violent Islamics who are frequently
victims of Italian racism and religious persecution.) There is
chitchat about an “underground railway” that illicitly transports
euthanasic candidates to Switzerland.
For those in Italy, who possesses a trace of dignity and courage
and would like to leave this world on his or her's own terms, there
exists another “extrajudicial” possibility. For €700, they will kill
you, burn you, and in Tuscany, the Cradle of the Renaissance,
sprinkle your ashes upon the Arno river, flowing through Florence,
where that residue will commingle with the cocaine and heroin
and other lawful and unlawful substances which are urinated each
day into the Arno and which consequently find their way to the
Tyrrhenian Sea where they there fuse with the plastic bags that
are choking off and poisoning the marine life upon which so many
Italians depend for a living. Naturally, Italians dress—excuse the
pun!—to kill for these occasions wearing the most elegant
Ferragamo shoes, toting the most exquisitely beautiful Gucci bags,
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and Italian women are made-up to the hilt with their nails so
elegantly polished with an assortment of scintillating colors.
By the way, an Italian nurse is holder of the Guinness World
Record for serial killings. She is reputed to have killed off 90
elderly patients in the hospital where she was employed. Police
are still investigating to determine whether or not she sent even
more Italians to their Happy Hunting Grounds.
So much for Western Civilization I (Europe) &
Western Civilization II (DisUnited States of America)!
If you are thinking about taking a spin on a gondola around the
Venetian canals,
hurry up before it is too late!
And, bring a pair of galoshes—like those that reach your hips!
And, of course, have a nice nightmare!
Authored by Anthony St. John
The Ides of March MMXV
Calenzano, Italy
www.scribe.com/thewordwarrior
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