The weak signals are clues to the future. Those who see them will be the first to know what awaits us. At the beginning they are rustling sounds, light breezes that suddenly, but only for the naive, turn into a hurricane. Up until now anyone who has ignored them could justify themselves with the low level of the signal, but this is true for the past, when for politicians, journalist and bankers to get into debt was great, shifting production abroad, a sign of progress. Berlusconi was a President of the Council and the PDminusL an Opposition party. Now the weak signal has become strong, deafening. Your eardrums are vibrating. From the 30 decibels of a whisper it’s gone to 180 of a rocket taking off. There are no longer any justifications. If your house shakes, the furniture moves around like the ball in a game of pinball and the chandelier falls on your head you cannot continue to sleep as though nothing was happening.
The fire at the camp of the Roma in Turin, a city of the deep North, by normal people, whom you meet at the bar or on the bus every morning, is attributed to the deflowering of a young girl instead of suppressed anger, to a forced situation of living together, to a social nightmare into which we are falling. A crowd of torch-carrying people from Turin burning caravans and sheds of the “different people”, is something that reminds us of the Middle Ages. Let’s not delude ourselves that this will be an isolated incident. Another signal, the bomb in Equitalia that was welcomed by the internet, and not just there, with an incredible enthusiasm, with “boatos” {gossip} and thousands of approving comments. The only response from the institutions has been solidarity (surely this is a duty) for the victim. The Italian wants the closure of Equitalia by fair means, and unfortunately, by foul means. The Sherriff of Nottingham had a public reputation that was better than that of Attilio Befera, president of Equitalia. Why is there no intervention on the causes of the unhappiness and on the real usefulness of maintaining Equitalia in existence and the application of sanction mechanisms that are beyond every bit of reasonableness? Could the bomb have been foreseen? Certainly it could have been foreseen! Assaults on the offices of Equitalia and the kidnapping of its functionaries no longer hit the news. Another signal, the parliamentarians who, right in the fullness of the crisis, are resisting a partial reduction of their emoluments and the cancellation of their annuity. It’s a strong signal, of the type “I am me and you are not even a shit”. Will they perhaps get applause if they are recognised in the street by unemployed people and starving pensioners? And if that doesn’t happen will Napolitano issue a warning of solidarity?
Italy is at bursting point and the signals of its exhausted body are ignored and mocked. First they came to take the gypsies, then the tax collectors and after that whose turn will it be?