Bullshit dishwasher
Before some journalists went to investigate the past management of the Romagna area, we immediately moved on to the supercazzola of large systems. This in order to save what remains of the so-called "myth of well-managed Emilia Romagna". And believe me, even the supercazzola of large systems (for example: "it is Nature that rebels") is one of the favorite techniques of the Apparatus.
I grew up in Emilia Romagna. And I've never been subtle when I describe it as a kind of provincial and ignorant sewer, held up by copious doses of cholesterol, accomplice journalism, easy chicks, petty human miseries and dull tunes.
The problem is that it would be easy to say that the PCI constructed this myth, in the sense that it is true that it requested the help of the Swedish socialists (who sent people on holiday to Reggio Emilia saying they had to learn from their kindergartens) to foment the myth, but what is not understood is the ability that the PCI had to become something more, to colonize the economy (and with it society), becoming more than a party: an apparatus.
An apparatus that, taking advantage of the fact that the municipal library bought a lot of records at the local shop, could make the music it didn't like disappear from the same shop. For example, in my village the Apparatus didn't like Heavy metal, which my friends and I went to buy in Comacchio (we went to buy the Possessed, 7 churches , in the Christian Democrat city of the Province, yes), or through postal sales , and the little shop had Inti Illimani in its window for most of my teenage years.
This is to say that the Apparatus reached everywhere. And he built the myth of well-managed Emilia Romagna thanks to this sprawling hold on everyone.
In doing this he used techniques that I am now going to list.
- Pinpoint excellence against generalized mediocrity.
Building a situation of "excellence" is relatively simple. Just concentrate easy money, malpractice, journalism and propaganda on a single small body. For example, a kindergarten. Once that nursery has been transformed into a fantastic kindergarten, the other European parties are called to pay homage to him (the PCI was the largest communist party in the West), after which l'Unita' and RAI3 are called to trumpet, on the local news , how cool that kindergarten in Reggio Emilia is. As Il Resto del Carlino, being another provincial newspaper, will join the local pride, suddenly this happens: "Emilia Romagna has the best kindergartens in Europe". In reality, it is via Cesare Battisti in Reggio Emilia that has THE best kindergarten in Europe, while the rest of the region has very long rankings, a scarcity of places and a scarcity of funds.
But from that moment you will no longer be able to criticize ANY kindergarten in Emilia, because there is an excellent one in Via Cesare Battisti in Reggio Emilia.
Tataaaaaahhh….
This technique has been exploited copiously to silence any criticism. Once hypnotized, the Emilian citizen parroted that he had fantastic kindergartens and spatial elementary schools, even when 12 consecutive years of Salmonella epidemics in Bologna's school canteens should have suggested that, in short, maybe that coop that prepares meals shouldn't more work with the municipality. The dialogue went like this:
- Shit, again? There have been Salmonella in schools in Bologna for 12 years in a row! But enough of that co-op!
- What are you saying!!! Look, we have the best schools in Europe here! We are always better than certain places in the south.
End of discussion. Salmonella is beautiful. It is nature that rebels. Et voilà.
Speaking of Nature that rebels, another propaganda technique of the Apparatus is to bring the theme to large systems. The conspiracy theory was often touched upon, but when the conspiracy theory ends up on the Unit it becomes pure geopolitics. Giulietto Chiesa teaches.
- Shift the theme to the theory of large systems, or World Problems.
Let's see the Apparatus machine at work these days, after 50 years that the Romagna area has been despoiled and made dangerous, what do we discover? That if a disaster happens it is not the fault of the mismanagement of the Apparatus, but of "Nature that Rebels", and of "Global Warming".
I would like to point out that global warming and extreme phenomena have already been talked about for decades, therefore a “Region that works™” should perhaps have thought about it sooner. It's not a theme that came out yesterday.
The problem is that the comrades' "Bullshit Dishwasher" has the task of spraying bullshit in EVERY direction, in order to clean up the flaws committed by the Apparatus.
So, if that disaster happens to a rain of 300mm, no one wonders how the Veneto managed to resist a rain of 700mm. No. It is nature that rebels.
Personally, I remember the 80s. The area where I lived suffered from a devastating heroin problem. One fine day, we woke up with a sad record (which luckily didn't last long): the youngest person to die of heroin in Italy.
Obviously the thing ended up in the national newspapers, so it had to produce the usual symbolic response from the Apparatus. An extraordinary municipal assembly took place, so extraordinary that all those elected to participate in the municipal assemblies were at the municipal assembly.
Virtually all high school students in the country had to participate, and when they attended schools outside the country they also had to lead the school representatives sent there. The purpose was to demonstrate that the Apparatus cared about the Youth. (who were actually fleeing political commitment, right at that time).
The assembly NEVER touched on any of the real issues. The fact that the mother of the dead boy prostituted himself in a small hotel in a nearby village, called "Cavallino Bianco", was not considered a factor that could bring drugs closer to a boy. Nor the fact that a social center had just opened in Ferrara, the Resistance in Via della Resistenza, which was a sort of local heroin market. (according to the Apparatus the Digos brought it to us to make them look like drug addicts.), and that the boy frequented.
No. The problem was much bigger. According to one of the factions, the PCI, heroin had been studied by the CIA, together with LSD, to silence youth protests during the Vietnam War. According to the Christian Democrat opposition, it was instead the PCI's anti-Christian modern values that led to the dissolution and confusion among the young. Plan obviously made in the USSR, to weaken our youth.
The fact that it was full of closing sugar mills, with sky-high unemployment, social problems to fuck, didn't seem to affect them. Nothing brings parties together like fucking the same whore, it seems.
In short, in the end the PCI was victorious, so Ronald Reagan received, in the 80s, a letter written in French (because this was there) where he was ordered to order the CIA to leave the lower Ferrara area in peace. The local parish received 600,000 lire to upgrade the oratory, the local ARCI SPIM received 800,000 to sensitize young people who no longer went there against drugs, and poof. The boy's mother was at work two hours after the funeral.
And this would also be funny if it were a film by Peppone and Don Camillo, but the problem is that it really happened.
Almost all easily solved local problems, when embarrassing, became effects of World Problems.
- We have a vandalism problem in the town, the public park looks like a landfill and a group of boys even attacked the police.
- It's the Cold War, darling. Don't tell me you know nothing about Euromissiles.
Done. The Myth of Wheelies.
In order for this to work, two beliefs must be true, namely that all the participants of the Apparatus receive some small personal advantage just by being part of the Apparatus.
What do I know, if he opens a "sandwich shop" in the village (in those days sandwiches were a serious matter) then the Municipality must do the work in front of it, so that he cannot put the tables outside. And the historic bar rears up.
- The Apparatus distributes small gifts, such as at the Unity Day
This paradigm, of course, requires that everything be broken into microscopic parts, so that everyone can have their own crumb. Three neighboring countries, one of which has 174 souls, could also have had only one Unit Day. Instead, three were organized, in order to "feed" three different shopkeepers, need three times as many volunteers, and move many people, to make the local shopkeepers happy.
This also applied to municipal policies, so speaking of hydrogeological, you could have had the complete lack of coordination between the municipalities, with different companies digging different channels, building bumps in points that would have devastated the flow of water to the neighboring municipality, etc. .
The result could be that in the construction of a municipal sports center a bump was made, which then blocked the flow of water from the neighboring municipality, which still relied on the design made by the fascists during the reclamation to remain dry.
But that center had to be built, which no one has ever used because the covered court of the middle school was covered and you always played tennis there, and also the back (because yes), and go. Everyone earns small sums, and the Apparato counts on the complicity of many small shop interests, or if you prefer, of many small human miseries.
The result of having so many accomplices is that, doing the usual interviews to calculate which was the city where one lives best, half a million ecstatic imbeciles spoke well of the city, forgetting the problems. And poof: in the year of the Uno Bianca, with one rape a week, Bologna is one of the best cities to live in. And if there is the Uno Bianca it is the secret services, the KGB of the Romanian dancers, and we want the Truth, and woe to say that there is a fucking prosecutor's office full of Freemasons.
And the myth of the Well Managed Region soars.
But on the smallness of things I must add a few words. Because the baby was another of the tricks with which the population was kept provincial. And it still is.
Future historians will never understand why Bologna is not the largest city in northern Italy.
It is at the center of ALL long-distance railways, including high-speed rail, goods and people, it is at the center of ALL the largest motorways in the country, it has hospitality facilities in abundance, it has had a fairground capable of hosting the old Motor Show, and has an international airport, has a teaching hospital the size of a neighborhood.
According to all the geographers' theories, the city should have taken away citizens from the surrounding cities, and became the metropolis of northern Italy. Why doesn't it happen? Because, in the way the Apparatus works, someone would have to be arrested for every contract. And that's what happens.
But if the contracts are small , they are small investigations that end up in small newspapers, and the rest of the country doesn't know it.
Thus, the Apparatus wants Bologna to remain small . Look at the result in the Bologna airport. It's obviously too small for what you need, plus they've put a local market inside. With the result that it is too small an airport which is also too big a shopping centre. If you have to buy mortadella in Bologna, don't bother Tamburini: they sell the best at the airport. But next to it, since there was no more space for many chairs, you will find travelers sitting on the ground.
Sooner or later an accident (fire, for example) will cause a massacre and decide to enlarge it (or to make a shopping center in its own right) but this is the consequence of a small management. There are scandals, but they are small and don't make it into the national newspapers. Because the airport is small . A small town whose problems are too small to make the national news.
Same thing for the fairgrounds, which had to be connected by subway to both the station and the airport. This could have produced an expansion of the fair, which would have become large, and all the wizards of the building cooperatives would have come (as they have come) into the open, but with a large fair, they would have come into the open on the national news. And not only, however, on the regional ones.
And this keeps up the myth of the well-managed region.
And these are the reactions you should expect after the flood. Nature that rebels, Global Warming, the Tragedy of the Little man and the Small Company overwhelmed by the waters, the investigations that will end up producing little accomplices in small newspapers, will create a Dishwasher of Bullshit, where the bullshit is sprayed under pressure from every direction, and the result will be that as usual, everything will come out clean.
And the Apparatus will remain standing.