A question for USA

Marcello Veneziani

But must a state manager really resign from his office not for incapacity, dishonesty, abuse of power but for having used a quotation from Mussolini in another context, certainly not to make an apology for it? But should a public employee really be fired, according to the Court of Cassation, not for incapacity, dishonesty, abuse of power, absenteeism, violence or anything else, but because he called a colleague of his "lesbian"? But are those who really don't pickpocket, rob, or attack their neighbors on the subway more criminals, but film and report the thieves? But does an employee who warns passengers from the microphones of the metro that there are gypsies on board who are stealing really deserve disciplinary action? (They should have said: exponents of Roma culture are holding income redistribution courses). I could go on and on, tell you about honored careers cut short only by an inappropriate word, valuable athletes canceled because they once used non-compliant language, or just a little word now prohibited, and much more. They've eaten their brains.

This excessive power of the "corrective" (moralistic and punitive variant of the collective) is not just an ideological delirium ; but it becomes a sanction, discrimination, persecution. You may have had an exemplary life, a career based on merit, effort and ability, you may be concerned with the rights, freedom and security of citizens; but if you say that forbidden word, if you use that forbidden expression, you have entered the fatal square as in the game of the goose and luck, as they said in ancient times in that game "'nzerra a'porta", closes all your expectations forever, your every right, your every requirement.

Then there's always some badass who says: but there's no cultural hegemony, it's a lie. It's true, there is an insane hegemony , which is infinitely worse; it has lost its residual cultural characteristics, through ideology it has reached its worst stage, the one that mortifies intelligence, common sense, the perception of reality. And it's so pervasive that you don't even realize it's an ideological cage, a distorting lens.

The other night I felt like going to the cinema, I went often, at least a couple of times a week. I saw the news in theaters: there wasn't a film that didn't deal with those obligatory themes of the "corrective", films about gender, about history rewritten in a feminist key, about homotrans stories, and if they deal with history, about Nazism and its surroundings . Variant, the migrants. Even animated films are adapting, soon even in thrillers there will be an absolute obligation that the victim be black, gay, trans, migrant, and the murder be a white, fascist, straight, conservative male, sexist and homophobic. You have to hope for some Asian film, or from the extreme periphery of the world to see something different, but up to a certain point, because if they enter the global circuit they must have at least some obligatory ingredients in the package. In the end I didn't go to the cinema. And when I wrote about it on social media, as well as reminding myself that even the series you see at home respect the same ingredients and have the same addresses, many told me, glorying in it, that they no longer go to the cinema. All right, but there is no pride in this renunciation, it is a defeat, a mutilation of freedom and culture, a surrender to those who use his power in an insane and infamous way. One cannot continually withdraw, renounce, exclude oneself because others administer their ideological-corrective porridge. And it is superfluous to add, but it is necessary to do so, that the b side of this situation is the disheartening absence of different alternatives, cultures, movements and productions. The carousel is always one-way, as it was in Sanremo (demented hegemony, or rather enforced monopoly).

I no longer speak of it to denounce this hegemony or even to analyze it; but because I feel a growing unease of living in this world under these conditions. And I already know that any testimony, work or reflection in the opposite direction will leave no trace, will not be taken into consideration, will sooner or later be canceled from the logbook of our days. Thus dissent turns into defection and defection into anger. But impotent rage, judging by the outcome of this complaint. Impotent rage, if one considers that even a clear and precise orientation, opposed to this cauldron, won the elections and governs the country. And you already know that nothing can be done to change things and at least encourage an opposite or different key to reading the world alongside the dominant and suffocating one.

Someone objects: it is clear that all this is fine with people, if nothing prevents it from being affirmed, and so quickly. No, gentlemen, it's not that people like it, the problem is that on one side there is a power, a mafia, a hood and on the other there are loose citizens, lost in their life as individuals, powerless. And the hammering is so insistent, daily, obsessive that in the end you sketch, you accept - Stockholm syndrome, resignation, drop by drop Chinese torture, making everything go well to survive - and in the end maybe you think that reality is really the opposite of that who see your eyes and perceive your mind. And the cancel culture applied to many areas, which is also rejected by most people, who feel it as false, despotic, unnatural? But in the long run it is easier to erase than to build or keep, it is easier to ignore than to remember; just a swipe of the sponge, a reset, a key that cancels and overcomes ignorance combined with amnesia. To build and to safeguard, however, it takes patience, courage, ability and creativity to invent - piece by piece a culture - something that needs care and maintenance. No, it's much easier to get rid of it, undo it, erase it. For this I confess the discomfort of living in such a world, without truth.

The Truth – March 17, 2023

Ko-fi.com/thejournaloflingeringsanity

DISCLAIMER:   The Journal of Lingering Sanity is a reader-supported publication from Old Gold Mountain (Chinese: 旧金山. We are beholden to truth not party.  “The time has come," the Journal said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."

This Surrealist is viewer supported. Please do your part today.