We’ve just had national elections in Italy on 25 September
2022, and now we await the mid-term elections of 2022 in the USA.
The Italian elections were called as soon as the newly
elected Parliamentarians had served enough time in office to be assured of a
Parliamentary pension. That was
foreseeable but the speed with which these snap elections were scheduled was
not. There was little time for
campaigning and little was done. In half
a century I have never seen so little campaign publicity here. Almost no posters or ads anywhere. The current Italian organization of elections
is virtually indecipherable, certainly to foreigners, but my impression is that
few Italians have much of a clue as to how the system works either. One mostly just votes for a party, but there
are also preferences and politicians seem to be able to represent whatever city
or region their party agrees to let them run in, with residency having nothing
to do with it.
There are a large number of political parties but they tend
to band together as parties of the center-right or the center-left. Italy has suffered a great deal from the
Covid pandemic and now, just when people have expected a recovery, the war in
Ukraine has come along to devastate the economy even more than Covid. The Draghi Government was something akin to a
unity government, i.e. a government of unelected “technocrats” appointed to see
the country through the Covid crisis.
Virtually all the major parties supported that government, with the
exception of Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia. While in the past this essentially right-wing
party trailed behind the other two parties in the center-right alliance, the
Lega, headed by Matteo Salvini and Forza Italia, headed by Silvio Berlusconi,
this time she outpolled them with 26% compared to 8% for the Lega and 8% for
Forza Italia, with their combined center-right taking something like 44% of the
vote. She may not have been a part of
the Draghi Government but she did support its unconditional allegiance to NATO
and the US, just like all the other parties.
The big losers were the Partito Democratico and its partners
in the center-left coalition. Its
partners mostly consist of vanity parties, i.e. splinter parties formed by
former leaders of the PD who thought they were better than the current
leadership. The center-left wound up
with 26% of the vote.
That left the Five Star Movement, which only a couple of
election cycles back came out of nowhere to become the party with the highest
number of elected parliamentarians, as the only other significant element. While the 5SM officially supported the Draghi
Government, it split over the continued supply of weapons to Ukraine, with
several of its members, who were ministers in the government, forming their own
party, in a show of support for Draghi and the US government. When riding high, the 5SM had accomplished
two significant goals. It passed legislation
to cut Italy’s oversized Parliament by 40%, a change which goes into effect
following the recent elections. It also passed the Reddito di Citidinanza, a
measure by which people with limited means who apply, receive an income of
€500./month. The party was expected to
do very badly in the recent elections, at least in part because of the anger
generated in the north among people who work hard and still struggle to make a
living. However, the 5SM did remarkably
well in the South where many people have benefitted from the boost to their typically
low income. The party polled 15% with
the remaining 15% split between a center coalition and the other small parties.
There was some discussion on why there had not been faster
action to make Italy independent in terms of energy and why renewable energy
had not been a high priority of the government but the fact that the US
sanctions, acquiesced to by the EU, had cut the available supply of energy
practically over night by 40%, was rarely mentioned except by a few
non-establishment journalists and a several renegade politicians. Thus, the Italian public, which apparently
opposed sending more weapons to Ukraine by something like 44 to 38%, had no
political party representing their views on one of the most pressing issues of
the day.
Italians usually have a large turnout in national elections. This year was an exception with a 64%
turnout, down from 73% in 2018 and 80% in 2008.
Non-voters outnumbered both the winning center-right coalition and the
defeated center-left coalition. There
has been more noise about the election after it than there was before it took
place. Conventional establishment
leftists are pulling their hair out because the country has been taken over by
a party whose origins derive from the remnants of Mussolini supporters, while
nobody cares to point out that originally of the Partito Democratico was the
Partito Comunista Italiano, which supported Stalin and toasted the crushing of
Hungary, long after the death of Mussolini.
Can people change and do they change? Much evidence suggests that they
can. The PD became the most extreme
right party in Italy, at least with regard to economic issues, when Matteo
Renzi attempted to push through a new Italian Constitution drawn up by JP
Morgan with the paid consultancy of Tony Blair, in an effort to reduce the
input of the Italian public on policy decisions.
The recent elections took place on September 25th. While the PD had become the most vociferous
supporter of Ukraine and NATO prior to the elections, by October 6th
or 7th the newly resigned PD Secretary was calling for demonstrations
demanding negotiations leading to peace, as people were already in the streets
burning their electric bills and to refusing to pay what in essence were well
beyond their ability to pay.
Unfortunately, ex-Secretary Letta called for the demonstrations to be
outside the Russian Embassy, rather than at the US Embassy, a rather hollow
gesture inasmuch as the Russians had been clamoring for negotiations for nearly
a decade to halt the NATO expansion on their borders. Indeed, there had been negotiations leading
to the Minsk accords, ignored by signees France and Germany and violated by
Ukraine. Apparently, there were also
negotiations to end the war shortly after the invasion, supported by Zelenskyy,
but vetoed by Uncle Sam and the more militant elements within the Ukrainian
regime.
The new government will not take office until early
November, despite all the criticism it has received before even being
officially appointed. The country is
showing signs of turmoil which are likely to grow. The Italian economy may grind to a halt as
retail and industrial businesses are forced to close but it will not be
alone. Much of the EU is likely to face
something reminiscent of the Great Depression.
Misery loves company. There
should be enough to go around.
The 2022 US Mid-term Elections-
It is not uncommon in the US to describe up-coming elections
as the most important in a lifetime.
Presidential elections of 2000, 2016 and 2020 had something of that
aura. They had the potential to alter
the course of history, of conditions in the US and around the world, and they
did. Mid-term elections seldom have that
importance. This year they do. The BLOODS and the CRIPS, as I choose to
refer to the Republican and Democratic Parties, both deserve to lose, one for
sedition, the other for failing to effectively deal with it. While both parties appear to be functioning
below a level of competency one would expect by picking government
representatives at random out of a large phone book, there is a major
difference. One party has effectively abandoned the concept of government
elected by the voters. It is a minority
party, a difficulty it has dealt with effectively for decades by using many of
the built-in peculiarities of the US Constitution to hold onto power despite rarely
having majority votes. Under the last
president, the BLOODS have renounced all respect for the rule of law and any
pretence of civility or decency, to pursue the quest for unlimited perpetual
power, whether it be for personal gain or to inflict their will on the majority
of their countrymen. This is a clear
attempt to seat a totalitarian regime.
If they prevail in the upcoming election by margins large enough for
them to gain full control of the voting process, the USA, which we prefer to
think of as an historic leader of the democratic experiment, is dead! Unless the current war escalates into a
nuclear holocaust, the physical terrain will still be there, inhabited by more
than 300 million people, as will be rulers of the country, but the USA will be
as extinct as the Roman Republic or the Soviet Union.
There should be two other major issues in the coming
elections, starting with climate change making the world uninhabitable, and the
threat of a nuclear holocaust doing the same thing more quickly. However, it would seem, judging from the news
as presented by the MSM, that the deciding issues are more likely to be the price
of gasoline and the status of abortion rights. The CRIPS, who only a few months
ago were in a funk over their prospects of being blown out in the mid-terms,
have grown more optimistic since the striking down of Roe vs. Wade by the newly
radical right-wing Supreme Court, which has created a sizable backlash. CRIPS have also been encouraged by the
reduction of gasoline prices, by full employment, and by the soaring stock
market. Unfortunately, the stock market
has sagged lately, gas prices have turned up again and inflation has grown fast
enough to make people edgy. A poll taken
in Georgia the other day said that abortion rights are a decisive issue for
11.7% of voters polled, “threats to democracy” are the central issue for 18%,
while “the economy” is the decisive factor for 40%. In a few weeks the continued existence of the
world’s most powerful democracy may be decided by fluctuations in gasoline
prices.
For any of you with the opportunity to vote in the upcoming
US elections, I urge you to vote for the CRIPS, no matter how obnoxious you may
find their candidate on your ballot. I
have faced a similar challenge. The CRIP
candidate on my ballot is the son of one of my Senators, who is a Batista
Cuban, among other issues. I am unaware
of any Batista Cuban who has ever voted against funding any CIA-installed
Fascist government anywhere in the world, or for that matter opposing any
military expenditure at all, whether they are BLOODS or CRIPS, or whether they
represent FL, TX or NJ. I have no
anti-Cuban prejudice. I simply don’t want to vote for anyone with that kind of
mind-set. I have done it though, and you
should too. There are many issues to be
fought over and some may be very important to you. Speak out about them. But right now, nothing is more important than
assuring that there will be real elections in the future.
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