Letter from Italy
By
Saul Landau Read Spanish Version
The
Roman Empire has lessons to teach even to humble tourists. For some,
the instruction is how to frame a shot of a friend or loved one posed
against ancient stone structures, without simultaneously recording
the guides who recite “facts” in several languages. One woman
wearing a badge that made her official casually referred to Roman
emperor Vespasian as “the one who forced Jewish prisoners to begin
work on construction of the Coliseum in 72 AD.”
This
behavior should have clashed with the sensibility required to
construct such architecture and the precision required to build the
exquisitely designed arches. It is hard to understand how persons
with the levels of understanding and qualities of mind needed to
build this multi-tiered amphitheater did not recoil at the very
notion of forced labor — no less feeding men to hungry lions to
amuse the emperor and up to 50,000 other spectators.
Sea-going
slaves rowed the immense marble and stone pillars across an often
unfriendly Adriatic Sea. Once in Rome, skilled architects and
craftsmen mobilized tens of thousands of members of vanquished
nations to lay bricks and sculpt the magnificent façade of the
arena. Likewise, the arches, columns and designs that went into
building the Roman Forum (ruins next to the Coliseum), where citizens
met and discussed the affairs of the nation and carried out rituals,
show a degree of democratic organization that should not have
logically coexisted with slavery — just as our own scientific and
technological achievements do not coincide with slaughtering 4
million people in Vietnam. God only knows how many in Iraq!
The
contemporary Nero, George W. Bush, plays video golf instead of the
violin while Iraq burns. He shrugs off scientific warnings about
global warming and recites platitudes while encouraging more autos
and trucks to ride the highways. He has also allowed the dollar to
weaken so that multinational corporations can export more products
made from hydrocarbons — their advertisers have conditioned the
“buying public” to need.
Scientists
chart the human genome and explore outer space, but no appreciable
advances in reason as applied to human behavior appear — except on
paper, as laws are written to curtail the abominable activities of
previous wars.
Almost
eight centuries ago the Magna Carta established rights for the non
ruling people. In 2001, the U.S. President annulled habeas corpus,
thus deleting 800 plus years of history. Like Roman emperors, Bush
justified the extension of his power, including the use of torture,
by referring to national security (exigencies of state), the war on
terror (Communism, Islam, heretics etc…) and other empty phrases
that quickly take on the authority of God’s word: something one
cannot question, no matter how preposterous it sounds. Millions each
day go through rituals devised by the TSA (Thousands Standing Around,
said my grandson) as if these “security” procedures will stop a
carefully planned attack.
Italian
socialist and ‘green’ friends shake their heads in disapproval
over the U.S. electorate’s choice. Yet, in the same time period,
Italians elected Silvio Berlusconi as prime minister, who appears on
TV as the equivalent of a comic actor impersonating Mussolini.
Defending himself against charges that under his reign (ended in
2006) the mass media he personally owns had improper communication
with the state-owned TV and radio, Berlusconi dismissed the
accusations as “ridiculous.” As he moved his hands and arms
symmetrically — he could have been demonstrating the body language
of an arch-type anal personality to a psychology class — he argued
that the collaboration was “only natural,” hardly evidence that
he was trying to control the media. This Italian combination of
William Randolph Hearst, Rupert Murdoch and Benito Mussolini should
comfort
liberal
Americans who thought their fellow citizens were
especially
deranged for voting for George W. Bush. Perhaps they could take some
solace in the fact that the more developed — taste the food if you
doubt it — Italians voted for a similar political mountebank into
office to direct their government. “He represents success,” says
a retired Italian labor official. “That’s what obviously
attracted the majority of Italians.” She referred to Berlusconi’s
ability to make tens of millions of dollars in business — unlike
Bush, who possesses no visible virtues, not even a green thumb.
Italy’s
revived imperial pretensions — after the fall of the Roman Empire —
rudely ended with the downfall of Mussolini in 1944. His ventures
into Ethiopia in the 1930s, however, paled before the exploits of the
Holy Roman Empire, which ruled hunks of the world for over a
millennium.
The
Vatican, which remains as a lot more than a vestige of that empire,
has been home to Popes since the late 14th
Century. Inside this vast and elaborate complex of buildings and
cathedrals, a formidable museum displays the wealth acquired (stolen)
like floors made from tiles taken from private homes and re-laid as
floors in the Vatican, artifacts, sculptures, pillars, from many
parts of the world over many centuries.
At
the end of the long museum tour one finds the piece de resistance:
the Sistine Chapel. In 1508, Julius II contracted — ordered —
Michelangelo, the young painter and architect, to represent
graphically on the ceiling the essence of the Catholic magic. Indeed,
all around Rome and other Italian cities, geniuses have displayed
their talents for the purpose of perpetuating the myths of the virgin
birth and the other fantastic stories that form the very foundation
of Christianity.
By
the end of his life Michelangelo put his talents to memorializing
Emperor Marcus Aurelius, the one surviving statue at Il Campodoglio
(The Capitol). Everywhere one walks in Rome one sees evidence of the
creativity of past centuries, somewhat reduced now by the
commercialism alongside — a billboard advertising a fancy watch
overlooks the Trevi Fountain — the noise and smell of the robust
auto and motorbike traffic that pervades everything, even the
magnificence of Bernini’s 17th
Century obelisks.
Five
hours northeast of Rome, the train arrives at the car-less, water
surrounded city of Venice. For the dwindling number of residents
(lack of jobs other than tourism), the hydrocarbons that feed the
causes of global warming present a clear and very present danger. If
the oceans rise, Venice will be among the first of its victims.
Instead of motorized land vehicles, Venetians move around on the
vaporetti, the small ferries that take them and the tourists around
the city and to its off-shore islands. Like the residents of Rome,
however, the Venetians too are drenched in a history of empire —
meaning wars. In the early Fifth Century AD, the Visigoths invaded
Italy, which meant that the fleeing population sought refuge on the
Venetian islands. By the mid 6th
Century the Byzantine Empire encompassed Italy and some of the pointy
arched architecture, the friezes and mosaics show the influence of
the Moors who also invaded Italy in the 6th
Century.
Modern
Venice, however, has suffered a steady depopulation since the end of
World War II. A city once numbering almost 200,000 residents now
counts less than a third of that amount as people left to find jobs
on the mainland. Tourists pour in, however, to take $100 gondola
rides and view the magnificent San Marco Basilica and the Palazzo
Ducale. Senegalese men stand around the Piazza — as they do near
tourist attractions in Rome — selling women’s handbags. Immigrant
groups carve out their niches: some Vietnamese weave, Bangladeshis
sell toys and Italian customs’ boats patrol the waters around
Venice to try to prevent more of them from coming, less fervently
than U.S. border patrols guard the Mexican border. Italy does share a
similar anti-immigrant fervor as the economy backslides.
A
short train ride takes one to Padua, where Shakespeare’s shrew
allegedly got tamed. The ubiquitous African handbag peddlers display
their wares there as well. Among the passersby on the street are
North Africans, South Asians and even Latin Americans — members of
Europe’s new working class. Like in most of Europe and the United
States, Italy has reserved the lowest scale jobs for these now
unwelcome immigrants. Ah, the glories of globalization. But even
Bush’s neo con advisers, who try not to learn, should absorb
obvious lessons for their “new Rome,” as they call the U.S.
empire. Old Rome’s imperial leaders expanded militarily, stretching
their economic resources. They also offered citizens amusement rather
than consulting them on policy. Indeed, one of the ruins is
supposedly the very spot where Caesar was assassinated. This is not a
suggestion!
Now
tourists get amused by looking at ancient times and going “wow.”
Hard to learn difficult lessons on a full — and very amused —
tummy.
Saul
Landau is an Institute for Policy Studies Fellow. His new
Counterpunch book is A
BUSH AND BOTOX WORLD.
Get his new DVD – WE
DON’T PLAY GOLF HERE
– from roundworldproductions@gmail.com.
