Stoney

Furthermore, out of curiosity, I would like to know, you who vote for the center-right "economists," if you have ever realized that the "economy" they defend does not consider you, does not affect you, does not protect you, doesn't even give you a passing thought (and neither would the economy defended by those from the center-left, but so be it...). Unless you are a friend or relative of one of them, in which case every kind of discussion would fall apart.

Having had contacts with organized crime and other lovely things that we all know very well (hypocrisies aside) are EXCELLENT reasons to spit in the face of politicians from both sides. And if Travaglio is one of the few who does it, I would like to know, please, where his mistake lies.

@Den Vlaams, Travaglio doesn't accuse anyone; it's the courts that do so with their sentences, he merely reads them. It's not like one wakes up in the morning and accuses a politician out of spite; there are plenty of sentences and investigations that provide more than enough reason to raise doubts, and if necessary, to get seriously upset, which I find entirely legitimate. If I find out that a high-ranking official is accused of collusion with the mafia, you bet I can get furious. The fact that out of 100 sentences, 80 are against members of the center-right is intuitive: they’ve been in power for two decades, which seems quite normal to me. If there had been a center-left government, the proportions would be reversed. It's not that one goes after the right simply because one dislikes them: nobody here looks anyone in the face. If you come to this conclusion on your own, great, if not, that’s your problem; you can't expect logic to bend over backwards to make things add up the way you prefer.

An essential masterpiece. Calvino is one of the most underrated geniuses of the 20th century.

What would a Creed reunion look like? And what happened to Alter Bridge? Have they broken up?

"It’s the well-coordinated selfishness of the State that moves the world and improves things." That is, you complain that communism is ideal and unachievable, but you believe in a world where all selfishness is in balance for the common good. Tell me, are you for real or just pretending?

@Mike, everyone is on a coffee break again, so I can respond to you. I don't know what kind of person you are or what you dream for yourself and for the people around you. Beside me, I have a lot of people who consider themselves happy even though they spend 80% of their lives dependent on arrogant and ignorant individuals who humiliate them as if they were defective machinery stubbornly refusing to work. They accept this and many other "trivialities" as rules of the game; I see behind this a form of cultural aberration that is absolutely unacceptable. Just as it is an aberration that they complain about the cost of living and mortgages while accepting them as unavoidable obligations that "adults" cannot escape. Moreover, it is an aberration that these people have learned to confine their need to be with the ones they love to Saturdays and Sundays, or holidays. I miss the possibility of building a life and an experience (human, cultural) while I am here; they don't feel this desire, but between them and me, I don't think I am the one who is exaggerating. I'm not asking to spend all day lying on my back counting daisies in the meadows, but I also don’t find the exact opposite acceptable. I don't know what you think, but the prospect of living a life like theirs, experiencing this gray dulling of mind and limbs until getting used to it and even coming to call it "freedom" seems absolutely inhuman to me. P.S. Any comparison with other states is misleading. I could say that in the favelas of Rio they are even worse off than in Cuba, and in Uganda worse than Rio, and so on. I feel compassion for these tragedies, but I don't use them as an excuse to feel fortunate. Perhaps it is true that man has always fought for survival, but the time has come for six billion individuals to emancipate themselves from this state of beasts in the jungle and think of a way to give everyone an opportunity; otherwise, it will be the end. Today, we can do this; we have the awareness and the necessary means; settling for just getting by today will mean suffering heavily in the future. Bye.

@Mike76. Writing on DeBaser while others are on a coffee break, or writing now that they are on a lunch break, is not exactly the idea of freedom I had in mind when I posted that comment. I thought instead that freedom is giving people the opportunity to express their personality, to fulfill themselves. Forcing them to struggle to put together a lunch and a dinner is a crime against human rights, just like a wall that divides a country in two: the difference lies only in the obviousness of the gesture. It's easy for everyone to scream scandal in front of a wall; in the face of all these other very subtle things, however, one can always get away with a joke.

@Mike76. No, there are no walls in our very human world, actually. Today the sun is shining, I would like to escape this hole, but instead I'm stuck in front of the computer. Because if I don’t work my 9-10 hours a day, my career might suffer (if I even have one), and I could end up in trouble. Maybe I could risk ending up like my colleague who is suffocating under debt just because he wants to buy a house and feed his daughter, or like all those like him, of which there are many. He mocks me when I say I want to go outside because the sun is shining, thinking I'm a frivolous person with stupid fantasies, and he replies, "thank Christ you have a job." They have never put him behind a wall, actually, but they have even taken away his will to breathe. No walls anyway, let’s be clear: we are a free world. Regards.

Mike76, American-style democracies have no need to raise a wall to prevent citizens from fleeing: they use much less theatrical but far more effective methods.