George Orwell
Animal Farm

"Hey guys, have you checked out Studio Sterco, the parody of Studio Aperto"

"Oh wow! It's genius it's hilarious, 'Let's focus on a hot topic, the Fat Cats videos are going viral on YouTube, so let's start the segment' "

"The scary thing is that Studio Aperto probably actually did a segment on fat cats"

"Yeah well, but at Studio Aperto the schedule includes at least one segment on panda cubs, one on the weather, one on the Prime Minister, Cavaliere Silvio Berlusconi, and finally boobs and butts"

"Yeah, by the way, notice that every time there's a segment on the dwarf, the 'journalist' specifies that it's the Prime Minister, in case anyone hasn't noticed yet, and they show archive footage of him smiling and being cheered by crowds"

"But you have no idea about the psychology behind every segment, even, for example, in the words used... like when they were protesting the Iraq war and the word 'pacifists' couldn't be used, but the protestors were called 'disobedient'"

"Crazy, but are we in a democracy or under a dictatorship?"

And at that point, girl with the ample fifth-sized bra, you turn towards me and look at me with those doe-like eyes, aware that you've asked the first intelligent question of your life. Now I could go off on a tangent and talk to you about Pasolini, the Christian Democracy, the mafia, but the right people are missing, all rockers and drinkers (because Rocchetta purifies you and makes you pee), so let's try something simpler: Animal Farm.

Animal Farm is a simple book, easy in language, direct in its message, as it uses a rather obvious metaphor. I could even stay here to explain all the possible interpretations to you, but I would consider it an insult to your intelligence, because just reading the book would be enough for you to get there on your own. One could almost call it, forgive my presumption, a punk book. Any idiot could contextualize it in Soviet Russia, so much so that (in the United States) it has often been used as anti-communist propaganda, having it read to children and giving them a partial interpretation, of that unhealthy partiality that kills thought.

However, it is a book that, if fully understood (therefore read after the age of 14), can serve as a pocket summary of the current way of doing politics.

All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others (Animal Farm, George Orwell, 1945)

All citizens are equal before the law, but I am a little more equal than others, as I represent the majority of Italians (Silvio Berlusconi, SME Trial, 2003)

Because that's the trick, in what Orwell, three years later, will call doublethink, and the message that must come through is: you are free to do whatever you want, but remember well that you are slaves, exploiting a current of thought or an ideal, be it liberalism, nationalism, communism, socialism, populism, someone will even do it with environmentalism, but the constant is that it doesn't matter if for lunch you eat a well-salted child or the legendary Abruzzese mozzarella, if you have a shred of power you are a potential dictator.

And so I wonder, are we really so addicted to power that we are lost in a condition of its absence, seeking it in the first passerby who offers it to us, as if it were a carnal need to have someone command us and, not to be underestimated, also someone to command, because often human discomfort stems precisely from this?

In the end, I stayed silent...

"Oh, it's so late, will you walk me home?"

Okay. I get up...