It looks like Pandora’s box has been thrown opened, but the culprit is still unknown. One at a time, at a pace that does not allow a pause for considerations nor to digest matters, there appear in dark shades all the foul deeds and calamities of the Italian society. Years and years of expedients and hypocrisy toned down the scandals and inefficiencies that now dominate the scene. We just seem to have reached a showdown, as if what was done badly and what was not done promptly has created such a tangle of problems that the saying “your sins will find you out“ is extremely pertinent! Let us consider the Health System: beyond more or less factional disquisitions, it is sad that every time a reform has been passed, hoping to fairly solve the relations between state and doctor, and doctor and citizen, in practice we have found ourselves facing situations that were worse than the previous one. The first is crippled with debts, the second has lost heart career-wise and the third is perplexed! To complicate matters, the media have entered the scene with the occult power of strategic communications, now without an ethical code to restrain its impact. Results of new researches, which often deceive rather than heal, are publicized daily, as regular news items. These are alternated almost sadistically with cases of poor organization in the Health System, which are quite unsettling, to put it mildly. Notwithstanding defective cardiac valves and secret cloning, prescriptions with or without tickets are still the constant nightmare of pensioners whose end of the month accounts are badly affected by the euro effect! Science, technology, industry and the market are taken up in a Fellinian dance where the circus never closes and rotates round the patient, who at times believes he is a god, made eternal thanks to diet supplements and miraculous drugs; at times he feels a wretch, moved on a stretcher from hospital ward to hospital ward, where what matters most are the ward’s proceeds rather than his poor health! The same fate has struck justice where the Andreotti case was nothing but the casus belli with which the magistracy has paradoxically undermined its own authority! It is best not to touch on the country’s economy to avoid losing ourselves in a labyrinth where incalculable amounts of capital circulate, virtual and strong like emotional and cruel monsters, generating at a single stroke poverty and wealth, peace and even war! Bizarre incidents take place even in the land of religion that should be ‘the incorrupt’ par excellence, something that has no sense at all in the ‘box’ of human misery. Gays are offended because they are not allowed to take priestly vows, prelates mistake the beatitudes for social battles, beliefs are blended in a cocktail where we cannot distinguish between Christians and Muslims in a chaos that only leaves the heart bewildered and anxious. It is hence natural to recall the old colossal on the Ten Commandments, which depicted a strict and rightly authoritative Eternal Father who thundered and, lightening in hand, put people in their place! Blessed the times when God spoke directly to the prophets and only His wrath could cause environmental disasters! If we consider what is happening nowadays in Italy we must conclude that this time, Pandora or not, even God is fuming!
Translated by interpres sas