Democracy today is immune from being brought before international scrutiny and held accountable for its crimes, just as those Americans known to have committed war crimes are immune from being tried before the tribunal in the Hague. Such crimes as the massacre of 504 innocent villagers of My Lai, where even babies were machine-gunned by American soldiers, are strangely viewed with leniency when they are committed by the world’s most powerful democracy. Far from being punished for their war crimes, these American war criminals live comfortable suburban lives today. And yet, the democratic government that pardons their war crimes seeks the prosecution of similar war crimes committed in Bosnia and Herzegovina, threatening economic sanctions if the criminals are not extradited to the Hague tribunal. In the midst of the economic chaos, carnage and devastation that it wreaks routinely, democracy sees itself as the solution to the world’s problems, the savior of humanity and benevolent parent who nonetheless threatens much of the world with mandatory acceptance of this system… or else there will be Hell to pay.
Remember. Democracy never lasts long.
It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself.
– John Adams
Modern democracies are based on the first democracy in Socratic Athens. Foreigners, slaves and women took no part in Greek “democracy”, which was conceived for a small warring city-state. Representative government and indirect elections via a vague and distant “electoral college” did not exist – every man represented himself. The warrior-general Thucydides (c. 460 – c. 395 BC) had no admiration for the Periclean democracy, which he believed to be a disguised oligarchy (like the democracies of today), “in name a democracy, but in fact a rule of the privileged and rich citizens.” (History of the Peloponnesian War) Pericles (c. 495 – 429 BC) ruled over proud, dangerous rabble, prone to treachery, cruel and perverse when in possession of civil power. When this shouting democratic mob grabbed all the power, they unanimously chose to murder their sage and holy man – Socrates – with a “majority vote”.
The choice of the majority is right, the choice of the minority is wrong. Such is the logic of democracy. However, more and more often in the world we see that lonely individuals, the smallest possible minority, are proven right, after the calamities brought on by the choice of the majority (as was the democratic choice of Nixon) pass over with Catastrophe, and prove the majority wrong. If the majority is right, then its craving after junk food, junk culture – junk and more junk – is right, and the minority’s preference for excellence in the arts is wrong – at least, until history proves them, yet again, to have been right.
Whatever spiritual heritage the homo sapiens has left reveals the opposite of democracy: not rule by the majority, but rule by the minority. Had the “tyranny of the majority” been allowed to rule in Art as it ruled in the American, French and Russian revolutions, then Bach, Shakespeare, da Vinci and all the other masters of our civilization would have been forgotten. Despite the calamities and disgrace brought on by the majority, the serenity and grace of this tiny minority still prevail, often at the cost of poverty, neglect, madness and suicide that lonely individuals have paid to keep this flame burning.
History’s most grotesque examples of the “tyranny of the majority” include the death sentence on Socrates through a democratic process, the democratic mass murders of the French revolution, Adolf Hitler’s initial access to the political arena through a democratic process, and millions of meaningless deaths in the Vietnam war brought about through the democratic process that brought JFK, Lyndon Johnson and, alas, Richard Nixon to power. Considering the unprecedented devastation of World War II brought about by Hitler’s rise to power, one may have valid reasons to question the democratic process that gave him the power.
“Democracy is two wolves and a
lamb voting on what to have for lunch.“
Benjamin Franklin
The most devastating harm caused by democracy in North America is the genocide of numerous Indigenous nations and the tyrannical oppression of the survivors to the present day. The Lakota/Ojibway leader Leonard Peltier has spent over 30 years enduring the harshest imprisonment the US has to offer for a crime he didn’t commit. The fact that he and his dissident group did not acquiesce to mandatory acceptance of the democratic system brought down the full tyrannical force of this system over him, and there was Hell to pay. This is only the tip of the iceberg of injustices committed in the name of democracy against Indigenous people in the Americas. The advocates of democracy can very easily brush aside the brutal fact of multiple genocides in North America as a minor flaw in an otherwise perfect system. However, history will nonetheless chronicle that the price of democracy in North America is one of the most terrible crimes against humanity ever committed by the homo sapiens in his tens of thousands of years of existence.
If 51% of fickle public opinion (which fluctuates in the afternoon from what it was in the morning) at one given moment shall determine the course the nation shall take into the future, then why not just flip a coin and be done with it? Heads or tails? Republican or Democrat? This is the facade of a two-party dictatorship that is in fact one entity. The sacred cow, democracy, brought Adolph Hitler to power, who enjoyed over 80% of the population’s support when he took command. It is a silly idea that right is to be determined by the opinion of the many, and wrong by the choice of the few: then Wisdom shall remain forever banished from human societies, for it was safeguarded by the smallest possible minority in democratic Athens: one lone man.
In ancient Athens democracy was practiced within the confines of the polis (“citadel” or its “people”). From this word came acropolis (“high citadel”), necropolis (“citadel of death”), metropolis (“mother citadel”), cosmopolis (“citadel of the universe”), politics and police. Politics, a word derived from Periclean democracy, means everything to politicians, despite the fact that the warrior general and writer Thucydides, as well as the sage Socrates, had no respect for politicians. In 1959 JFK pondered into his dictaphone: “Politics has become one of our most abused and neglected professions. It ranks low on the occupational list of a large share of the American [public].” (Lawrence Leamer, The Kennedy Men, Harper Collins, New York, 2001) He then argued that the politicians make the most important decisions in history. This view of politics as supreme in human affairs was shared by Napoleon. However, as the poet Robert Graves observed, politicians are hardly remembered in history because of the low status they hold in the overall scope of humanity. Graves regarded politicians as “mere managing clerks”:
Archons at Athens, consuls at Rome, prime ministers in modern Europe – none of these is remembered after his death, as poets and even generals are remembered, unless some national emergency has given him symbolic prominence. Otherwise they are all rightly regarded as mere managing clerks.
(The Common Asphodel)
Kennedy’s belief in the supremacy of politics derives from the democratic tribunal of politicians in Athens which condemned Socrates to death. Yes, as Kennedy says, the politicians in charge of the trial of Socrates made the most important decisions of their time – and they were the wrong decisions. What occupation, argued JFK, compares to “a life in Congress, where you are able to participate to some degree in determining which direction the nation will go?”
Alas, this notion of “determining” which way the nation will go is mere delusion. Politicians are utterly ignorant of what Destiny has in store for the nation. In “determining” the direction the nation would take by waging war in Vietnam, none of them had the wits to see that their incompetence (disguised as know-how) would lead to the defeat of the most powerful nation on earth by a tiny developing country on the other side of the planet. The historical fact of tiny Vietnam defeating in war the most powerful nation on earth is the stuff of Plutarch, Herodotus and Thucydides. It is legend as intensely as the victory at the Little Big Horn and displays the catastrophic workings of democracy at its worst.
In 1964 Robert Kennedy declared that JFK “felt that he had a strong, overwhelming reason for being in Vietnam and that we should win the war in Vietnam.” (The Kennedy Men) Those who persist in believing that JFK was against war in Vietnam forget that the first full year of US air war in Vietnam was 1962 – 12,000 sorties ordered by Kennedy in his second year in office. It would seem that JFK, and all politicians, far from “determining” coming events, are totally in the dark about what is to come. By pretending to know, they place the rest of us in utmost danger. Men and women die because of their catastrophic errors. 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese died because of incompetent politicians “determining” the future. No intelligent reason for this bloody lunacy has been found, for the simple reason that it does not exist.
Equally as erroneous was JFK’s judgment about the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. Because of his wish to “determine” coming events, more people died needlessly. Given bad counsel by his advisors, a leader has the choice to reject it. Kennedy did not reject the bad counsel given him by the CIA, but acted on it with calamitous consequences. Covertly invading Cuba obliged him to let men die rather than to overtly involve the USA militarily in rescuing them. Thus, “determining” which direction the nation would take for the politician Kennedy resulted not in Castro’s murder (as was his plan) but his own, the total failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion, the dragon’s teeth sown in Vietnam which would bring epic disaster after his death, and more political infamy to soil American history.
Rather than honestly acknowledge what the world knows today (that the US backed the invasion), and rescue American lives with overt support, to save face, the author of (the ghost-written) Profiles in Courage let 114 men die and 1,189 be imprisoned, abandoned by their president. Indeed, immediately after the invasion of the Bay of Pigs, Walter Cronkite reported on national television that Castro had called JFK a “coward”. The right decision – not to invade Cuba – was far removed from the thoughts of JFK and the geniuses advising him. Today, nearly fifty years later, Castro still prevails in Cuba, as does communism. John F. Kennedy’s name remains permanently attached to this disgrace, while the Cuban leader, despite his status as tyrant, leaves posterity with the image of an invincible leader who was Kennedy’s superior in that he survived. Again, as in Vietnam, the most powerful nation on earth was no match for a tiny developing country, this time right next door in the Caribbean. Years later, a commander directly involved in the Bay of Pigs evacuation remarked that the JFK administration was “gutless”.
We were pretty well disgusted. We could have stopped the Cuban operation cold if they had just turned us loose. I had the feeling that the Kennedy administration was gutless. They got the brigade in that predicament, and they let them hang out to dry.
(Stanley Montunnas, commander of support planes at Bay of Pigs)
The military used the same argument in Vietnam – that “gutless” politicians made them lose a war that they could have otherwise won. Although I am not convinced that their morale was high enough to defeat a valorous people with the highest morale fired by the unbending determination to defend their homeland from violent invaders, I am convinced that these two military fiascos are examples of a fatal flaw in democracy that bodes ill for the future.
Democracy was introduced into France and the rest of Europe by way of one of the the most brutal and perverse rituals of mass murder in history. The guillotine's persistent “thud“ was the voice of the people, the establishment of “majority rule“, the quaint refrain of democracy. The democratic foundation of the European Union has been criticized as a dictatorial body lorded over by unelected officials who create laws in secret and answer to international bankers and the global power elite.
The European democracies of today, both within and without the European Union, have the democracy in the USA as their initial model. The EU flag with a circle of stars on a blue field obviously is derived from Betsy Ross’ first American flag. Democracy in individual nations is one thing. A monstrous democratic bureaucracy stretching across the borders of Europe, with administrative seats in Brussels and Strasbourg, is another. What portion of a member nation’s sovereignty is to be handed over to the EU parliament? No one knows for sure and chaos is the result. A referendum vote was held all over Europe to ratify a constitutional document. A “yes” was the politically correct vote. Ireland voted “no”. But in a democracy, the outcome of such voting can be manipulated until the “correct” result is achieved. A year or so later, after much heated debating and political arm-twisting, another referendum over the same issue was held with the understanding that Ireland should now deliver the “correct” vote, the one that the EU parliament had already decided on. Ireland voted “yes”.
One raison d’être of the EU – to avoid the fratricidal slaughter that has been a European tradition for centuries – is dubious when confronting the fact of the wars in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s, with the worst carnage in Europe since World War II taking place under the noses of the democracies in the EU. At this writing, the nation which hosts the EU parliament, Belgium, is experiencing serious inner conflict that threatens to split it into two nations. The Flemish-speaking citizens want to prevent the French-speaking citizens from buying homes in their areas, and refuse to converse with anyone in French. The problem is getting worse as I write, and begs the question: If the two ethnic groups in the host nation of the EU parliament cannot coexist in harmony, how on earth can all the many diverse nations and cultures of the EU do so???
Today in Sweden white supremacists and neo-nazis disguise themselves as political parties like the one called Sweden Democrats. Such people, like Hitler himself, are very pleased with the concept “democracy”. They see it, as Hitler himself saw it, as a clever way to sneak into the political arena with false smiles and rhetoric. They like democracy so much that they have given themselves the name “democrats”. This con-game creates a dilemma for the other “respectable” parties in Sweden’s democracy. Trying to forbid Sweden Democrats from gaining seats in parliament goes against the principles of a democracy, since they, like Hitler’s Nationalist Socialist party, have the same rights as any other political party. If the government denies the Sweden Democrats access to school auditoriums during election campaigns to disseminate their propaganda, then all parties must be denied this access. In the midst of this heated public debate, the Sweden Democrats are receiving very much free publicity which helps their cause to maintain the purity of the “white race”.
Thus, the democratic society which opposes the Sweden Democrats gives them valuable assistance for increasing their popularity and possibly gaining seats in parliament in the next elections. The weakness and incompetence of many politicians now in power, their corruption and misguided legislation that at times is nothing other than sheer idiocy, result in wide-spread public contempt for politicians and a desire for something “new” and “different”. A “change”. Change is the raison d’être of a democratic election, whether it be a change from plague to pestilence, or vice versa. Thus, from one election to the next a voter goes through the cynical cycle of thinking: “Plague is bad, but perhaps pestilence is not so bad,” and then: “Pestilence is bad but perhaps plague is not so bad.” The important thing is change.
In their chronic lack of self-criticism, western democracies don’t wish to acknowledge the degree to which corruption has been, traditionally, a part of the democratic process. At the present writing (April 18, 2010) the conservative government in Sweden is being accused of several counts of purchasing votes from immigrant communities in Stockholm in the elections of 2006. This brings to mind the democratic manner in which Joseph Kennedy’s money was used to “purchase” a House of Representatives seat for his son John in the 1946 campaign. JFK’s extremely wealthy and powerful father paid a janitor named Joseph Russo, who shared the same name with JFK’s opponent, to put his name on the ballot in order to split the real Russo’s votes. Thus, JFK’s first steps toward the White House were made in the dog shit of corruption. The janitor Russo was thrilled: “They gave me favors. Whatever I wanted. I could have gone in the housing project if I wanted. If I wanted an apartment, I could have got the favor. You know?” ( The Kennedy Men) The next stop on the way to the White House was the Senate in 1952: “You know, we had to buy that fucking paper [ Boston Post] or I’d have been licked.” (Senator JFK after his successful election to the Senate)
Although knaves win in every political struggle, although society seems to be delivered over from the hands of one set of criminals into the hands of another set of criminals, as fast as the government is changed, and [although] the march of civilization is a train of felonies – yet, general ends are somehow answered.
– Ralph Waldo Emerson, The American Scholar
The presidential election of 2000 between George W. Bush and Al Gore reveals that democratic “rule by the people” is a meaningless phrase. The election was noteworthy because the winning candidate received fewer popular votes than the runner-up. It was the fourth US election in which the electoral vote did not reflect the popular vote. Strangely, there was a problem with the voting machines in Florida and the vote count looked suspicious in a state whose governor was, strangely, the brother of the “winner”. The subsequent recount process “awarded” Florida's electoral votes to the governor’s brother, who became president in spite of the democratic “will of the people”. Thus, the democratic process brought to power for eight years a man who grew to be detested world-wide, who increased the devastation and misery in the Middle East, whose government brought on the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression, and who was not elected by the “majority vote” of the demos (people). If the majority vote is not to be the determining factor in the outcome of a presidential election, if malfunctioning voting machines and political corruption can award the presidency to the loser, then… à quoi bon?
The people who cast the votes decide nothing.
The people who count the votes decide everything.
– Joseph Stalin
The Electoral College consists of representatives (electors) who formally elect the president and vice president of the United States, an example of an indirect election. Rather than directly voting for the president and vice president, United States citizens vote for electors. Electors are technically free to vote for anyone eligible to be president, but in practice “pledge” to vote for specific candidates. In reality, voters cast ballots for favored presidential and vice presidential candidates by voting for correspondingly pledged electors, who are however free to vote for the opponent at their whim, despite their “pledge”.
The outcome of a presidential election in such a fickle and illogical system resembles the outcome of the system using “heads or tails?” as its guiding principle. The advantage of tossing a coin to determine who will be president is that it saves the taxpayers astronomical sums needed to conduct a national election, as well as the salaries of the “electors” in the Electoral College, who are in turn free to get themselves a life. Although critics argue that the Electoral College is inherently undemocratic, it is indeed democratic, part and parcel of the most powerful democracy on earth. A result of the Electoral College is that the national popular vote bears no legal significance on determining the outcome of the election. The elections of 1824, 1876, 1888 and 2000 produced an Electoral College winner who did not receive the plurality of the nationwide popular vote. Thus, in the world’s most powerful democracy, the national popular vote is irrelevant.
The Electoral College in American democracy means that, since the national popular vote can be irrelevant, candidates base their campaign strategies around the existence of the Electoral College. Any close race has candidates campaigning to maximize electoral votes by capturing coveted “swing states”, not to maximize national popular vote totals. Throughout time, societies have been governed by tactics of deception in order to maintain a hierarchy of exploitation and servitude. Voters in the USA are like turkeys voting for Thanksgiving.
Democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contentions,
have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights
of property, and have in general been as short in their lives
as they have been violent in their deaths.
– James Madison
One of the most calamitous results of democracy in North America was the Civil War (1861-1865). In 1858, two years before he became president, Abraham Lincoln cited Matthew 12:25 in a famous speech: “A house divided against itself cannot stand.” In the gruesome four-year war that resulted in “a house divided against itself”, 620,000 people were killed – more than all the American dead in World Wars I and II, Korea, Vietnam, and the other smaller wars between 1865 and 2010. The confederate flag is still flying in the South, evidence that the house is still divided against itself. Even in Washington DC today, the traditional rivalry between Democrats and Republicans reveals that the state of being “divided against itself” is the very image of modern democracies.
Abraham Lincoln, despite his godlike status in our education system, is being revealed by certain historians as the worst dictator in American history, enemy of the Constitution, which proclaims secession as constitutional, thus no cause for war. The blatant lie that white supremacist Lincoln launched the Civil War “to free the slaves“ evokes the “weapons of mass destruction“ that were the lie that launched the war in Iraq in 2003 The world would have to wait almost a century more for one despot to have caused the violent deaths of 620,000 of his countrymen. There is no intelligent reason for Lincoln to have waged this war. The only reason for this war is despotism.
In Sweden, as in other European democracies, “liberal” parties have traditionally been opposed to “conservative” parties, assuring that the respective nations remain forever divided against themselves. Every time a new political block comes to power, the course of the nation changes abruptly, canceling many promises and projects made by the previous power-holders. If a ship at sea were to navigate in this fashion, a course set for Rio de Janeiro would result in the ship docking in New Orleans. If, instead of Rio de Janeiro, the destination is a dignified existence for all citizens, then the destination will never be reached by such faulty navigation.
In the 2,500 years since its birth democracy has not produced a just society in which all citizens are granted a dignified existence. The vast scope of the poverty and misery in the USA today is best proof of this fact. Modern democracies lavish their wealth more freely on means for the destruction of the human race than on that which would lead to the well-being of their citizens. When democracy came to ancient Athens, the comic playwright Aristophanes remarked that the wealth of the nation was enough for everyone to lead “a life worthy of the land they belong to, worthy of the victors of Marathon. Instead of which you have to queue up for your pay like a lot of olive-pickers!” (The Wasps) Such was the birth of democracy.
Americans revel proudly in their democracy, and at whim lay waste foreign countries in order that these poor souls as well may enjoy this splendid thing: democracy. And since “compromise” is a cornerstone of democracy, they are quite willing to compromise with the commandment “Thou shallt not kill” to force democracy on nations which they have invaded, even if tens of thousands of innocent civilians and thousands of their own soldiers must die in agony. Indeed, it was the very democratic notion of “compromise” that made it possible for Socrates himself to take his own life instead of being stoned to death in a public square. (We must be civilized about these things!) Those who say no thank you to democracy can find themselves undergoing “enhanced interrogation techniques“ (torture) by American military who compromise with international law and common decency without a trace of conscience. On March 7, 2011 Defense Secretary Robert Gates described the mistaken killing of nine Afghan boys by NATO aircraft as a “setback“, and for the umpteenth time the USA offers an “apology“ for the massacre of innocent civilians to whom they bring the precious gift of democracy.
Americans would never tolerate a foreign army stationed permanently in the United States at various military bases supported by a vast infrastructure needed to maintain not only their military aspect, but their “rest-and-relaxation” aspect as well. Many countries around the world however are obliged to do just that with over 800 US military bases established as an echo of the military bases established by the Roman Empire in countries which it dominated. (The Romans and The Germans as well came as saviours.) “Rest-and-relaxation” for American military abroad involves networks of brothels in the vicinity of the bases where the USA demonstrates to the local population the moral standards maintained in the democracy which they export (by brute force) to foreign countries. Nightly brawls, violent crimes against civilians, the general blight of boisterous arrogant soldiers, pollution and noise are the trademarks of this democracy as seen by the people now being colonized.
Insitutionalized torture of captives in prisons like Abu Grahib in Bagdad, Bagram in Kabul, Guantánamo and secret prisons around the world reveal that the government is not concerned by laws that have been decreed by the very democracy they are exporting. Established to prevent tyranny, American democracy has become the biggest tyranny on earth, the greatest threat to world peace. Chalmers Johnson visualized the current state of American democracy in his book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic:
The United States today is like a cruise ship on the Nigara River upstream of the most spectacular falls in North America. A few people on board have begun to pick up a slight hiss in the background, to observe a faint haze of mist in the air or on their glasses, to note that the river current seems to be running slightly faster. But no one yet seems to have realized that it is almost too late to head for shore.
Many wishful-thinkers want to believe that the billions of homo sapiens on our planet are essentially reasonable, infinitely educable, peaceful, good-hearted beings who will – one day soon – finally be able to govern themselves in an intelligent manner. It is, however, questionable if “the majority rules” is to be their guiding principle. After all, the overwhelming majority of the German people who supported Adolf Hitler were not psychopaths, but ordinary people like those voting in democratic elections around the world today. It was a tiny minority, like the school girl Sophie Scholl, her brother Hans and friend Cristoph Probst, who dared defy Hitler. And they – like Socrates, like Wisdom – were put to death by the mindless pride of the “majority”.
The democratic principle of “compromise” made it possible to write slavery into the constitution in 1787: the northerners would return all runaway slaves and offer no protest over the importation, buying, selling and mistreatment of African peoples. The southerners, who regarded the latter as livestock, would be allowed to include their slaves in a population-count for seats in the House of Representatives. (Cows, sheep and chickens, however, were not to be represented in the new congress.) Not only did Thomas Jefferson consider his race superior over that of his many slaves, but his sex superior over that of women. Women simply were not to be considered in the running of the new “democracy”. And thus, even at the moment of its conception, the blue-print of American law was indelibly stained with crime. Its signatures bear witness to all the foundering fathers who whole-heartedly agreed to “compromise” with evil. To construct a government upon such “compromises” is to call down calamity on future generations. (A compromise between a good idea and a bad idea is a bad idea.)
Ben Franklin, who was one of the masterminds of the above “compromise”, wrote in his Autobiography of his passionate desire to reserve the continent of Turtle Island for the “White People on the Face of the Earth” by “Scouring our planet, by clearing America of Woods, and so making this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus.” A fine bit of lunacy from an American hero! Virile cultures and ancient forests which had existed on the continent for thousands of years were to be “scoured” from it, and a nation was to be imposed on it based on “the yea and no of general ignorance” (Shakespeare, Coriolanus).
Update, November 11, 2011 (11.11.11)
The ongoing Euro crisis has resulted in a call for a democratic referendum vote in Greece by prime minister George Papandreou to determine whether or not the Greek people want the Euro or EU-membership. What? Democratic process to be utilized in the “cradle of democracy”? Unthinkable! In the capital city of modern Greece – Brussels – it was decided that the Greek prime minister who called for such an unthinkable process (democracy) would be forced to “resign”. In his place Lucas Papademos, the vice president of the European Central Bank and a member of Goldman Sachs, was imposed on the Greeks by the Germans as their prime minister, just as former EU Commissioner Mario Monti is now forced upon the Italians. Italy's new government has not one member who was elected democratically. As with the other EU commissioners and VIPs in Brussels, these bureaucrats are “appointed” by some vague and faceless dictatorship without the voters having any say in the matter. It appears that 11.11.11 was the day that national sovereignity became irrelevant and that the chimera called democracy died in “democratic” Europe.
Odysseus restoring sovereignity to his nationIn 2011 Greece has returned to the famous scenario of the depraved Suitors impoverishing the realm in the 3,000-year old epic poem, the Odyssey. Alas, Odysseus will not be returning home this time and slay the Suitors (foreign banks) who have robbed Greece of its sovereignity, forced it to become a colony of Germany and the rest of the EU, expelled her democratically elected prime minister, and in his place appointed a banker from the US investment bank Goldman Sachs. His name is not Antinous but Papademos. Both are Greeks unworthy of Greece, unable to string Odysseus’ bow, that is, unfit for leadership. Papademos has been instructed by his overlords in the EU to stifle any talk of Greek sovereignity, just as Antinous would not tolerate Penelope asserting her husband's sovereignity over Ithaca.
The horde of 108 boisterous Suitors abused the hospitality of Odysseus' household, insulted his wife, beat up his son and ate up his wealth just as the foreign banks eat up profits from “austerity measures” imposed on ordinary Greek citizens to repay “bail-out loans”, to the point that some children are fainting from hunger and some adults are committing suicide. Beggars stand on Athens' sidewalks, pensioners are picking up discarded vegetables after street markets close, and the homeless are scavenging for food in garbage cans, while the modern Suitors are living in luxury and ease. Like Odysseus' burglarized household on Ithaca, the entire Greek populace today live in degradation and bitterness, the awakened ones among them deploring that they ever became memembers of the EU, that they ever were so unwise as to take the Euro as their currency. Such is democracy in Greece after 2,500 years!
EPILOGUE
A 77-year-old retired pharmacist shot himself in the head in Athens’ not far from the parliament in the busiest square on April 4, 2012.
The following excerpt from his suicide note was published by Greek newspapers:
The occupation government of Tsolagoglou [reference to Hitler's occupation government under Tsolagoglou, Quisling Prime Minister of the 3rd Reich] has erased essentially any possibility of my survival which was based on a decent pension which for 35 years, I alone (without the intervention of the state) had paid.
I am at an age which doesn’t give me the individual capacity for a dynamic intervention (without of course precluding that if one Greek took up arms-Kalashnikovs, the second person would be me) I can't find another solution from a decent end before I end up looking in the rubbish bins for food.
I believe that the young without a future, one day will take up arms and in Sindagma Square will hang upside down the national traitors like the Italians did with Mussolini.
