Propaganda

That our public opinion has been manipulated for years by US propaganda is more than evident. And so is the fact—ever since the Mitrokhin archives, thanks to which we discovered hot water—that the traditional oppositions in Europe were remote-controlled by Kremlin propaganda.
Far more surprising is what's happening these days, in the era of the web, social media, and all the various information channels open to everyone.

Society as a whole—not just the news media or political organizations—has by now split along a dividing line that in some stretches coincides with the old Iron Curtain and in others is more fluid. Most of the population reacts like parrots (or rather, maybe parrots are more independent) to one propaganda or the other, with no fixed outlets to rely on, but going out and personally hunting for the sources that confirm the laws carved into the tablets that their deity of choice has handed down to them.

So we end up with a majority of people who no longer question anything and have no desire to uncover truths, lies, evidence, or logical holes for the pure pleasure of learning and understanding. Their only goal is to discredit A and confirm B, through banal, childish cherry-picking techniques. And so they lean, completely uncritically, on assorted mainstream and minorstream channels—or rather, given how comparable the two camps have become, mainstream A and mainstream B, that is, dry media waste and wet media waste.

Everyone thinks they've got the truth in their back pocket and mocks the other side, accusing them of being puppets manipulated by a system. And of course, on that last point, they're all right.
I read this quote somewhere, and it strikes me as spot-on: “There’s no better herd than people you’ve convinced they’re outside the herd”

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

The two Matrixes

Yes, two types of Matrix. The official one and the alternative one. Because with divide and rule, herds of oxen are easier to govern.
People who truly think for themselves belong to a tiny minority, sometimes even an intermittent one, because it's not easy to keep the tiller steady on a course of independent clarity when you're crushed between the two jaws of a two-headed cultural press that swallows up, on one side or the other, most of the population.

In this majority, split in two along an artificial and illusory dividing line, there are plenty of sharp minds and prominent personalities who can't break free of the spell. It isn't for lack of talent, courage, or wit, but for lack of vision. They can't imagine a different reality, freed from the shackles of one imperial domain or the other.
And that's a real shame, because we badly need people with their qualities, but without servitude to the powerful of the moment, and unhooked from the sedation of mainstream and anti-mainstream propaganda, that is, type A and type B media waste.

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.

Rebellion

The determination with which most of the "old fogeys" rack their brains to find logical holes in the reasoning these students gave the exam board for refusing to sit the exam smacks of powerlessness, more than of authoritativeness, not to say authority.
The truth is, every criticism leveled at them does have a point, in the musty corner it's being shouted from. "All of life is competition." "Too convenient not to sit at that table and get away with it." "What a lack of respect toward the people who bust their backs to give you an education." "You're turning your back on a society that's trying gratis to give you a future."

They make sense, sure, but from the point of view of someone who got caught off guard, and maybe got knocked out cold by an unexpected uppercut. It's like trying to make sense of the promises of a general who has just pulled off a coup, or the cheering of the ringleader of inmates who have mutinied, only to try to take them apart with a bureaucrat's logic.

Maybe it's that I don't spend much time in Italy, and I'm starting to react to news from the motherland in a slightly atypical way, but what I notice about this whole affair is the gesture, more than the explanation. It's a revolt. It isn't a critique of the system, with solid, rational socio-political reasons. It's a rebellion against authority, and so an act of force. The gesture has no meaning. The gesture is the meaning. What catches you unprepared, and so lays you flat, is precisely that it comes from where you don't expect it, from a generation you thought you'd raised, but which has instead already developed a mindset of its own, different from yours, new, unpredictable, partly unknown even to the ones who embody it. So it explores it, tests it, to see just how far it can go in using it as a battering ram.

It's the young animal, a cub until yesterday, challenging the pack leader to become the new alpha male. Except this isn't just about males. There are girls too. With balls, some would say. But that would be the usual regime reading, sexist by virtue of being a regime, like all traditional regimes. These are girls who do what they do with what they have, meaning not balls, and that's what makes them strong.

Besides, nearly all of them come from Veneto, a region portrayed for years as a caricature: servile, bigoted, workaholic, backward. Mocked by regions that have been wallowing since time immemorial in other stereotypes just as ridiculous. Stereotypes that, with every generation, in every city in Italy, fortunately lose a piece or two. I wouldn't be surprised if before long we saw them running the country. And go ahead and tell me they'd be worse than the ones we have now!

Egocentric? They were awkward kids not long ago. They wrote this script in their little bedrooms, or in the back room of a neighborhood café, while we were worrying about them catching the flu. And now public opinion is asking questions. Ministers step in to change the rules. The public comments, scandalized. Is there some egocentrism? It would be surprising if there weren't! But do you remember yourselves at that age? Pumped up if two classmates laughed at one of your jokes. The lump in your throat and the sleep lost before the exam?

A student plans the surprise move in silence, calculates the risks, exploits the wiggle room in the gaps of a system that has run the same way for decades, shows up in front of adults vested with the authority to judge him, greets them, explains himself, takes his leave with a line that lands, and leaves everyone speechless. The plan worked to perfection. And you'd better believe there's egocentrism! The same egocentrism as the forty-something politician or industrialist who checkmated the competition with sinister maneuvers. And who, when he gets checkmated by his own son, reacts like a moralist.

You're accusing them of shying away from challenges? Of refusing to compete? But they tripped you up and laid you flat, when you didn't even know you were in the race with them?

Drafted from Italian with Blog Translator, then revised by me.