Reshuffling. Or: About The Capricious Voter

Philippines, electoral advertising in the streets

Pretending to change the rules of the game while being predictable and misinformed. Recent General Elections in the UK and France, plus local mayoral races in Italy, represent good examples of a puzzling trend: voters ostensibly voting to upset the forces in power, or at least those forces that seem stronger at the moment, as if the unwashed masses wanted to evade control (while actually failing at it). As if moderation and wisdom were embodied by an erratic behavior that isn’t fully committed to any cause or political project, instead rushing to support the latest movement or political figure promising “change”, then at the next opportunity punishing that very same party…

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Syria, Sarin & Red Pills

A surprisingly widespread reaction to anti-Assad propaganda (UPDATED) As you probably already know, yesterday tens of people have been killed in Idlib, Syria, seemingly as a consequence of chemical weapons being released in the air. Horrible images of civilians and children, gasping for air or already dead, have been disseminated around the mediasphere. According to reports, the Syrian Army attacked the rebel-controlled territory using Sarin gas. The source: a so-called Observatory for Human Rights, a well-known propaganda operation based in London, part of an international concerted effort to remove the Syrian President Bashar Assad from power, favoring the “rebels” (essentially ISIS, Al-Qaeda spin-offs and their allies) that are at war with the…

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On Trump, crowd counting & lies. Look what I found!

How big was the crowd at Trump’s Inauguration? Bear with me. I wasted waaay too much time on this study. But the results are significant.   This is a teachable moment. What happens when literally everybody is lying, and the matter is quite difficult to verify to begin with? Ideally, you’d expect people to notice and demand better standards from politicians and journalists, but no. The two sides just choose the narrative they like, then run with it. Eventually the public moves on. But I’m not. I waited a few days to see if someone came up with a decent article on the subject, in vain. See, the topic itself isn’t…

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Acts of Mercy from the Monkey Church

Uno dei manifesti di contestazione a papa Francesco e al suo operato comparsi a decine in tutta Roma, appesi sui muri della città, 4 febbraio 2017. La foto a tutto campo riporta l'immagine del Pontefice con un'espressione particolarmente rabbuiata e accigliata. In basso, su fondo violaceo, la scritta con venature romanesche: "A France', hai commissariato Congregazioni, rimosso sacerdoti, decapitato l'Ordine di Malta e i Francescani dell'Immacolata, ignorato Cardinali... ma n'do sta la tua misericordia?". ANSA/ FRANCESCO GERACE

If salt loses its taste There’s a new Catholic Church today. A Church that is behaving like a monkey: aping the majesty and wisdom of God, drifting away from Him. It’s a significant part of the Catholic Church; you’d easily mistake it for the Church itself. But it’s something different. It’s a sort of gooey blob that took over many positions. But it won’t end like this.   For all its blabbering about mercy, this reality is far from the true Mercy that comes from Christ; they are watering down the Church teachings in order to appease everyone. “The pitiful mother causes the wound to fester”, an old Italian saying goes. Posing…

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The US Media Circus & Trump, as seen from abroad

People attending Trump's Presidential Inauguration

Since I kept a close eye on the US Presidential Election, especially for an Italian, but I didn’t report of the events unfolding from the actual election itself on November 9 to yesterday’s Presidential Inauguration, many fellow foreigners may now ask: what happened during this transition? The short answer is “not much”.     The Trump team was busy putting together a cabinet that seems quite solid and trying to keep the promise of bringing a new approach to politics. Case in point, Trump nominated Scott Pruitt as head of the Environmental Protection Agency, and this move was widely criticized because Pruitt himself previously sued the EPA (alongside many other…

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