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THE
END OF DEMOCRACY?
Do
you remember a pamphlet rose to a remarkable fame at the beginning of
the ninety, written by a Japan-American researcher sociologist and political
counselling whose name was Francis Fukojama and entitled "The end of
history?". There he debated in a some bar-kind way that the fall of
the wall had in practice led history to the terminus: what else could
it happen, then..? How it's going on now we know... Well then, a title
alike crosses my mind for analogy and that sounds as "Democracy ended!!".
I beg you to follow me: past August, few days later one from other,
two fathers of the Italian journalism of the second half of the XX century,
Enzo Biagi and Giorgio Bocca celebrated their birthday.
There's
a lot to say about the two gurus, in the good and in the ill, provided
the good and the ill of information as a whole. I confine myself to
mark the difference of the birthday celebration deserved to them: Biagi,
between awards and celebration, has been literally hailed; Bocca, set
a part some acknowledgment of estimation, ignored. Why this resounded
(and ignored by sheer coincidence by them/our same category) disparity?
For a very simply reason: Biagi has always been a man of power, power
likes him, his homogeneous with power, starting from the editorial one
that sponsors him for his indubitable professional depth.
Bocca, even among thousands contradictions, isn't. He goes on thinking,
even if in disorderly way, even with dross of past among the golden
threads of the real memory, while the precious Enzo goes on quoting.
Being this one the condition of mass media, who did you think they would
celebrate, the quotation maker or the thinker?
I
leave the reader, that on the other side I think I used to analyse clinically
facts and shady customers of communication along with me while my friend
Solinas does bravely the same with another starting "c", that of culture
-, leaving the doubt about who had read most sane things in the long
career of the two, in front of which, all ways, it remains lonely Indro
Montanelli: concerning me, even if smiling for the almost daily amount
of quotations, I re-start -to get to the point- from an intervention
by Bocca on a issue of the "L'Espresso" on late summer entitled "In
the democracy of the kiss politicians are like products".
He
refers to Al Gore and to the one-minute kiss to his wife (sure to his
wife: if he kissed his named vice-president, Hebrew, the effect would
have been quite different....) at the Democrats' convention that seem,
thanks to the kiss, to have upset polls. Hence a set of considerations
by Bocca (evidently with less cakes and bubbly wine than the eight-years-old
peer) about the value of an even more spectacular and superficial democracy.
Maybe, I would add, it has got the moment to debate democracy, to debate
if it is reduced to a fetish an so to a taboo, a huge taboo: mainly
if at matter it is not only -"not only "?- a way to govern, but rather
quality of life of individuals and society, that is a sort of "where
are we going to end?". Bocca's birthday suggests me the following: that
for Biagi, maybe it's too soon, or maybe too late....
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