Notes from the underground

The Greek parliament ought to be an elevated place, but in recent years it has been striving hard to come level with the gutter. This is certainly true with respect to the basic political (as well as other) intelligence of the average member. As for elementary integrity, the issue should be better avoided. This is terrible news for the notion as well as the practice of democracy in this country, which in recent years has disintegrated into an unprincipled free-for-all for the satisfaction of private interest and/or sectarian ideological delusion at the expense of the commonweal. This as a rule involves the deliberate wrecking of public institutions, space and property in the name of sundry ideological obfuscations of bogus "social" coloring, such as nationalism, Stalinism or (quite often) an odious combination of the two.

This is a shattering disappointment for many of us, who a generation or so ago fought the colonels' regime with the vain (as it is clear now) hope that we might put a free and decent society in its place. We paid a terrible price for this delusion, not necessarily in terms of personal suffering -although in quite a few cases this was also involved. I am talking rather in terms of the misguided life goals that we set ourselves in the light of the betrayed ideals of those years, such as the determination to abandon prospects of academic and personal advancement abroad in order to participate in the effort, as we saw it, to build that society. It was all so utterly futile. When Papadopoulos died in prison a few years ago, I wrote in my personal journal that he should rest easy because the behavior of his ostensible enemies actually vindicated him ideologically. His silly doctrine of "Greco-Christian" messianism was soon after his overthrow triumphant, penetrating all components of the political spectrum. As for the spectacular venality of the "democratic" power holders, of all ideological persuasions and on all levels of government, it worked as a retrospective confirmation of his dismissal of the entire political class as corrupt. One of the saddest things in the past couple of years especially has been hearing ordinary people of impeccable democratic and leftist credentials openly express a longing for his dictatorship as a last ditch cure for the moral, social and economic breakdown that our pithecanthropic political and intellectual leaders have plunged us into.

These are of course counsels of desperation. And, all told, it is still the sullen and cowed mass of the people that offers the long-term hope that this problematic historical experiment called modern Greece will still emerge as a viable social and cultural concern after the present shipwreck. And the reason is simple. It is they, the anonymous masses, that silently bear the brunt of the present catastrophe. They are its only witnesses in a basic existential sense. And, to utilize a valuable insight of the great Hegel, it is through this "fear and labor" inflicted upon them by those that falsely claim to speak for them that they will find the inner strength to endure and to build a new life upon today's ruins. They have done it in the past, and therefore it is reasonable to assume that the feat will be repeated. For there is true seriousness in their silence. They, and only they, have instinctively understood the depth and significance of the present disintegration, for it affects their existence immediately and painfully without the mediation of junk ideologies and political slogans. They know, for they have always known, that it is only through work, serious, concentrated work personal and social, that their society and nation will pull through. Work has reappeared as a value in the present despond. It had well nigh evaporated in the great debauch of the past generation, where getting something for nothing, blackmailing the community for personal gain, sucking the marrow out of the bones of the commonweal was the watchword of "democratic" advancement. In this sense there is a return to the essentials of, yes, Marxism (as well as of the classical social and political theory of modernity) -of a genuine Marxism, though, as opposed to the tattered and lying caricatures thereof with which the Greek people had been hoodwinked and oppressed. It is in this undertow that long-term hope may be detected -not foolishly I hope.

As opposed to this, there are no signs that, even in the midst of the terminal crisis we are going through, our rotten elites can offer even a morsel of inspiration to counteract the gloom. Instead, they are still engaged in their selfish games of jockeying for power, even as the whole edifice is crumbling around them. Their incorrigibility is the cause of the fact that among broad segments of the population, and especially the rudderless and fearful youth, the very democratic ideal, which they quite naturally identify with its vile usurpers, has been discredited. The feeling in the air is sometimes akin to the twilight of the Weimar republic. A kind of defensive fascism is rampant, blindly nihilistic and reflexively violent, no matter what the ideological pretensions it dons. This knee-jerk reactionary paroxysm, often taking the form of real flames devouring the center of Athens, can cause incalculable devastation. But, as I argued above, it is not preordained that it will prevail.

These sad thoughts (and only this kind seems to be possible nowadays) were occasioned by the antics of our self-admiring parliamentarians yesterday. The director of the IMF was in town and he agreed to appear before the economic affairs committee in order to answer questions about the rescue program etc. The antediluvian left boycotted the proceedings claiming that he had no right to be in the country (!!!!!) at all. The deputies present then proceeded to basically insult him. The attack was orchestrated by a prominent individual of the ruling party (!!!!), a person who was a chief contributor to the unspeakable kleptokratic mess from the consequences of which those foreign agencies currently reviled in the media and in parliament consented to save us, provided we decided to mend our ways. The sight of the very protagonists of the calamity that threatens our existence as a country abusing one of the agents of our possible salvation would be utterly laughable -if it weren't so tragic. The perversity of all this is so extreme that it ends up provoking a certain admiration. The political sense of our elected leaders is so abysmal for so many reasons that one's head just spins. To begin with, the IMF, for all its real and imaginary faults, is an official agency of the United Nations. Greece is a certified member of it, paying its dues regularly since WW2. Many prominent Greeks have been and are still among its ranks. So much for its "right" to be present in the country. All this is of course arcane science for our Neanderthal revolutionaries whose great vision for the country has all the hallmarks of North Korea. But one might think that a basic sense of self-preservation would deter at least the members of the ruling party that had to go a-begging to the IMF's door from their egregious rudeness. It so happens that at the present moment among our rescuers it is precisely the IMF that supports Greece's request for a prolongation of the period of repayment of the loans, in the face of opposition from Germany. Among all their accumulated misdeeds, it is this suicidal stupidity of our representatives which is so frightening. We are at God's mercy.......