Once Upon a Time - Not an American Tale

It has been a while since my last post and I naively hoped that this writing break would exorcise all evil things on this planet, which look to have disrupted what I once thought was an equilibrium in the occurrence of good and bad things.

Instead, we experienced wildfires in the country, the worst in decades, headed by the catastrophic events in Mati, which left every branch of government officially involved unprotected from the harshest of criticism by the public, all the while the mess left behind counts almost one hundred burned corpses that will haunt the collective conscience of this administration forever, should it have one.

Seven months before this calamity, we had experienced a similar extreme outbreak of natural forces to the same effect in Mandra, where twenty-four citizens drowned in a flood that took place in what we thought is the most attended part of the country, i.e. in-and around its capitol. Again, much to the detriment of this administration things happened during the same term of office. Usually, our low set public argument would immediately try to put the blame to past rulers of this country and to no one’s surprise this turned-out to be an easy prediction to make.

And while I am sure most of us have become immune to the various unreasonable, almost borderline idiotic narratives of this present poor and inefficient administration and its below average staff, we were yet once more negatively impressed by their official explanations. The absence of a proper sewage system and the fact that at some point in time we started concreting over our waterways and kept building homes on them equals the quote of “building castles in the sand” and it seems that we did so hoping that it would never rain in this country. Which worked ok for some years. So, in some regard I guess that this fact came handy to the PM when he tried to address the public and explain why they failed so bitterly in preventing this disaster. At the time the Government, via its female Prefect had promised to endeavour into rapid flood prevention measures to avoid future incidents. Only for the citizens of Mandra to face the same floods seven months later in a short summer-day rain where they had to learn the hard way that nothing had been done in the interim.

Equally unfortunate is the circumstance of the recent Mati wildfire, which cost the lives of ninety-six people, where the government branches completely failed to understand the trends of the fire and to coordinate efficiently the attempts to control it. And with this human drama in progress the Government contained itself to lousy statements about the efficiency of the branches involved, while at the same time all fire-fighting forces and police coordinating operations on the ground redirected citizens to the center of the fires instead away from it.

A little over a week ago, a young couple, a Greek student who lived the last seven years of his life in Scotland, came to visit his home-town of Athens. He took his Portuguese girlfriend to the Hill of Philopappou, which is right across the Acropolis for a romantic evening walk where they were attacked and robbed by three Iraqis and Afghan illegal refugees. The young man was pushed over the hill and got killed. Mind you, this place is one of the most visited places by tourist and incidents like this one happen all the time, yet there is no policing of the area whatsoever. And remember, this country’s economy depends largely on tourism.

Three days ago, the city experienced a power black-out for many hours with the power grid being overloaded on a more than normal summer day of August, where ¾of citizens were on vacation. Tons of supermarket products that needed to be kept in refrigerators, but also thousands of households affected had to throw things into the garbage.

In simple words, this country if falling apart. Anything can happen to you at any point in time. Life, as we knew it does no longer exist. Succeeding memoranda and incapable governments have catapulted this country back into the 70ies. The 70ies that followed the reinstatement of democracy after a seven-year dictatorship period. Where everything was scarce and everything was possible. Where shadows were enough to scare the living hell out of you. Kind of an Eldorado - a State without rules and with collective fears and other counter-productive social syndromes.

With the major difference that there is crime today. Lots of it. And criminals that come in both colors, official and unofficial. Street crime and political crime walking hand-in-hand. Sometimes you cannot even tell them apart. Soviet style propaganda from dawn to evening, the type that takes you, the citizen, for brain-dead. Mediocracy at all levels and no escape rooms in sight. We certainly deserve either better or a lottery destiny. We are tired of 50/50 games, but also tired by this widespread incompetence. Tired of the "No-future" psychology and tired of non-reciprocal sacrifices. And also tired of nepotism, of social wisdom and of father figures. We need to break the intoxicating chains of false capitalism and the notion of surreal communism. And if we are meant to go down, we shall not do so without giving our finest fight. Remember, we once used to be the cradle of Democracy. Let's remove the cancerous part of this society and I am convinced that we can do it again!