Saturday, April 9, 2011

Rotten to the marrow... and still winning elections

IMAGE REMOVED BECAUSE OF NATO CENSORSHIP AGAINST INSURGENTE WEBSITE
Corrupt Tory politicians laughing at everyone
Something good about having many cousins is that, in the occasional family meal such as weddings, they provide you with anecdotes from exotic places and occupations. So I have this cousin who is a propagandist mercenary (writes propaganda articles under assumed identities for a price), that other one who is a broker (unscathed in the financial crisis, don't ask me how) and that one who works in the Valencian Country much to his own desperation. 

Valencia, aka Madrid's beach, is a very strange place. 24 years ago I was hitchhiking through the peninsula and between Madrid and Valencia (and further southwards to Denia) almost all I got were reluctant rides of people who wanted to hire me for sex or even give me a job working as prostitute. They even protested that, if I was hitchhiking I must be offering my sexual services. Astonishing and disturbing. It never happened to me in any other country.

Later the road between Madrid and Valencia became known as the route of cod (bacalao, Spanish word for repetitive disco-techno music) and it became full of young brainless zombies in sportswear and extasis pills.

According to my cousin (he has repeated that in several occasions along the years), Valencia is a moral desert. Of course there are exceptions, far from me to judge any whole country much less knowing also in person some of such exceptions (for example the people around the historical hardcore band Maniática, who also made the best clone of The Clash in Spanish language ever: La Furia)... but they are from a peripheral town in the South.

The case is that the ruling conservative party (PP) of the Autonomous Community of Valencia is rotten to the marrow and most of its leaders are implicated in serious corruption scandals. Even their own party's state-wide leadership demanded from them to present a clean list to the upcoming elections, yet they have rejected to do that and at least 10 of the accused in the corruption scandals are in the list for the upcoming regional elections (not to mention what may be at municipal level).

But all polls suggest that, regardless, they are going to win by a lot. It is not only that all other parties are also quite rotten (even if maybe less exposed) but that voters do not seem to care at all. (Source: Insurgente [LINK REMOVED BECAUSE OF NATO CENSORSHIP AGAINST INSURGENTE PRETENDING 'MALWARE']).

And this last is the really worrisome part of the problem. If the electorate is not outraged by corruption, it means that they are also corrupt or at least too benevolent towards corruption. And, if that is the case, there is no way to solve corruption. 

But one thing is clear: I do not want to be in the same polity as those people. I would not want to be in the same planet in fact, because from such attitudes happen the Fukushimas and Deepwater Horizons and other catastrophes that damage us all.

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