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| 13 October 2017 |
After regularly posting to this blog for 14 years, last April I found I no longer felt the urge to do so. Given the cruelty, criminality, and corruption of the American regime that had taken power in January, I found it both painful and pointless to back look over both a past and a place that I very much missed. I thought this feeling might pass. But as the cruelty, criminality, and corruption have only intensified since then, it has not.
Of course the Venice that now exists is no longer the Venice I lived in for nearly 11 years. When I visited in the summer of 2024--for the the first time since leaving in summer 2021--I was dismayed by its further degradation. Napoleon had famously threatened to be "an Attila to Venice" and wipe it out, but it has been Luigi Brugnaro, a predatory self-serving businessman from the mainland, who has carried that threat out.
In sharp contrast to his long ago campaign promise to pursue policies designed to increase the city's resident population by 30,000, the city's population has continued to dwindle as he has gutted--or attempted to gut--vital services upon which residents depend. Last summer I found that more than a dozen people I knew, most of whom still worked in Venice itself, had moved to the mainland. People I'd never imagined would ever leave the city no longer saw the point in living in a place steadily being scoured of all local life and businesses.
It seems, in fact, that Brugnaro's actual promise in that long-ago campaign was to reduce the city's resident population to 30,000.
On that promise, he's made significant progress. He's now gotten it down to less than 48,000, and continues to be hard at work.
Last summer the Rialto market was a ghost town, with just 3 or maybe 4 legitimate produce sellers--by which I mean, stalls that stock a wide range of fresh produce. The few other stalls that exist sell packaged soup mixes and little else. Like all the mask shops and other garbage businesses that now fill the city, it's hard for me to believe they function as anything other than money-laundering fronts, so meager is their inventory.
Perhaps some day this sad state of affairs in Venice will make my documentation of the last years of local daily life in Venice of some interest. But at present what people seem to want see of Venice is the same old fantasy world of lonely streets and moody, romantic decay--or class-porn, envy-inducing accounts of luxury living. I'm happy to leave that to others.
Meanwhile in America the seriousness of the authoritarian steps being taken cannot be overstated--even as the only people to whom Americans seem to listen is late-night talk-show host comedians. Public discourse is degraded and corrupted, devoid of critical thinking, which is of course exactly as the regime would like it to be: after all, the goal, in the words of one of its most successfully-self-promoting architects, is to "flood the zone with s--t."
In such a "flooded" country, in which every utterance and observable occurrence is dismissed as "fake", the only measure of meaning is is the brute power to impose one's agenda. The only "true" statement, the only fact, is whatever the dictator declares. Which of course, can be altered in the very next sentence--and still remain the only "truth."
This is not new in this country. As Judith Butler discussed in her vitally-important (but little read) 2004 book, Precarious Life, it was George W. Bush who first openly claimed the divine infallible right to obliterate the existence of any given individual he chose without troubling to present even a shred of evidence, much less go to trial. It sufficed for him to simply declare one an "enemy combatant" to disappear that person from the land of the living, to an unreachable realm in which neither national or international law held any sway. (The masked paramilitary force called ICE is now exercising a similarly unchecked power.)
America's current authoritarian has expanded this divine (or demoniacal) right--with the blessings of America's Supreme[ly corrupt Catholic kangaroo] Court--beyond all limitations. He declares a boatload of people drug smugglers ("narco-terrorists") and they are immediately murdered in violation of both international and American law.
His administration has now intensified their practice of labeling American citizens "terrorists", and intensified their harassment of them.
The administration has declared certain American cities "war zones" and "terrorist havens" and sent in the military and National Guard. If Americans had any memory of simply their own recent history--much less world history (which, of course, is too much to ask), they wouldn't have much trouble figuring out where this is heading.
But of course they won't get much help in doing that from the US media, since 6 conglomerates have owned 90% of American media since 2011:
GE/Comcast (NBC, Universal), News Corp (Fox News, Wall Street Journal, New York Post), Disney (ABC, ESPN, Pixar), Viacom (MTV, BET, Paramount Pictures), Time Warner (CNN, HBO, Warner Bros.), and CBS (Showtime, NFL.com). Almost all of which have shown a remarkable willingness to succumb to the (often extortionate) demands of the current regime.
In 1984, 50 independent media companies owned the majority of media interests within the United States.
I'd like to imagine any American who believes in the country's supposed commitment to a Free Press and the free market, would find this extremely troubling.
In any case, this is why the blog is on an indefinite hiatus.
A few months ago, a friend asked me if I had any recommendations about what to do in Venice that she could pass along to a friend of hers who was to visit it last July. Because the first thought that popped into my head was "Don't bother to go," I didn't say anything at all.
As for visiting America? Given the "detainment" (that is, jailing) of a number of visitors to America on the slightest pretexts, I'll leave the decision to you.
