Let’s Get Serious—But Not Too Serious
Rising early yesterday morning—with
four hours of sleep under his pillow—Jonathan dashed to Kalamata to price
pull-out couches at the Praktiker, a German home supply store, arriving just
before the doors opened. At 8:15 a.m., the heat was already building, even in a
metaphorical sense. A group of middle-aged Greeks and a few pensioners were
engaged in a lively conversation on the subject of (what else) Greece’s default
and pending nationwide referendum, which is scheduled for Sunday, July 5.
The debate between two sixty-something,
would-be store customers was heated and angry. The man was a communist, the
woman obviously not, and their respective “solutions” to the current crisis
were are odds, to say the least. Angry, animated body language and diatribes
ensued, reminding anyone listening—everyone was listening—of the sharp divide
in this country that dates back to the post-World War II civil war, a bloody
affair that lives in people’s collective memory.
Ordinary Greeks, the 1 percent in
the parlance of American politics, have suffered terribly since 2008—cut (or
unpaid) salaries and pensions, phenomenallyhigh unemployment, reduced
healthcare, police, and public services. The child mortality rate has doubled,
the suicide rate (previously the lowest in Europe) has quadrupled, the catalog
of misery goes on and one. This was the lenders solution to Greece’s “problems”
and the medicine has obviously killed the patient.
In a nation that witnessed a
horrendous blood-letting just a generation ago, one can’t help but understand
that some fierce disagreement lay just beneath the surface of civil society.
Soon the doors opened and your
correspondent was faced with the unlikely prospect of being an American
shopping in a German big-box store in Kalamata, Greece, with Country Western
music playing through the intercom.
Needless to say, this is a nation of contradictions.
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Jonathan deferred the big-ticket
purchases and filled his basket instead with 40 euros worth of useful household
items—solar lighting, cleaning supplies, a few hand tools. He then headed to
Lidl, the Belgium supermarket chain down the road toward the Messene circle.
There, beside the Roma
encampment, groups of gypsies milled about suspiciously. They enter the store
in groups, overwhelm the bullet-proofed security, and steal. Plain and simple—they
are professional thieves--this is not a slight, simply a fact--an occupation extending back hundreds of years. They
also sell fruit and vegetables—a useful ploy for casing the next theft. The
women lift their large, colorful dresses, and fill “compartments” (baskets
hanging between their legs) with everything from whole chickens to processed
foods. It is a truly bizarre scene to witness.
On the road beyond the traffic
circle, beautiful dark young gypsy girls, fourteen or fifteen years old, walk
the highway with infants strapped to their hips, begging for money. Gypsy girls
are usually married off by age 13 or 14 and are mothers by age 15. They and
their offspring learn how to steal and beg at a tender age and thus continue a not-to-proud
tradition of their forebears.
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Greeks—one would be hard-pressed
to find a people with a great sense of self-awareness and a sharpened notion of
their own cultural heritage and historical legacy. There is a remarkable
continuity of thinking, a manner of discourse, and an indefatigible pride that
extends back 3,000 years. There is a word for it, of course—Greeks have a word
for just about anything, but this one is rife with meaning: φιλότιμο (filotimo). It is translatable, for sure,
but if you ask a Greek to define filotimo,
the answer may take several minutes. Or hours. Or generations.
Filotimo, for no better definition, is honor, dignity, pride, or “face.”
And in many ways, filotimo is
precisely the thing that drives today’s internal debate.
Greece’s referendum on Sunday
(July 5th—aka, our wedding anniversary!) is in one obvious sense a Yes or No on
continued austerity in exchange for the European and International Monetary
Fund (IMF) pipeline of financial support. It keeps the banks afloat, which
keeps the pension system afloat, and enables the most basic of governement
services.
But this is more than a vote on
austerity, or on Greece’s membership in the European Union (EU)—it has taken on
existential qualities that are unimaginable for most of the Western world. With
that said, a large swath of the electorate believes that Greece is damned if
they do, damned if they don’t, and a Yes vote will simply kick the proverbial
can down the road for another three months when the next interest payment on
its 300 euro debt—just the interest payment—comes do. The 7.2 billion that the
IMF is withholding goes to pay back the IMF, not to help Greeks in any
meaningful way. It is the ultimate Ponzi scheme directed against a sovereign
nation, a credit card trap of enormous proportions.
Many Westerners are caught in an entirely unfair “they
deserve it” manner of thinking, utterly incapable of putting themselves in the
shoes of ordinary Greeks. Greece owes 300 billion in sovereign debt; the U.S.,
by comparison, owes $17 trillion. This makes Greece’s debt sound like an
accounting error, by comparison. Should Americans, or Western Europeans for
that matter, endure what the Greeks have enduring, real civil unrest would ensue. Americans take note: this reality is coming
to a theater near you...or your grandchildren!
Some say that this is Greece’s
most important decision since raising the banner of liberation against the
Ottoman Turks in 1821 (the modern nation rose from the ashes of that victory in
1832). Yet for others, it harks back 2,500 years to the fateful decision by 200
brave Spartan warriors to defend the pass at Thermopolae against the barbarian
(Persian) hordes, invading form the East.
In this view, today’s barbarians
are the IMF, the European Central Bank, and, in the opinion of many, the German government.
(A special note for the righteous reader: Germany’s vastly larger debt, accumulated from two world wars, was totally expunged in 1953, a
mere eight years after slaughtering half of Europe. Fair is fair!). Swords and
spears and shields are engaged in bloody combat against credit default swaps,
interest payments, and the noose of the corrupt financial system that oppresses so many.
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Tomorrow is July 4th, a
mythological holiday in which Americans proclaim their largely imagined independence.
The mythology runs head-on into the reality of Wall Street politics (best
represented by the broad spectrum of presidential aspirants—Bernie Sanders
notwithstanding), corporate malfeasance, and America’s entrenched two-party
system that is often confused with “democracy.” The plutocracy that is modern
America bears little resemblance to the lofty aspirations of that nation’s
founding fathers.
One is reminded these days of
Thomas Paine’s admonition: America needs a revolution every 15 years in order
to stay true to its democratic values.
The differences between Greece and
America are large indeed. At least the Greeks are prepared to take their stand
at Thermopolae regardless of the cost. Americans, by contrast, are napping at the wheel.
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On the subject politics, which is
hardly the point of this family blog, Jonathan is obliged to respond to several
friends’ worrisome messages from the homefront. One friend, perhaps taking his
cue from America’s fine tradition of yellow journalism, recently read that “civil
unrest” was imminent in Greece. CNN, Fox News, the New York Times, take your pick: these are the propaganda organs
that leave Americans in a place of utter darkness and ignorance. (This follows
in a long and proud tradition: Americans have a 200+ year history of being the
least informed people on the planet.) Another friend suggested that Jonathan “escape”
Greece while he still can, as if this is Saigon circa 1974, and the last
helicopter will soon lift off from the embassy roof.
With all due respect to his
friends in the States, should you want “civil unrest” look no further than—Ferguson, Missouri? Miami? New York City? Lest we
add Baltimore?
America remains the murder
capital of the world. The statistics are stark and frightening, taken from a
recent issue of the Economist. A
sampling of gun violence (death and injuries) for 2014:
Britain: 56
Holland: 11
Greece: 9
United States: 36, 523
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O.k., it’s time to lighten up.
This is Greece, it’s summer, crisis or no crisis, the people of this nation of
10 million—and 17 million well-loved and pampered tourists—can always find a
good time. A little parea (company)
with a friend at the cafeneion, a swim in the cobalt sea, which is warming
nicely, a meal out (or in, owing to the crisis) with family. This is the rhythm of life, this is why
people who visit this great country always leave with the determination to
return again one day.
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