I’m in Italy, we’re voting in our first national elections in five years today (despite having three/four governments in the intervening years, depending on how

I’m in Italy, we’re voting in our first national elections in five years today (despite having three/four governments in the intervening years, depending on how you count). Democracy definitely seems dead or at least mute here. As I made my way to the polling station, I was reminded of my favourite quote from Thomas Pynchon: “If they can keep you asking the wrong questions, they don’t need to worry about the answers”. I don’t mean it in the sense a conspiracy theorist might, but in some other ineffable or inexpressible sense whereby parliamentary politics has simply become to weak and ineffectual to contrast and compensate for other forces that act on societies (economic and financial ones, particularly). That might be why strident or extremist viewpoints of various kinds are more prevalent now than they used to be: because faced with a body politic that cannot effect change or even visibly affect the trajectory, many people just choose what they perceive to be a bigger rudder to steer with.