Lack of generosity: the vice of our politicians

Without this quality, politics becomes merely a personal career. It loses efficiency, and also appears to be a very boring activity. In Italy, things haven't always been this way.

di |
generosity and politics

There is something that is completely missing from our political class and which explains, to a large extent, its inconsistency: the generosity. Nothing more than politics, among human activities, mixes good and evilGreat impulses to change the world and petty miseries for purely personal gain. The ambition to leave a mark on history and the pursuit of status. A true civic passion and the underlying goal of being able to change your life without much effort.

LACK OF GENEROSITY

Politics is also that combination so well summarized in the expression which combines fatigue, physical and mental efforts with the need to also handle the murky side of this profession. Yet, as far as the objective of the power, with its advantages and its symbolism, is a sort of effigy of politics, without generosity, the politician's profession loses meaning, ends and means become confused, and his action is condemned to sterilityHe may have a good career, but no one will remember him, either during or after his career.

ALSO READ: The vagabonds in power: but where did our ruling class study?

HOW TO RECOGNIZE GENEROSITY?

How can we recognize the generosity of a political figure? From his actions, from his gestures, from his ability to be at the service of one's own ambitions but first and foremost of a communityThe voters, the party, the nation. Without these elements, politics is reduced to a competition for power as an end in itself, in a clash of personalities. So many "I's" that, when put together, do not form a "We."

POLITICAL SYSTEM CRISIS

Let's try to translate this drift by returning to the snapshot of Italy after the collapse of the First Republic. Since then, and we must acknowledge this without unnecessary nostalgia, the political system has no longer had a center of gravity or a point of equilibrium. Not only that. The parties have effectively disappeared or at most have been transformed into electoral committees, and the ruling classes are made up of strays, people who don't know where they come from or where they're going. In the center-right, Silvio Berlusconi's titanism, combined with a glaring conflict of interest, has resulted in a complete lack of generosity. And for this reason, in its approximately thirty years of existence—a century by political standards—Forza Italia has never become a true party, governed by the rules of internal democracy. And while its leadership has changed hands, it has always shared a few fundamental characteristics: loyalty to the Leader and his orders. When anyone attempted to open up new avenues, even hinting at a conflict with Berlusconi over a different political proposal, their fate was sealed. Expelled. Giorgia Meloni and Matteo Salvini, with two different paths, and with two different origins behind them (what remains of the post-MSI National Alliance, Meloni; what remains of the League, a local union founded by Umberto Bossi, in the case of Salvini), went in the same direction: ad personam parties, with an iron control of the leading groups, and a political language kneaded by the presenteeism of tweets and television appearances. In the center-left, things went even worse. The Democratic Party (PD) leaders, stingy in their behavior, have characterized themselves as cannibals and sorcerers. Cannibals because they have done nothing but eliminate, through fratricidal power struggles, the leaders themselves (we've lost count of the number of PD secretaries who have left the party), sorcerers because of their extraordinary ability to manipulate the levers of power, seize it, and hold onto it for years, without ever being judged by the voters. At the center, the space everyone claims to want to occupy to give stability to the Italian political system, in a couple of decades, like a carousel, Italians have seen at work figures like Pierferdinando Casini, Angiolino Alfano, Mario Monti, Bruno Tabacci (and we're forgetting many others). Ready to build small trenches to defend their positions, but incapable of a surge of generosity and courage, which in politics is like salt in life, to create and give something new on the level of political offering.

THE VALUE OF GENEROSITY IN POLITICS

To get an idea of ​​the value of the generosity In politics, we need to take a few steps back in history. Without going too far. For half a century, the Christian Democrats were the center of gravity of the political system, and after Alcide De Gasperi, a clash of ideas and power arose between the two great thoroughbreds, Aldo Moro and Amintore Fanfani, whom we cite as examples of this virtue in politics. They were capable of very tough clashes, but they respected each other and also knew how to step back, even in their own interests, at the right moment. Thanks to this quality, entire generations of DC leaders grew up behind them, and in the wake of their ideas. And this explains why the party was so resilient, to the point of being overwhelmed by its own capacity for resistance. In the Communist Party, after the long hegemony under the charisma of Palmiro Togliatti and the transition of Luigi Longo to the party leadership, the real battle for succession began, between Giorgio Amendola and Pietro Ingrao. With the current criteria narcissistic, selfish and politically motivated, this clash would have led to the split of the Communist Party, considering the distance that separated the two figures. And instead Their generosity allowed us to find a fruitful compromise in the leadership of Enrico Berlinguer, which also marked a definitive generational shift from the post-war communists and the anti-fascist underground. In this way, not only a party, but an entire community was saved.

THE AWESOME POLITICIANS

Politicians stingy They don't go far. They don't last; they're ephemeral and transitory, even if they manage to grab a few seats for decades. They don't leave a mark, and they don't go down in history, with and without a capital H. Generosity is essential to listening to, and then interpreting, the needs and demands that come from society, and not remaining stuck in its impulses. Here too, a fact: in the face of such incompetence and unreliability, the Italian-style divorce between politics and society has never been healed. Everyone continues to go their own way, and society manages to react much better than the political class to all systemic crises, from the coronavirus epidemic to the coronavirus pandemic. coronavirus to the economic recession. Without generosity, politics becomes sterile, fruitless; it doesn't foster community growth, but only personal positions. And as such, besides becoming ineffective and inefficient, it also turns into a parasitic and boring activity.

FEELINGS THAT IMPROVE LIFE

Want to see a selection of our news?

Don't Waste