Let's try to give some poetic color to the black and white news circulating on the web, below are some of the most clicked facts of the week seen through a color filter.
Salis, Vannacci and the world in black and white
And so there were the European elections, many comments, many thoughts flooded the media. The two most significant media phenomena were on the one hand General Vannacci, on the other the adventure of Silvia Salis. Two apparently opposite strategies, which are actually very similar: taking the debate to the extreme. One fact remains solid behind it all: this country, like the entire world, is becoming increasingly polarized, fading all shades to leave only a black and white world.
The clash in the Chamber
It cannot therefore be too surprising if a polarized world increases its rate of conflict, on the darkly multiplying battlefields as well as in the buildings where power is managed. Just like in our Chamber of Deputies. It is a sad sight to see words end up giving way to the brute dialectic of violence. It would be nice to hope that it doesn't happen again, but if the world continues in this direction we will have to get used to it.
Abortion at the G7
And so those who have power cling to the symbols that guarantee it. Macron made his comment during the G7, effectively complaining that the rest of the world is not as advanced as France – the usual lost grandeur – because he didn't put abortion in the constitutions. Abortion is a key symbol of division between the two poles that fuel the tension of the present. So much conflict, so much ideology.
A year without Silvio
On 12 June a year ago Silvio Berlusconi left, but it's a bit as if he never left. He had managed, in a world that was already polarizing, to find a way to save the essence of Italian identity, the one embodied by Giovannino Guareschi's characters, and he had done so by keeping thathumanitas that made civilization great. Today even his enemies of yesterday struggle not to recognize this.
Saint Anthony of Padua
There are the great heroes, those who should not be forgotten, like Saint Anthony of Padua, whose anniversary was June 13th. Almost 800 years later, the devotion towards his figure is so vast that it is surprising.
This Portuguese saint, whose memory is preserved above all in Padua, continued paths started by his “master”, Francis of Assisi. Antonio said: “In murky and choppy water the face of anyone who looks out is not reflected.” Perhaps he reminds us that we must look for new mirrors.