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Waiting for D-Day

2020-03-23T23:57:21.635Z


Two generations of Europeans have just discovered the uncertainty experienced by their most direct ancestors


Who was to say that the great threat to the longest period of peace in Europe since the collapse of the Roman Empire was not going to be a military invasion, as it happened until the fall of the Berlin Wall, nor the chaos caused by a coordinated strategy of attacks indiscriminate terrorists, as jihadist terrorism has attempted since the beginning of this century. In the end it has been a much more insignificant enemy in size than the Soviet divisions or radicalized suicide bombers, but much more effective.

Two entire generations of Europeans who have not known the war or suffered its consequences - beyond in most cases what has reached them on television - are suddenly immersed in a situation that has many similarities to which their most direct ancestors have lived. Of course, not those who fought the front, or whose cities were destroyed or who had to flee with their clothes to an uncertain future, but those who, relatively far from the front, saw how their lives were turned upside down because their loved ones they were sent into combat with the almost certainty that they would never see them again or because the world as they knew it was erased with the stroke of a pen: routines, jobs, friendships. Everything, absolutely everything, was subordinated to one objective: to win the war.

So a way of living based on predictability and security has been put on hold for a citizenry that has been receiving the message for decades that it could plan, and in a sense control, any aspect of its individual and social life. It turns out that now he finds himself, at first incredulously, with his cities occupied by an enemy against whom, for the moment, it is not possible to rise and only remains to resist waiting for D-Day.

But even before the victory, after the initial shock , the time for questions will begin, followed by the time for answers, both individually and collectively. One of the most momentous for the coming years will undoubtedly be that of the political organization of each society. And here we are going to listen to everything; common sense and folly, opinions seeking the common good and others pursuing a personal goal. A totum revolotum where it is necessary to discern in a time where - before the great interruption - it was already beginning to be difficult to do so.

Perhaps one of the positive effects of this situation is that disbelieving and disaffected citizens are convinced of the importance of politics when things get ugly and that, therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to it when everything is going great.

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2020-03-23

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