An Open Letter to Pericles

Pericles, 495-429 B.C.E.

Dear Pericles,

You’ve been away 2500 years and that’s far too long.  Greece needs another Golden Age.  Please hurry back, all expenses paid.

Protesters gathered in front of Greek Parliament.

Your incredible Parthenon still towers above Athens, though it’s missing its marbles.  Come to think of it, I think your city might be too.  Have you been following the media coverage of what’s going on here?  Or are you tuning out, as seems much of the world, tired at hearing about Greece and its problems?   There’s a war going on.  No, not with the Persians or of the Peloponnesian sort, this one is of a more civil(ized) sort.  Where it is headed is anyone’s guess and everyone’s fear.  But headed it is.

Rioters attacking businesses

This is the third Christmas season in a row that Molotov cocktail and paving stone tossing demonstrators of disparate views have mortally wounded holiday shopping in central Athens.  Perhaps that’s the truest tradition of the Christmas season in that part of town.  Deck the malls with bombs and salvos…

Police confront protesters by Parliament

This week 20,000 or so largely peaceful citizens turned out in central Athens as part of a general strike across Greece to protest additional austerity measures under consideration by the Greek Parliament for addressing the country’s financial crisis.  If you haven’t heard about that fiscal meltdown, my friend, stop reading immediately and under no circumstances leave whatever state of innocent bliss you’ve found.

That demonstration answered a question I’d been asking my friends on Mykonos all summer: Why aren’t the politicians holidaying here this year?  They always did, but this year tipota, nothing.  My informal survey yielded what I thought a flippant rather than reasoned conclusion: “Because they’re afraid the people will beat the $#!^ out of them.”   I should have learned by now not to bet against popular wisdom or vox populi (if you prefer Latin).

Costis Hatzidakis, MP

During that demonstration a current member of parliament—who’d been a minister in the government that was at the helm of Greece’s economy when it drove into the rocks under full sail—tried to exit the Parliament Building and was pelted with stones and bloodied by a crowd of one hundred.  If you’re wondering what the police and other guardians of order are doing about all the goings-on, take a number and get in line.  Your question will be answered before the next 2500 years have passed.

There is real anger in the country, a pit of the stomach sense that serious suffering waits just around the corner, and one hell of a lot of finger pointing.  Perhaps the only thing the country appears to agree upon is that “all in government are corrupt.”  The second most agreed upon point is, “nothing will change.”

There is an old saying Greeks use when a fairy tale ends happily, “They all had a good time, and we did too.”  Perhaps that’s why so many Greeks let their politicians get away with so much for so long.  Everyone was profiting.  Now that times are bad, and the people want someone to blame for the unhappy ending, they’re pointing at the politicians they kept electing.

Whatever the answer, the solution is not going to be easy.  And it will be painful. I wish there were a magic wand to wave or a simple answer to the crisis.  But there is not, and the country seems desperate for a new Greek voice to listen to and trust.

The people would listen to you, Honored First Citizen of Athens; certainly those I know who act as if they had a personal hand in all the incredible contributions you helped bring to the world.  Think of them sort of like American baseball fans that claim because an ancestor happened to be at the third game of the 1932 World Series when Babe Ruth pointed before hitting his legendary “called shot” homerun off Charlie Root of the Chicago Cubs, that they’re somehow entitled to take partial credit for Ruth’s swing of the bat.  If you don’t understand what I’m talking about, wait until someone starts talking about cricket.

The great New York Yankee Bambino calls his shot.

In fact, even I would rather talk about cricket.  It’s so much easier to grasp than the sticky wicket of a relationship Greeks share with those they choose to govern them.

Jeff — Saturday