Recently by Simon Black: A Fight Broke Out for My Dinner Tab inGreece
Thessaloniki, Greece
Last night I had quite an unexpected surprise.
You see, at my hotel here in Thessaloniki, there’s a delegation from some group of the European Parliament called the Committee on Regional Development. They’re here to help… Hey, isn’t that what they always say? The Committee wants to supervise Greece working its way out of the debt crisis and make sure that Greece’s poor are getting the support they need.
The hotel’s restaurant was filled with these sycophantic parasites last night– an entire room full of people with a superiority complex who think that they are entitled to make decisions about other people’s lives and money.
They sat at dinner drinking fine wine and polishing up steak tartare making proud, bombastic proclamations about the virtues of foreign aid, the democratic process, and the great progress of Greece’s austerity measures.
Coincidentally, not 300 meters down the road, a campsite has been gathering for economic refugees, Thessaloniki’s former middle class that has been vanquished by the crisis. Some of the children swung by the restaurant’s outdoor terrace begging for change, only to be waved off by one of the delegate’s extended pinkie fingers as he sipped his wine.
It couldn’t have been more ironic… the perfect image of what passes for democracy today, right here in the country that invented it.
Today’s democracy is nothing more that pseudo-authoritarian rule by an elite few, executed by legions of self-deluding freeloaders who have convinced themselves that their current bureaucratic roles are both necessary and honorable… as well as a stepping stone into the next job which will be even more necessary and honorable.
With each successive position up the bureaucratic ladder comes more power, more privilege… until they actually expect to be called “The Honorable…” so and so, or “His Excellency” so and so, etc.
My dictionary suggests a few definitions for ‘honor’. One of them refers to a person’s chastity… and I doubt it applies in this case given the political establishment’s Twitter record. The other definition says, “conferred as a distinction, especially an official award for bravery or achievement.”
