Today Portugal goes down the rabbit hole. I mean this both figuratively and, even, strangely enough, literally.
Figuratively down a rabbit hole because today the Social Democrats take over government in Portugal, after having won the recent legislative elections. They're a bunch of neo-conservative pricks who pontificate about 'market reforms' and gladly kowtow to bullies like the EU and the IMF, whilst serving the interests of the super-rich and neo-con elites of Portugal and, to a lesser extent, the (fast-dwindling) upper-middle class. In doing so, they pander to the petty conservative fears of the middle-classes (or what remains of that in Portugal today) and even, to my endless amazement, some of the working class (in itself a fast-becoming oxymoron in that country if ever there was).
Literally down a rabbit hole because the man set to become Portugal's Prime Minister is a blandly handsome, thin-lipped creep by the surname of Passos Coelho (picture above - saying it all) - a surname loosely translated into English as "rabbit steps". How very fitting that this patronizing and sly technocrat set to banish Portugal into an abyss has a name so weirdly reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland. It's almost Orwellian in its sinister irony.
The PSD, or Social Democrats, coming into power at this C-R-U-C-I-A-L time are the biggest mistake yet made by the Portuguese electorate since the Carnation Revolution of 1974 that brought democracy to the country. Portugal sits on a precipice not at all unlike that over which Greece is falling as I write this. The last thing it needed was a pack of lying, conniving neo-conservatives to push it over that precipice with more cuts, more austerity, more capitulation to the financial terrorists in Brussels and Washington DC.
Portugal should never have been in the euro and, now that it's stuck with that poisoned chalice and more of its population is slipping into de facto poverty, it sees its welfare system being stripped away by the neo-conservative scheisters that champion that blight on humanity, the Washington Consensus.
I always say that a country gets the government it deserves. I've said it for years and I continue to believe in that implicitly. It hardly matters when I say that about countries like Nigeria or the UK, for example - countries I hardly give a toot about. It's a bit more difficult to swallow when that country is one that I know so well and that is part of my heritage, such as Portugal.
Prime Minister "Rabbit Steps" has led Portugal down a primrose path with false terror tactics against the former Socialist government. A government that, at least under the until recently Prime Minister, José Sócrates (pictured below), understood the many dangers of capitulating to the 'bailout package' being foisted on Lisbon by Brussels and Washington DC. And warned about that 'package' again and again. To no avail.
Passos Coelho wishes he could be as erudite, witty and smart as Sócrates no doubt is. The latter will be missed.
Portugal will fall down that rabbit hole. And for that I fear for it very, very much.
Do you get my point?
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