“A cynic’s paradise”, that is the phrase I coined long ago for the Republic of Panama, the isthmus that connects north and south América, a place riddled with corruption and nepotism that I called home for just short of two decades.
The place was (and is) completely dysfunctional and the only motivation for any governance going on is self-enrichment. The country is ruled by the most awful, uncultured, corrupt, vulgar and outright stupid white elite, the so-called rabiblancos, that I have ever encountered anywhere. I’m actually convinced that they are not entirely human but some kind of sub-species, the response of evolution to excessive greed and backwardness.
Rabiblanco culture
Legislators don’t legislate but work on their shady schemes, skim off subsidies to their districts so that they can build another beach house or exercise their special right to import tax-free cars (I kid you not). The judiciary is rotten to the core and they can’t even write coherent sentences. Lawyers either dabble in offshore corporate schemes or they serve as bribe brokers — usually both, but never anything else. I have yet to meet a competent trial lawyer in Panama, and I sure met a lot of lawyers. Diplomats, then? A Panamanian consul in Miami — a nightclub owner who got the job because of unexplained big donations to the election campaign of president Martinelli — once went on TV to explain that the function of the locks in the famous Panama Canal was to mitigate the difference in sea level between the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans. Another consul, nephew of the vice-president, used his office in Spain to promote and sell rum from the distillery that his presidential uncle owned. That’s how dumb these people are. The current president, Nito Cortizo, during the pandemic angrily declared that if he tested positive, he would not stay inside but just take the gamble, since God had not made him to stay at home and he needed to be among the people. Then, during one of his televised addresses to the nation, the Panama map fell from the wal behind him.
I could go on and on. As a matter of fact, I did go on and on, on Bananama Republic, a blog that I started to keep my own sanity and that became a sort of a boutique must-read about corruption, fraud and scams and general Panamanian weirdness.
However, one has to hand it to ordinary Panamanians that they do not just take all that rabiblanco shit sitting down. Ridicule is a frequent response to the antics of those in power, and it really works. Former president and klepto-queen Mireya Moscoso had a publisher arrested once because of a cartoon. When Nito Cortizo was talking gibberish about how God had made him to be among the people spreading COVID, Panamanians turned his drivel into reggaeton.
When recently the prices of fuel and other life necessities went up dramatically as across the world corporations used the war in Ukraine as a pretext for price gauging, Panamanians were livid and took to the streets, blocked the highways for weeks, battled it out with the police, organized massive marches and took care of the logistics that are needed to sustain weeks of occupation of roads. They stuck with it until the government had to give in, froze some prices and started negotiations about the rest. Protesters won. For how long nobody knows, because those kind of victories are never permanent and must be defended and sometimes fought again. But they won. Cortizo and all his corruptos had to surrender.
Dutch apathy
Where Panamanians at least try to save their country from the hyenas at the top, the Dutch seem to relish the idea of their country going to hell in a handbasket. A nation awash with money, literally the port of Europe at a scale that dwarfs the Panama Canal, top notch infrastructure, not a pothole in the roads, good education for everybody, good health care for everybody, leaders in the world in terms of press freedom and civil rights — and the Dutch don’t give a shit.
The recent price hikes are being discussed, people will complain, and that’s about all you can say about the response of the Netherlanders to being swindled out of their hard-earned money. Nobody took to the streets, even though food prices are up considerably and the poorest are struggling to make ends meet.
You can dangle a massive clear-cut corruption case in their face, the whole enchilada, graft of public funds for enrichment and political gain, and they’ll say “oh wow” and allow the corrupt minister to stay in his job.
If not for me, for nobody
Decades of neoliberal government have turned the Netherlands into a hellhole where nothing works anymore. Rail transport is a mess. Covid policy was so amateurish and evil that it left more than 30,000 people dead who shouldn’t have had to die, and nobody was held accountable. Climate policy is a disaster, with the government unwilling to reign in even a small minority of extreme polluters, the livestock farmers, let alone giga-poison spewing corporations like Tata Steel, Shell and Schiphol Airport. And who are the only ones taking to the streets? The farmers, who have successfully turned their plight into a fascist culture war while raking in billions of subsidies for their inefficient and polluting farms.
Instead of re-appropriating from these farmers the tactics (and the billions) they stole, the Dutch complain about how blocking roads and protesting in front of the house of a government minister is supposedly “not done” and “threatening”.
While the Dutch thus successfully rendered themselves impotent, the neoliberals could freely demolish everything else. What should be a solidarity based tax system became a cesspool of racism and white supremacy that plunged tens of thousands into poverty with even children illegally being taken away from their parents. But no window was smashed over this gross injustice. The government stepped down, only to re-install itself a couple of months later without even a whiff of protest.
A nation of complacency and indifference
You can do practically anything you want to the Dutch. Humiliate them, steal their money, steal their happiness, drench their land in poison, pollute the air they breathe, take away affordable housing, maim and kill them with a virus and so on, and they won’t lift a finger to stop you from doing all that. Worse: They’ll probably vote for you.
In Panama, the Ngäbe people fought tooth and nail against mining on their land. They didn’t want gold mines, they didn’t want copper mines and they didn’t want hydroelectric dams for electricity they didn’t even need. Weeks, months, of battle ensued. Blocked roads, riots, burning bank buildings, the lot. They won. To this day, nobody can start any kind of resource extraction on their land. As much as I understand and sympathize with the plight of the Groningers, there is a reason that for more than a decade they have not been getting anywhere regarding their houses being destroyed because of earth quakes resulting from the exploitation of the gas fields under them. Similarly, there is a reason that Shell-owned NAM can just drill for gas in the Waddenzee, a UNESCO world heritage site.
In only a few places on this planet will you find basic human rights better enshrined in laws and international treaties than in the Netherlands, yet the Dutch treat those rights as if they are disposable napkins. Right to a roof over your head? Tough luck if you can’t pay the rent or a mortgage; if you can even find a house. Press freedom? Maybe two dozen journalists actually do their job and the rest is too busy rewriting press releases and paraphrasing what lobbyists and spokespeople tell them. Two absolute lows are political reporting, which consistently sides with power, is obsessed with hobnobbing with fascists and neonazis, and otherwise only reports trivialities; and the talk shows. Once the place were public debate was nurtured, the talk shows have become televised freak shows where guests, hosts and editorial staff compete for stupidity and depravity. Cynically, neoliberals often emphasize the importance of a free press — they have little to fear from it. In turn, the media have little to fear from their audiences, who have since 1966 refused to mount any kind of revolt against the mediocrity and propaganda they get served on a daily basis.
The biggest disdain however the Dutch reserve for the right to seek asylum. The Dutch generally take the neoliberal approach in everything: I don’t need it, so I don’t care, and nobody else should enjoy that right either if it’s at my expense. When applied to asylum this becomes not just a denial of laws and treaties, but also indifference to human suffering. The Dutch did not protest when Europe decided that it was a good idea to let refugees just drown in the Mediterranean and criminalize attempts to rescue them. The Dutch hardly protested when concentration camps emerged in Greece where people are tortured and burned alive, nor did they throw any stones when the government promised to airlift children out of the Greek hell — and then didn’t.
Even when gross abuses happen right in front of them, like recently in the refugee registration center in Ter Apel, the Dutch will shrug their shoulders and get on with their business. Blatant racism against refugees in some small backward villages was generally met with understanding, while the governing coalition of misfits in parliament scrapped yet another human right; that to a family life.
Furious Panamanians showed up in droves at the site where children had been abused and chased those responsible out of town. In Holland, a baby died in Ter Apel, a baby who should not have been sleeping in a sports hall in the first place, and the overwhelming response of the Dutch was, “well, we don’t know what happened yet.”
Yes, there are some protests. Couple of hundred people here and there. Maybe thousand. Most of it is just glorified parades, because if there is one thing that the Dutch are scared of it is that things turn uncivilized or, god forbid, violent. You see, the Dutch believe that the Berlin Wall just spontaneously melted all by itself, and WW2 was won by talking, listening, and building bridges with those with whom we had disagreements. In the minds of the Dutch, no right had ever to be fought for, so they won’t fight either.
Without much fuss, the Dutch have left the protest space and tactics to white supremacy and its derivatives. The only ones who take to the streets, who make an effort for change, are the fascists, be it farmers, racists or anti-vaccine wackos. Obviously they don’t fight for rights; they fight against them.
I have to say that it is an amazing and somewhat entertaining sight, a nation full of rich and bored people who think so highly of themselves, yet all they can come up with is to shoot themselves in the foot, in the head, gnaw their own wrists, and stab their own faces. A cynic’s paradise.