Ciao! I Am Back! A Short Hello Before The Dam Bursts!

So, I am back among the living or walking dead. Susan and I just spent two weeks in Pulgia, Italy, exploring the “heel of the boot.” If you haven’t been, Pulgia is a beautiful part of Italy. Think Northern California in climate and countryside, but old Mediterranean in the cities and villages. It’s not crowded, the food is fantastic, and the people are friendly. We had a wonderful time and I will be writing about the travel aspect of it for Soriano’s Circus paid subscribers.

Yes, it is time to disappear some of the Circus behind a pay wall. I am happy that to have a decent number of readers, but need more people to pay up. Subscriptions are only $6 a month and now that Mark Maron is ditching is podcast, maybe you have some cash to throw my way?

Talking about podcasts. In a couple weeks, I’ll be doing the first Soriano’s Cirus podcast. I’ve been debating whether to do audio or video, and I think it will be audio as it’s much easier to produce. The podcast will also be available only to paid subscribers. Sorry about that but this man needs butter for his bread. Listen, anyone who knows me can vouch that I can talk my ass off and that it can get pretty interesting and sometimes cause laughter. And, I’ve been told that I need to get paid to babble by people who I trust, so why not?

While away, I spent exactly no time on social media and felt no ill effects from not checking in. It actually made things less stressful. Fancy that! I did a few substack notes. Not sure how many people read them, but I figured that they they are easy enough to do, especially since they are what I do in Circus posts on Zuckerbot’s destructive toy. So, rather than make that asshole richer with my free labor, I’m only going to use his shitty site to pimp Circus posts (and Record Time, as well as selling records). So, if you rely on Zuck’s Toilet to keep up with me, best you subscribe, paid or free.

Not going to go long on this one, but I will say this about Italy and the United States. Of course, Italy is beautiful, has lots to see, and has fantastic food. Being European, it has a decent social system, with universal healthcare. There’s very little gun violence and it feels extremely safe. If you see people living on the street, it’s in the ones and twos, not the tens of thousands we see here. There are beggars but, again, much fewer than we have. You don’t see crazy people wandering around, nor are there old people in desperation.

Italy is xenophobic and racist. Women’s rights are lacking on some areas, gay rights are few, and trans rights are non-existent. Currently, the government is in the hands of the far right, including parties that once had fascist ties. The center-left is in the political minority but is starting to surge, thanks to Donald Trump and Elon Musk. Still, voter turnout is low because Italians are extremely cynical about politics.

It’s difficult to read where Italy is heading, but, right wing power aside, it is not experiencing anything close to what is going down here. What is remarkable is that as much as the US is in European news – mostly for economics, immigration, and Ukraine – Italians tend not to know how batshit crazy it is here, and when they are informed it takes them a while to assure them that you aren’t exaggerating.

At one point in a conversation with a youngish-getting-older, pretty well informed Italian woman, I had to stop our chat to point out that the head of our medical system is a conspiracy theorist who has a warped view on COVID and doesn’t believe in vaccination, and that the head of our emergency management system did not know that the US has a hurricane season, something that Italians are aware of. She buried her face in her hands and said, “I didn’t know it was that crazy.”

It is doubtful that Italy will take a similar dive. Trump and Musk – “at war” or not – are a very good warning of what can happen. Some local elections have shifted municipal power from right to left. But, again, cynicism there is higher than it is here and lack of political participation is what fascists and conspiracy theorists need to capture power. It is not so much how strong they are as it is how weak we allow ourselves to be.

I’ll be getting more into what is going on here and there starting next Soriano’s Circus (looking at Wednesday) and then start including stuff for only paid subscribers. But today, it’s time to shake the jet lag while playing catch up.