What does the Holy Inquisition have in common with the current European directorate imposing its fiat at will? Well, both were (and are) European phenomena? Hmm… yes, that too. But what really makes them different is that both of these had the loftiest of missions. To save through punishment. The original Inquisition had as its mission to save souls. The latter version has as its mission to save the banks… um, er sorry, no. To save profligate states.
And that is perhaps, the operative word”profligate” states. That is this is all about sin and redemption. These holy and unholy inquisitions have to really punish the deviants in order to save them. Excruciating punishment is integral to the process of salvation. Otherwise there is no point to it. Why? Well, they say, deterrence. If unbelievers or states know what they are in for by having witnessed the stark sadism others have been subjected to, they will be kept in line.
Of course the truth is that then as now, this is just pure hypocrisy. All that nonsense is just to mask the underlying sadism. They sheer enjoyment the big bullies get out of torturing the weak and of course putting all the blame for their inhuman behaviour on the victim him or herself, while couching it all in the lofty rhetoric of virtue and salvation.
Olli Rehn is no different to Tomas de Torquemada. Just as vicious, just as hypocritical, just as adept at blaming the victim and justifying his abhorrent inhumanity in hypocritical moral terms.
I think a joke doing the rounds in Greece is rather apt. After Olli Rehn decided that the IMF’s admission of getting the multipliers wrong was totally irrelevant, he announced (a bit like a Papal decree) that the progamme for Greece was perfect and just what it should be. The only one at fault for the state Greece has been reduced to is the Greek government itself and in no way at all the troika and the plan being implemented.
Hardly political, diplomatic, still less does it have any economic sense. Just the bloody mindedeness of the bully who always knows best and can bash you hard over the head to prove it. He is in fact, infallible!
Which is, says the joke, why the Pope resigned for the first time in over 600 years. How could he not when his infallibility has now been usurped by the European Commission?