Life & Politics: It's all Relative.

It was very strange yesterday for me to be reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the Virginia Tech shooting, where one of my former classmates lost his life, and not hear a single remark made about the incident outside of the daily news. Granted, I wasn’t around any Americans yesterday, so perhaps other English-language teaching assistants or American Fulbrighters were talking about the incident and its aftermath, but I wasn’t around them to hear such conversations, if they even did take place.

From the English lesson I taught earlier this year on gun violence and the 2nd Amendment, I know that most students (ages 12-18) have heard of Columbine and similar incidents in Scotland, Germany, and Sweden, but they never heard of Virginia Tech. Nor have the teachers. The Austrian media mentioned the anniversary, but just barely, focusing instead on the $11 million settlement for the victims’ families.

In a sense, the anniversary was chalked up to the anniversary of “just another American school shooting”—a tragic event, of course, but one that has no real impact on the common Austrian citizen.

Or perhaps the downplaying of Virginia Tech had more to do with the immediate spectacle known as the Italian elections, where “low” voter turnout was marked at 80 percent. Sunday night into Monday morning, there was an audible buzz of chatter throughout the entire city of Vienna as people speculated about the outcome of the Italian elections: Would (Could) the Italians really elect Berlusconi for a third time? Monday morning, everyone had their answers: yes, the Italians did elect Berlusconi, for a third time. Now people are busy predicting what new havoc this new-but-old prime minister can possibly wreak on Italy and on the rest of the world.

We’re talking here about the third richest man in Italy, a total media magnate, and the previous head of a center-right party (with post-neofascist tendencies) that he created! Does this man remind anyone else of Austria’s own Jörg Haider? In the past few days, media outlets from all over the world have already been reporting Berlusconi’s derogatory comments, ranging from immigration to Spanish women to the monetary policy of the European Central Bank. It makes one wonder how such comments will translate into new policies and regulations. Today Berlusconi announced that Italy will nominate a new EU Commissioner; there will certainly be a slew of other nominations forthcoming.

Just as Bush is leaving office in the U.S., Berlusconi is rising to power (again) in Italy. The eyes of the world are watching. It may take significant effort in the coming years to keep Italy running as the democratic republic it claims to be.