By Nikos Xydakis

I was watching a parliamentary debate on television the other day. The MPs babbled away apathetically, as though they don’t want to see what is going on, as though the fact the country is on fire is none of their business, as though the uprising of the country’s youth was confined to some tiny hamlet somewhere, as though they were not the ones who had fanned the flames, cracked the foundations of our institutions, shattered the credibility of the democratic state, degraded civil society and led the people astray.

I didn’t hear a single word of self-reproach, a single apology. When Greece was set alight over the murder of a schoolboy, the clueless minister of education was having fun at a nightclub and at a soccer game. And the courts of television, toxic substitutes for the real, paralyzed thing, were passing judgment and demanding confessions of guilt: “Do you renounce Satan?” The only acceptable answer is “I do” and anyone who dares ask who exactly Satan is in this case is thrown to the mercy of the tele-judges.

We continue to go about business in the same way, without apology or self-criticism, without asking the right questions or trying to understand the answers. In a cowardly and hysterical manner. Blind. Some, like ignoble hyenas, replace justice and morality with legal technicalities, desecrating the still-warm corpse of a 15-year-old.

The international media describe the Greek uprising against a backdrop of nepotism, corruption, scandals, institutional crisis and unemployment. The system here, the one that gave birth to the crisis, is blind to all this. It only sees random, isolated events, looks for a technical answer to the problem, a quick way to sweep it under the carpet.

But the problem will not go away, will not be forgotten or bypassed. The torching of the Christmas tree in front of Parliament was a signal. The marginalized, the underclass and now even the children are sending a burning message: We have made a mistake, we need to take another look at the problem. Let’s not ignore it.