Double Life – Online today

By Daniela Fubini

In my personal crossroads of nationalities, languages and political or cultural affiliations, it has been a heavy duty month. Let’s put it flat out there: a little over one month ago many, possibly most of my closest American friends, thought we would wake up on November 9 with Hillary Clinton as President Elected. It did not happen, and if we all thought that the craziness in social media was about to end a day or two past election’s day, we were all wrong there too. Not only I am still exposed to dozens of posts discussing the present and future of America politics, but I have been added to a number of Facebook groups that function like group therapy for depressed or panicky citizens.

Meanwhile in Italy the rampage of populism around, across and throughout the referendum was also reaching peaks never seen before, and my feeds got increasingly obscure, hosting content that had little to do with the technical questions asked by the referendum itself, and much more with appreciation or despise towards Prime Minister Renzi. Here at least the defeat of Renzi was not much of a surprise, but again, the aftermath is full of statements, dedicated profile pictures, memes, and mainly a lot of hate, on both sides of the arena. It is probably the first time I see people calling and being called a fascist from far right to far left including all the center of the political spectrum.

What’s left is the local, and since Israel is not openly at war with anyone at the moment (but check again, you never know), the only major issue in the news is a seemingly endless series of embarrassing and worrying scandals involving prominent military being accused of sex assaults and rape on much younger soldiers of both genders, much lower in rank. I would have preferred an unbearable political defeat to the ethical degrading of Tzahal, but at this point all I want is not politically charged discussion, therefore I will tune in my Israeli feeds and let the others go for a while.