Greeks know one thing – how badly their political class has let them down

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/jun/15/greeks-let-down-by-political-class

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It seems to me that irony is Greece's biggest export. The thin man with a ponytail and owlish spectacles who delivers Athens's free Metro newspaper had the word "Aggressive" written across his T-shirt; he looks like a philosophy student. The riot police who stand in grim lines on the roads near the university should have "Gentle" written across the massive machine guns that are strapped to their uniforms.

I do not wish to add to the headlines in the international media that dramatise and sometimes infantilise the lives of dignified Greek citizens who are living through a tough time. Just for the record, you should have seen Victoria station at 2.45am when I made my way to catch the Gatwick Express on my way to Athens. The sad, mad, drunk and desperate homeless men and women standing in the London rain were a more forlorn and shocking spectacle than anything I saw in Athens. I even had to wheel my bag in zigzags around a pensioner who had his leg in plaster and was sleeping in a wheelchair.

So I am not going to pathologise Greece, which, it seems to me, has conveniently become the scapegoat of a sadistic European family that is experimenting with various forms of punishment. Greeks know better than anyone else how badly they have been let down by the corrupt and cynical political class that has mortgaged their lives. The EU-IMF hardline mantra of fiscal austerity and structural reform might help stop the ever personified "markets", from "rippling with fear" for about three seconds, but it is not going to help the Greek people any more than it is going to help the British pensioner in his wheelchair.

If we were to psychoanalyse the symptoms of the "market" itself, we would find it consistently nervous. It needs to talk about who it is and what it desires for itself and for others.

Athens is my favourite European city. It is sunny and leafy, both tranquil and chaotic, ancient and modern. Its people are cultured, astute, witty and hospitable. In no particular order, the anxieties of the people I spoke to this week – teachers, doctors, waiters, shopkeepers and artists – go something like this: they are living with uncertainty and do not know what their lives will look like after this Sunday. Whatever the outcome of the election, they want to stay in the euro and they are asking for the terms of the bailout to be renegotiated by their creditors in a more "human scale" way. In the meantime, if the banks collapse, will their accounts be frozen? If their salaries, which have already been cut by a third, are converted into drachmas, they will have even less to get by – how then are parents who are currently employed going to support their adult children who are unemployed? Will their children have to leave Greece to survive? The elderly have had their pensions cut. If they become ill, will they be able to access medicines? The pharmaceutical companies are no longer supplying pharmacies unless they are paid in cash. There are some hospitals that can no longer pay the electricity bills and staff are working unpaid. Some of their patients are hungry.

Meanwhile Angela Merkel and her army of technocrats declare "nothing is negotiable", although with François Hollande's victory in France it is clear she is undoing the top two buttons of her blouse. It's a horrible game. Negotiating is what children learn to do in the playground.

The taxi driver taking me to the airport pointed out the silver olive trees that grow on the outskirts of Athens. He said his mother, who lived through the years of the junta, mostly survived on bread and olives. She told him this morning that the only people the terms of the loan agreement works best for are the bankers and corrupt governments who make money out of uncertainty. His family will be voting for the Syriza party. They would probably agree with Slavoj Žižek, who writing in the London Review of Books, asserts: "The Greeks are not passive victims; they are at war with the European economic establishment, and what they need is solidarity, because it is our struggle too."

Will Europe fall apart if Greece is bullied out of the eurozone? I don't know, but I'm reminded of a quote from Andy Warhol, who once wryly remarked: "I can't fall apart, I've never fallen together."

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