We all need to learn

This article is published in number 47 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until November 23, 2022

“We don’t take lessons from anyone!” and its variant «Let’s not take lessons from anyone!» is one of the stupidest and unfortunately most recurrent phrases, among those embraced by our politicians of the right, of the center, of the left.
Especially when, believing they are facing who knows what threat to their pedestal, they hurl it with a stormy face, an imperious tone of voice and an exclamation point attached. All details that serve to hide the fragility of its underlying meaning, which is always defensive.
The last to pronounce it was this phenomenal character of Matteo Piantedosi, a man of order, pure bureaucrat, who from first class prefect flew to the top of the Ministry of the Interior, ready to declare, with police headquarters prose, his little patriotic war to anyone who appears on the newsstand: both the idle rave party sufferers of labyrinthitis, sia the poor wretches who come from the shipwrecks of entire Eastern and African countries which, precisely because of our immense western wealth, have fallen into fratricidal wars, or in those against the drought that torments them, alternating with floods and famines. Sorrowful humanity that our minister, proud of having surprised and selected on NGO ships, does not call people, but “residual cargoes”. Confirming that he would really need lessons, perhaps linguistic and from an elementary school teacher like don Milani who taught his boys (and us) that the unequal must be welcomed and helped, not imprisoned on the margins of school, or disembarked from life. If the priest of the least were not enough, I would report to the minister the first among all the priests, Pope Francis, who last Sunday dedicated his homily to the Day of the Poor and said “listen to the cry of migrants”. To then add: “But if our heart is muffled and indifferent we are unable to hear their cry of pain, to cry with them and for them, to see how much loneliness and anguish are hidden even in the forgotten corners of our cities”. Let us bear witness, she said, “let us light the lights of hope in the midst of darkness”. And besides saying it, he did it, in a not at all symbolic way, preparing lunch for 1,300 people – migrants, the poor, the homeless – in the Paul VI hall. Adding to food, the nourishment of conversation and therefore of listening.
We all need to listen. We all need to learn. Especially politicians who must (should) take charge of the community. What else is politics but this? Recognize social nodes and address them together. Encouraging businesses and work to invent and improve. Invest in school. Mitigate tensions and inequalities. Organize in a decent way the protection of the weakest with the most equitable distribution of wealth. And each of these things, listening, learning, changing. The wise man says: «The more the bold walk with their heads held high, the more they risk stumbling».

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