Not your fault, Cypriots?

Small savings deposits in Cyprus were supposed to contribute 3 per cent to resolving the crisis – larger accounts, 6 or 10 per cent. Of course, one could also have levied a special tax. But then the owners of accounts holding thick wads of laundered money from abroad would be sitting pretty. The only thing left for Cyprus is to become a protectorate of Russia, accompanied by the usual protest circus parading effigies of Merkel in a Hitler mask, spurred by the infantile presumption that “Europe wants to destroy Cyprus.”

Europe is not threatened by the viciousness of the bankers or the incompetence of the politicians. It’s threatened by the delegating of democracy, by the fixed idea that “the ones up top” are responsible for everyone and to blame for everything, and by the tendency to elect politicians only to insult them and replace them with Beppo Grillos all stripes.

Even in this country, this murmur is everywhere. Germany has problems of poverty? The rich are to blame. We have bad schools? The politicians should sort it out. The pensions are not affordable? The state should cough up. That’s the murmur on every talk show, in every tram.

Democracy is that which does not concern me, but what others pay for. We want to control everything, but prefer to keep our fingers out of the heat. Democracy, though, is something other than mere consumerism.