Via Asiago drives away Fiorello and an avenger slashes illegally parked cars: it’s the Far West

Not all of reality has been digitized. Looking up from the screens of our phones, one would realize that many things are still happening analogically, around the corner, literally on the street. For example, in via Asiago in Rome: it is these days the news that the residents have obtained, after months of protests for (they say) disturbance of the public peace and degradation, the move to another location of the on the street program “Viva Rai2 ” by and with Rosario Fiorello, complete with apologies. In the days leading up to the news, rumors of compensation and cash compensation had leaked out that Rai would be willing to pay the condominiums, a cross between an abolition of the fee and a facade bonus: a background flatly denied by public television, but which it was enough to create the myth of the “state negotiation – via Asiago”. What was achieved by the Roman Asiagos made the administrators of those condominiums rise to the status of national leaders (according to the latest polls I am above Forza Italia); and the President of the United States Joe Biden, on a visit to Europe, asked to meet them: according to the White House, the residents of via Asiago could also succeed in evicting Putin from Ukraine (meanwhile in viale Mazzini there are those who have resurrected the myth of the “mutilated victory”, and Pino Insegno to avenge the honor of the company threatens to march on via Asiago to the cry of “We will break the backs of the condominiums”).

Remaining in Rome, but moving further south-east, in the Porta Furba area, it is noted instead “Free Park”, a vigilante of the night who signs himself with an indelible spray can on the sides of badly parked cars – on pedestrian crossings, on sidewalks, on places reserved for the disabled. A cross between a street artist, a latest generation activist and a traffic auxiliary; not exactly a Marvel superhero. But that was enough to incite the rhetoric of “not the hero we deserved but the one we needed”. Here, too, we have neighborhood residents ecstatic about the summary justice – aside, of course, from the car owners; who in turn threaten to take justice into their own hands and lynch the mysterious avenger of the wild stop once identified. Not just heaps of rubbish and car accidents, therefore: the road is once again the protagonist, with its unwritten laws – or if they are, in capital letters on the bodywork of a no-parking SUV.

Are we on the eve of a new Far West? Or are they the first signs of a return of populism, this time no longer nationalist but local, district, of the landing? On the threshold of a Third World War, we prefer to take sides and arm ourselves for condominium disputes; faced with a planet to save, we prefer to commit ourselves to safeguarding the sidewalk near the house. Other than nuclear threat, or fears related to artificial intelligence; but not even education, work, inflation. People’s problems are parking, no noise under their windows, the one who waters the geraniums when he shouldn’t and drips on the balcony or on your head, stuff like that. We already knew that the great narratives are over, and with them the great parties; but now let’s get ready for the political climb of the neighborhood committees.