If you try to explain to a foreigner what are the recommendations in Italy often he doesn't understand. Because in English the word means to mention someone, and it's completely normal. It's when a person is suggested for a job because someone deem him worthy and capable. In Italian the meaning of the word is just the opposite. It's when is mentioned for a job someone who is neither worthy nor capable, only well-connected.
This difference in meaning speaks volumes about the state of affairs in our country. There are whole sectors of employment where the "italian recommendation" is the only channel of access and merit has little or nothing to do with it, except in rare cases. Journalism is one of them, and this also explains the pitiful state of Italian media. Universities and health care are other fields where this logic rules, and the same goes for the vast gray area of expertise consulting and outsourcing gravitating around all the public offices of our country. The Mastella couple today defended themselves saying that they weren't doing recommendations, just suggesting people who needed work. This may also be partly true, but today is the system that is completely rotten, from top to bottom. I cannot believe that Italy has always been so. Had it always been like that, the Roman Empire and the Renaissance would never have existed.
This tumor of recommendations that systematically win on the merits is a sign of decay, it's the mafia that has taken over culturally the country. The Mafia is, precisely, a system of clans linked by family ties and friendship that aid its members to the detriment of all others. Italy has now become a huge mafia system from the far north to the extreme south, with few exceptions. Those who remain outside this national mafia system rather than honest feel like the poor fools. It's a system that can endure forever, until the final ruin of the country. The Italian political class, compromised by any kind of crime and busy organizing parties with young women looking for a tv recommendation, is the first engine of that, and how can we expect a civil revolt if a huge number of Italians is "recommended" and another huge number struggle to obtain the recommendation that has not yet had? We are a country in total decay and the only thing that can save us now is barbaric invasion.
Francesco Defferrari
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