They are good kids, mosdy in their 20’s: hardworking, energetic,rnand refusing to accept their nation’s slide into the ThirdrnWodd. For them being a Celt or a Lombard is a means of makingrnKarl Schmidt’s friend/enemy distinction, and they feelrnthemselves more and more alienated from the national regimernand the coalition of gangsters and welfare-dependents who supportrnit. For them, IJmberto Bossi is another Braveheart (asrnBossi himself has claimed) fighting against an oppressor whornhas occupied their country and mobilized the resources of publicrnopinion—the newspapers, the telejournalism, the intellectualsrn—into a massive conspiracy to demonize the people of thernhardworking North as racist bigots. When I explain that MiddlernAmericans, especially in the South, are subjected to thernsame campaign of defamation, they are at first puzzled, thenrnrelieved to find that they are not alone in Padania.rnBut what country is this Padania? Is it the industrial suburbsrnof Sesto San Giovanni, the tourist meccas of Venice and thernLakes, or the little towns of the Brianza, where old Lombardiarnawaits just beyond the electronics factory? I spend my last afternoon,rndriving up from Olginate toward Colle di Brianza. Irnpass through ancient villages adjacent to housing projects andrnrustic churches on top of terraced slopes leading down to gravelrnpits and a clear-cut lumbering operation. A shepherd drivesrnhis sheep down the road leading into a hilltop village that looksrndown over the industrial plain around Oggiono and its lake, onlyrna mile or two from the Superstrada connecting Lecco withrnMilan.rnThat night I go to supper with a local labor organizer andrnmaster gardner, Edoardo Bonacina (“Nino”) and my old friend,rnthe liberal baker Laini. After the disintegration of the LiberalrnParty, Laini has moved over to Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. A fewrnnights before, I had accompanied him to a meeting of thern”club” in Lecco, which consists of sober intelligent businessmenrntalking practically of local problems: roads, sanitation,rnzoning. I can understand the attraction of Forza Italia to manyrnresponsible Italians all over the North. Imagine, they say tornthemselves, if industrious and honest businessmen could runrnthings, instead of the Mafia and the socialists.rnSeveral Berlusconi supporters have been calling for a newrnrapprochement with their old friends in the Lega. In theirrnheart of hearts, most Northern Italians support the Lega’s majorrnobjectives, but for one reason or another, they happen torndislike Bossi (he is too tyrannical they say, a clown who cannotrnbe taken seriously, a crook who takes monev from the Bavarians)rnor else they find themselves attached to one or another politicalrnparty. As the ex-Liberal Laini declares, “I am more of arnleghista than Bossi,” explaining that he is supporting practicalrnmeasures to secure economic autonomy in the North. Peoplernare too busy with their lives and do not understand these things.rnNino concurs: “la zhede non capise un cavolo,” that is, “la genternnon capisce un cavolo” (the people don’t know a cabbage, i.e.,rnnothing).rnAs the night goes on, my notebook fills up with local dialectrnexpressions. Bragging a little, I tell them I have a Milanese-Italianrndictionary. No good, they explain: Milanese is a foreign languagernhere. Comasco? A little better but hard to understand.rnEven Bergamasco is exotic. Are there any books on the local dialect?rnNothing, although there might be something iir Lecco,rnwhich is close. Close? It’s five miles away. A few weeks eadier,rnMaroni had declared that Padania would renounce Italian andrnuse only local dialects, but if Como cannot communicate withrnLecco, much less with Olginate, Padania will soon break up intornregions, then into provinces, then into villages. Maroni’srnanswer is that as a “national” language, Padanians will usernEnglish, in which case Steve Balestra will have to be the nextrnleader of the Lega Nord, because he is the only one fluent inrnEnglish. I asked the Young Celts if they wanted to learn English,rnand they laughed. How could they turn their backs onrnManzoni, the greatest writer from Padania?rnI do not know what the future holds for Padania. Whateverrnhappens in a practical sense, it is a nation in the process ofrncreating—or rather recreating itself. Here from this localrnrestaurant—Da Oskar—I can see the traffic going by on thernsuburbanized road leading into Olginate. Most of the people inrnthese houses and apartments came from other parts of Italyrnonly 20-30 years ago, to work in the mills and factories ofrnLecco, and yet inside the restaurant, the last farmer of Olginaternis drinking wine. Laini tells me of growing up just up the hillsrnfrom here, on the other side of the River Adda, while Ninornseems to be at least second-cousin to everyone I have met: tornGiuseppe who owns the grocery where I buy cheese and wine torntake home, to the lady who owns the Ristorante Primavera,rnwhere I ate the night before as her children did their homeworkrnunder the television set. Beneath the surface of this transformedrnvillage, the age-old patterns persist. Nino is not arnfarmer, but he maintains the beautiful garden at CEISLO andrngrows enough vegetables to feed a family of 20. To a stranger’srneyes, much of Northern Italy has been modernized and transformedrnbeyond recognition, but for the old-timers eating andrndrinking in Da Oskar, these changes have not disturbed therncore of life.rnNino is a leftist, Laini a classical liberal, but both are Lombards,rn”more leghisti than Bossi,” and while it is Bossi and thernLega who receive the brunt of the media’s attack on the industriousrnNorth, it is the people themselves who are the realrndemons—Lombardi and Piemontesi, of course, but alsornToscani and Siciliani. Once upon a time, the objects of nationalrnhatred were aliens—domestic and foreign—like the Jews orrnthe Irish or the far-off Huns. Now the enemy is us, althoughrnnot in Walt Kelly’s self-hating sense. Everywhere in the Europeanrnworld, the official enemy is now the people themselves,rnparticularlv those who pav, rather than receive, taxes, those whornare not ashamed of who they are and who their people havernbeen, those who cling to the hateful illusion that they can runrntheir own lives and communities without an invading army ofrnteachers, bureaucrats, and social workers telling them what torndo and how to think, and if they begin to complain about highrntaxes or businesses taking jobs out of the country, the donkeysrnare told “Shut up and pay.” In Italy, the taxes may prove to bernthe last straw, not to break the donkeys’ backs, but to goadrnthem into resistance.rnHere in America, the donkeys may be too well-fed, too burdenedrnby all they think they own, too uprooted and bewilderedrnby their constant shifts of residence and by a global culture thatrnturns Rockford into Newark into Jacksonville. La zhede nonrncapise un cavolo—literally—because they are too busy watchingrnfootball on television. If any American donkeys are going tornkick over their traces, it will only happen in those remote placesrnof Middle America, where the old-timers know cabbages andrncan sec past the suburbs and info the fields and villages whererntheir ancestors lived and died, making the best sense out of arnwodd into which we are all born as strangers.rnJANUARY 1997/11rnrnrn