PERSPECTIVErnHoisting the Donkeyrnby Thomas FlemingrnIn troubled times, we look for something to hold on to as therndangerous eurreuts are sweeping us downstream to destruction.rnSome will have the clear sight (or unthinking prejudice)rnto grab on to some rooted feature of the landscape—the limb ofrnan oak tree, the steeple of a church, the arm of a brother; whilernothers make the mistake of reaching for something more recentrnand showy—an ornamental bush, a golden arch, or the hand ofrna political ally. For stupid people, which means most of us, itrnmakes all the difference whether a man in distress turns to thernGospels or to a grief counselor.rnEven in the smog of politics, we thrash the air, searching forrnsomething solid and enduring, but the great mistake—in politics,rnas in most of life —is to mistake the familiar for the permanent.rnThe world of the 1950’s is gone for good, and with it thernpostwar alignment of states and parties. Those who take theirrnstand on the platform of the Republican Party will soon be lookingrnthrough its holes into the great vortex that is sucking themrnin, and those who try to keep in step with some imagined “conservative”rnmovement (in what direction should conservativesrnwant to move, except backward?) will ride their slow freight allrnthe way off the cliff.rnI touched upon these matters almost a year ago when I gaverna speech in an ex-convent across the Adda River from the villagernwhere Lucia Mondella and Renzo Tramaglino were SLipposedrnto get married some 360 years ago. Those dim-witted Lombardrnlovers had a grasp of the permanent: love, faith, hard work,rncourage. Then, as now, there were unscrupulous oppressors asrnwell as cowardly and faithless priests and nuns, but even therncowards knew the truth, not only in the 17th century, whenrnthese fictional characters were undergoing the perils of thwartedrnlove, famine, plague, and war, but also in the 19th century,rnwhen jMessandro Manzoni was writing I Promessi Sposi.rnAnd there I was, not five miles from Manzoni’s home, 1 50rnyears later, lecturing an Italian audience on the themes of empirernand oppression, not of the Spanish and Austrian subjugationrnof Lombardia, but of America in the Philippines and inrnKosovo, an argument I had been making, it seemed, all over thernworld—in London and Paris, in Chicago and Berkeley, in S’dneyrnand Adelaide. “La fine del secolo Americano.”rnWlien I gave my talk in the restored chapel, the one or twornex-Christian Democrats (Italy’s Cold War “conser’atives”) werernincensed. The moderator of the panel, a former ambassador tornthe United States, was furious and afterward exploded at me, insistingrnthat all the lies he had heard about Racak and ethnicrncleansing were true, that the American government would neverrnbe guiltv of unprovoked aggression. Wlien I told him that hernand his government were as much victims of American lies asrnthe American sheep wlio bleated in unison with the CNNrnbroadcasts, this calm and benevolent diplomat started screaming,rn”I suppose the holocaust never happened either,” and hernstormed off waving papers in the air as if he were trying to flagrndown a taxi in the middle of an Italian garden.rnSince most Italians are too realistic to be conservative, therntalk was a great success. More than a few radicals came up tornfind out which section of left field I had come from, and theyrnwere not at all unhappy to learn that I came from the right.rnThose labels belonged to the past, they said, and in our subsequentrnconversation, the voung leftists turned out to be morerngreen than red, defenders of community and naive traditions,rnopposed to the expansion of government coercion in the namernof rights.rnIn America, the smart money is buying puts on the currentrnalignment of left and right, of performing mastodons and domesticatedrnonagers. In Italy, where politics is a matter of jump-rn10/CHRONICLESrnrnrn