Carabinieri Deputy Brigadier Mario Cerciello Rega fell in the line of duty, stabbed in Rome while he was engaged in an investigation. Whoever (with the exception of Salvini) wears the uniform does so out of a deep conviction, because he wants to protect people's safety. He is aware of being on the front line against crime – large or small – and he takes into account that the exercise of his profession leads him to ask him to sacrifice his life.
But Mario's is still the death of a young man, esteemed by colleagues and friends, loved by his wife and family. An absurd death, for futile reasons. This painful event, however, has highlighted - we should be afraid of ourselves - what level of barbarism overflows in public opinion and in each of us.
It has been said that the state should better defend those who serve it. Especially if we think that Parliament has approved an infamous law on self-defense which allows – thanks to a juris et de jure presumption – a citizen – who discovers a stranger (better if visibly foreign) to rummage in the backyard brandishing a crowbar with which attempts to force open the garage door – to take up a legitimately held shotgun and fire. A carabiniere, a police officer do not have – and rightly so – the ''license to kill''; on the contrary, they risk getting into trouble if, in front of a drawn knife – they make use of the firearm in their possession.
Matteo Salvini wanted to remind do-gooders that in the USA for such serious crimes there is (but it is less and less true) the death penalty. He has forgotten that even the police have freer hands there (here Mario Placanina, the carabiniere who shot Carlo Giuliani in Genoa suffered a sort of civil death). A few weeks ago there was talk of providing the police with electric guns that were supposed to prevent without endangering lives. Then nothing more was heard, not even of the results of the trial. But the signs of the brutality that we have absorbed from the current hate-mongers come to the fore when, almost unconsciously, we find ourselves "siding" with the nationality of the killers.
It would have been neither a North African nor a Nigerian (who entered the Peninsula illegally), but two young Americans who stabbed Mario - this is what the authorities claim. Sin. The ''defenders of the sacred borders'' had already gone off in trumpet, regardless of the political and institutional role they play.
Here is the Captain: «I hope that the two bastards are caught in the next few hours and that they spend the rest of their lives in prison working». And the social media had followed him (obviously on the assumption that the two had black skin) invoking the death penalty, lynching and so on, without anyone reminding them, first of all this singular minister, of what is laid down in paragraph 3 of article 27 of the Constitution: ''the penalties cannot consist of treatments contrary to the sense of humanity and must aim at the re-education of the convicted person''.
For her part, the angelic Giorgia Meloni (leader of a party, former vice president of the Chamber and former minister) has defined the murderers as ''animals'' who in her opinion would have been North Africans (nothing new, for centuries blacks were thought to be "animals"; relatives of monkeys). Then why pick on animals that, by nature, wouldn't hurt anyone?
But even on the opposite front there is a shiver of narrow escape: fortunately two young Americans have confessed, moreover a Wasp and perhaps also of Aryan descent. Will Salvini still call them ''bastards'', Meloni ''animals''? Perhaps, the two ditch jumpers will come to argue that the investigating magistrates have made a political choice (without standing as candidates in the elections) in favor of immigration, deflecting the investigation to save their Negher friends.
A teacher from Novara (I stress: a teacher) ''posted'' a repulsive consideration on the Facebook page (for which, later, she seems to have apologized): ''One less, and clearly with an unintelligent look, none we will miss it''. However, she does not need to show her gaze to exhibit her moral misery.
