“The political system has been made so incredibly complex that nobody can even have a grasp of what is going on. And it’s kept that way, because the more complex it gets, the more money it generates for the actors involved. Or wastes it – from a citizen’s point of view. In many ways, the European Union and Italy are in similar positions. The Italian nation state survives because its political system is so complicated that people give up caring about it. The EU relies on the exact same principle: once conceived by visionary intellectuals, the storylines of Italian and European history have been reduced to a framework of short-term financial benefits for a small group of people.”
That is an extract taken from an interview with the Italian comedian Beppe Grillo by my good friend Bruno van den Elshout. Interesting stuff. You can find it here.