Greece: Then and Now: Part 3
by Marry Wakefield Buxton
Urbanna, Va.— At 5 p.m. Syntagma (Constitution) Square changed like day and night. It started with military music turned up on loud speakers to earsplitting levels and a woman screaming in Greek over bullhorns. Tourists and residents, and even the dogs that roamed free in the streets of Athens, scurried away as throngs of communists dressed in t-shirts and jeans swarmed into the square waving red flags.
I thought of the Russian communist red flag emblazoned with cycle and hammer and the millions of people murdered in Russia under its symbol. If I were communist, I would design a new flag, but I didn’t suppose the young zealots today knew history and the massive killing that had once come about under the communist revolution.
I stood on the hotel steps and watched. The police were lined up to ensure the public could walk freely across the square but as I stood there and saw the masses assemble I wondered who would want to mingle in a mob? A mob can be dangerous to humanity… a man can lose his brain in a mob and the result can be as serious as losing a rudder at sea.
The last communist demonstration I had witnessed was in 1964 in Yokosuka, Japan, as a Navy wife when a U.S. nuclear sub docked in Sasebo. Communists feast on internal problems and they were out in full force in Athens this evening like jackals moving in on a bleeding carcass. Since Greece was about to fold, they smelled opportunity. The communist solution is to take private property at the butt of a gun. But communists, like socialists, forget the basic need of government—someone has to create wealth to pay the bills of government, someone has to create wealth to provide jobs, and without a strong business sector to provide those needs, a nation is doomed to bankruptcy.
I gazed at the Greek Parliament in front of me, once the royal palace, every room lit up in the dark night as Prime Minister Papandreou tried to stay in power. He had offered to resign if he could form a coalition government that would include more moderate Democrats. But the opposition was refusing to agree to anything until he stepped down. If a leader didn’t emerge soon who could unite the factions and return the country to solvency, there could be revolution.
A deadline was fast approaching. Come December 15, without bailout from Europe, there would be no money left to pay salaries to the one million public employees (in a nation of 10 million people) or pensions to retirees, or even health benefits. What was to be done?
Would Europe continue bailing out Greece? What about the other weak economies in Europe that are unable to meet their bills, such as Italy, Spain, Portugal and Ireland? Would the United States be pulled into the quagmire and try to bail Europe out? It was the same old story—government growing to the point it was unsustainable, taxes and regulations on business so high the business sector folding, and the end result was not enough tax revenues to pay bills.
Discouraged, we pushed past the communists waving their banners and shouting their dogmas to a quieter street and sat outside a cozy bistro to drink chardonnay, eat pasta, and try to forget the problems of the world.
A dog came over to my table; dogs are free to roam the streets of Athens (the SPCA neuters them and provides any needed medical treatment, and various businesses adopt them, feed and water them so they are free to roam at will) and I patted his head. Soon he was sprawled at my feet with his great head on my foot. What good fortune I had found a lovely dog halfway around the world to offer comfort! One can be sure a dog is not a communist plotting to confiscate your hard-earned property, I thought. (On second thought, maybe a dog does take over one’s home!)
At the end of dinner I was sorry to leave him but he seemed accepting of the fact I was only a short-lived friend and immediately befriended another and settled his head onto a new foot.
When we returned to the hotel, all the communists, bullhorns, and red flags were gone. All that remained was their garbage blowing through the streets and a few dogs wandering through the area. The lighted columns of the Parthenon looked down on Syntagma Square and seemed to be hideously grinning at us like an amused Greek god… perhaps to remind us how very silly was human behavior. Over 2,500 years had passed since the Parthenon had been built and humanity was still hopelessly in debt, killing each other, hungry, poor, sick or suppressed.
(To be continued.)
