Diario clandestino

"Manners maketh man. "

William of Wykeham, Motto of Winchester College and New College, Oxford

Questo 'Diario clandestino' è talmente clandestino che non è neppure un diario. E ciò sia detto a parziale rettifica del titolo e a conforto di chi, leggendo la parola 'diario', drizza sospettoso le orecchie.
Non è un diario, uno dei soliti diari dove si può leggere che il tal giorno il protagonista ha fatto la tal cosa, il tal giorno ha pensato la talaltra e via discorrendo; uno dei soliti diari in cui l'autore si mette al centro dell'universo come se egli ne costituisse il perno.

(Guareschi, 'Diario clandestino', 1949)

I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job, the dollar buys a nickel's worth, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter, punks are running wild in the streets, and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air's unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit and watch our tee-vees while some local newscaster tells us today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We all know things are bad. Worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything's going crazy. So we don't go out any more. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we live in gets smaller, and all we ask is please, at least leave us alone in our own living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my tee-vee and my hair-dryer and my steel-belted radials, and I won't say anything, just leave us alone. Well, I'm not going to leave you alone. I want you to get mad. I don't want you to riot. I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to write your congressmen. Because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the defense budget and the Russians and crime in the street.  All I know is first you got to get mad.

You've got to say:"I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more.  I'm a human being, goddammit. My life has value."

So I want you to get up now. I want you to get out of your chairs and go to the window. Right now. I want you to go to the window, open it, and stick your head out and yell. I want you to yell: "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!" Get up from your chairs. Go to the window.  Open it. Stick your head out and yell and keep yelling. First, you have to get mad. When you're mad enough we'll figure out what to do about the depression and the inflation and the oil crisis. Things have got to change. But you can't change them unless you're mad.  You have to get mad. Go to the window. Stick your head out and yell. I want you to yell:  "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this any more!" Right now. Get up. Go to your window, open your window!