Versions of the truth

Sometimes it’s useful to look at familiar things from a completely different perspective than your own – not only does it provide entertainment value, but it can also widen your mental horizons (and, as an added bonus, make you realize the infinite potential for human stupidity). That’s precisely the kind of thing that happened to me recently, when – while browsing the net – I bumped into some American blog, whose author was getting really steamed up about FOX News. Normally I ignore diatribes  like that, as people behind it tend to be lefties with foaming braing, but the link was just begging to be clicked:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ApZyx9skwzI&feature=related

Oh. My. Goodness. I’m not entirely sure what the weather is like on Bill’s planet, but it sure as hell is different than here – the fact that we exist in parallel universes is absolutely beyond doubt. Tourists don’t come to Amsterdam? Then why the hell is next to impossible to park a bike (let alone a car) in the centre? Free sex and drugs? Yeah, well, I don’t know what kind of crew is O’Reilly’s correspondent hanging out with – but the rest of us, mere mortals, have to pay for everything. Free stuff in Amsterdam – only an inbred redneck from flyover country could come up with something like that. Corruption? I wish – maybe at least some of the official procedures could go a tiny bit faster. Anarchy?  Sure, some places are a no-go after dark – but which big city doesn’t have those? And the police is there – visible, competent, and polite even when they’re busting you for cycling without your lights on…

And the funny thing is, there’s quite a few things wrong with Amsterdam – or Netherlands in general – but none of them has anything to deal with the apocalyptic picture painted by the pseudo-journalists from FOX. I took a tram to work today (the weather is turning totally Dutch-autumn-style, unfortunately) and for the sake of killing time, I was staring at  the in-tram display. Normally it’s news mixed with some horoscopes and crap about celebrities doing this and that – but the novelty today was the phone number where you can report an appartment scam.

I’ve been living here a while, so idiotic rules like the pro-squatting rules (if I keep my appartment empty for a year, I can’t kick out squatters, should I be unlucky enough to get such pestilence) or gemeente appartments (eight years of waiting and you get to live for 300 euro inclusive per month) don’t impress me much. Obviously, each big city has the problem of demand for places to live exceeding the supply – and every municipality devises its own way of handling it – but come on… Does it take so much brain to imagine, that patient will try to get those appartments and then immediately sublet them? They are not a root cause of the problem, merely a symptom – and, as befits good socialists, that’s precisely what the officials are targetting. Seems like they’ve been taking some lessons from their older colleagues in the Eastern Bloc: combating the big-bad-evil speculators has a long tradition there. Too bad I had to get off the tram before I could check whether financial incentive was being offered.

There is a theory that says there’s nothing new happening in this world – just old things that have been really well forgotten. Balkenende IV has a number of ideas stinking of Big Brother (the per capita amount of phone tap, which Hirsch Balin recently talked about in the Tweede Kamer) – but this short ad was a bit of an eye-opener for me: old ideas are coming back in a new form.

Anarchy my ass.