But today, no one loves the new, post-debt-crisis Greeks. As the narrative now goes, these Greeks are irresponsible, big-spending welfare babies who evade taxes and see the European Union as a giant ATM. These are the Greeks who are taking down the global economy and throwing petrol bombs at Parliament, not rice at weddings. The debt crisis sparked by Greece has revealed deep cracks in the cohesion of the European Union, which was already on shaky ground. Europeans have lost faith in the euro; some have proposed excising Greece like a cancerous tumor in a misguided effort to save themselves.
My father died in 1989, just shy of turning 53. He was a quiet, bookish man who always seemed out of place in the prairie of North Dakota, talking in his musical, Peloponnesian-accented English to the 7-foot gas station owners who chewed tobacco and responded with wide, flat vowels. He was at his most graceful swimming in the sea near his village. He took our family on a summer vacation there when I was 9, and I remember how happy he looked to be home, amid the salty breeze and hidden coves. My Uncle Thanassis was there, too. He and my dad laughed as they swam into the waves, and I followed, desperate to be part of that joy. My uncle still brings up that day whenever the gloomy news reports or depressed Athenians seem too much to bear. His eyes always moisten. It's what it means to him to be Greek, and as he watches his country tearing itself apart once again, for him that's all there is left.
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/greece_financial_crisis_an_elegy?page=0,0
