A couple I know jetted off to Naples, Italy last month for a vacation they have waited a long time for. As it turns out, they probably should have waited a little longer – at least until the garbage fires go out. Naples was recently hip-deep in a garbage and landfill issue that boggles the mind of an American city dweller. It's a political problem that would seem likely to only happen in a country run by a bunch of nine-year-olds—some moony bunch of juveniles who call their country Pokémonistan.

Details are a little hard to come by (who wants to travel to the garbage capital of the E.U. to cover the story?), but from what I can gather the ultimate passive aggressive movement in global history went down something like this:

Landfill space in Italy was running out and everyone knew it. So last year, work was started on expanding the facilities. Environmentalists were outraged and staged massive protests to beg the municipalities to consider alternative sites. Classic NIMBY (Not In My Back Yard) stuff, it would seem.

Political officials, recognizing the issue, but not willing to change their stance, smiled and said (I'm paraphrasing all of this), “No. We dig here.”

NIMBY guerillas countered with, “We will chain ourselves to the heaping piles of discarded foodstuffs and medical waste if you don't find another location.”

Politician's retort: “No. Time's a wastin' – if we don't dig now, the streets will be a sea of trash. It'll be like Venice, only with garbage instead of garbage and water.”

NIMBY guerillas: “We'd rather live with the trash in our city than have you wreck more of the gorgeous, highly-sought land right next to the dump.”

Politicians: “You want it? Youuuuuuu got it!”

And that was it. In a month the dumps were full and the trash workers had no place else to drop off the goods. So they halted service and the piles of refuse in the streets started growing. It wouldn't be long before they swelled into gigantic rotting mountains of
maggot-crawling trash. Most of the restaurants in Naples had to close. The smell was so bad, customers couldn't eat without retching. The heaps of rubbish toppled over into the roads, reducing the streets into slim paths that only mopeds could navigate.

People complained. The politicians pointed at the NIMBY guerillas and said, “Talk to them. They said they wanted to live with the slag. We're just giving them what they said they wanted – you certainly can't fault us for that.”

Another month goes by and summer starts rolling in. Stuff starts stewing in the heaps of waste. That's when the fires started. People who couldn't stand it anymore ran outside in a fit of grappa-induced rage and set the streets ablaze. As the black, greasy smoke rolled skyward, the environmentalists lost some of the footing in their original argument. Naturally, those who end up with half the city on fire as a result of their position on an issue, are going to have some explaining to do.

It’s high time passive aggressive becomes a new branch of democratic government. We can call it the Pagro party. The campaign slogan is already done: “You want it? You got it!” You want heroin legalized? Done. You want puppy fights allowed? Done. You want to stop poverty in Africa? We'll move them all here and they can live with you and Bono. You want to save the spotted owl? There will be so many freakin' owls flying around here your kids will have to wear diving belts to play outside.

Then, as the country crumbles into mass chaos, the Pagro party can sit back with their feet up on the table and say, “What? This is what you said you wanted! Don't even start blaming me for this – you said you wanted puppies to fight to the death. Oh – what's that? You want me to fix it now? Okay. But don't ever question me again. And, taxes are going up.”

I guess it's kind of like a dictatorship in a way. As with any overwhelming form of government, it will be prone to a violent, wild war in the streets in the form of a coup d'etat. Such is life in Pokémonistan.