Just Because I’m Paranoid Doesn’t Mean They’re Not After Me

H. L. Mencken wrote in 1936:

The central belief of every moron is that he is the victim of a mysterious conspiracy against his common rights and true deserts. He ascribes all his failure to get on in the world, all of his congenital incapacity and damfoolishness, to the machinations of werewolves assembled in Wall Street, or some other such den of infamy.

Yes, most conspiracy theories have me in stitches. However, the usual pattern of just looking for the obvious truth does not seem to apply to the Valencia train wreck we discussed previously.

But what IS the obvious?

The name of the driver was Joaquín Pardo. This good, responsible, serious-minded, unmarried 30-, 39-, 40-, 41-year old with the commonplace name comes from a family with railroad tradition and was placed at the railroad organisation of Valencia FGV by a temp agency, resp. was working for FGV since 2002 in various capacities, which he all filled satisfactorily, tenía mucha ilusión, had, according to the secretary of the Unión General de Trabajadores (UGT), Antonio Soler, great expectations, got a fortnight or six weeks, depending on who is asked, introduction to the skills of train driving, works in shifts, therefore his neighbours hardly ever see him, stirs the train into the worst underground train disaster in Spanish history, his body is subjected to a superficial autopsy and quickly buried. A second autopsy is cancelled. No representatives of the FGV and the trade union attend his funeral, different from the funeral of the train conductress. Between being stunned and non-comprehending, everybody remembers him fondly, the chico excelente, muy estudioso, the outstanding, hard-working, zealous, eager-to-learn darling, ruffian, sunshine. Era una bellísima persona.

A health official let slip that the autopsy revealed that he had been as fit as a fiddle.

What fit-as-a-fiddle man drives himself to death and many others with him?

The requests for "joaquin pardo" at Google Spain have dropped from 1,740,000 some days ago to 158 today.

Yes, what IS the obvious here? I honestly don't know.



Go to Gudrun Eussner's Homepage for more information and thoughts (in German).