There is no low they won’t stoop to

en to a whole new level and for new heights of ridiculousness. The past will cast its shadow over the present and the future. In short, the SYRIZA-Independent Greeks coalition appears determined to go the whole hog and damn the consequences. Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras is the one who’s setting the tone. It was he who thumped his chest and made so many threats in the past, ladling out delusional pledges that were triumphantly exposed, without, however, his party suffering any consequences. It was he who wagered the country’s future with the preposterous Yanis Varoufakis and his shenanigans. And now it is he who is defending the unacceptable behavior of Panos Kammenos, Pavlos Polakis and other government officials behaving in an unacceptable manner. He is calling all the political shots and guiding or assigning roles to his underlings. There is no doubt of this. Tsipras has set the stage: He’s got Kammenos stirring the pot in Parliament by flinging out names and accusations that have nothing to do with each other; he’s got Polakis and Dimitris Papangelopoulos attacking the justice system when its decisions are deemed unfavorable; he’s got Nikos Toskas protecting the no-intervention status of the crime of hotbed that is Exarchia with excuses and distractions; he’s got Nikos Pappas talking about Greece’s dynamic entry into space technology; and last but not least, he’s got Dionysis Tsaknis inaugurating a monument for those who “fell” for state broadcaster ERT when it was shut down a few years ago – and then reopened. This all comes on top of pandering to the striking garbage collectors, avoiding structural change, appointing cronies to the higher echelons of the civil service, letting disciplined state employees off the hook and so much more. And above all and everyone else, we had Tsipras himself putting up more smokescreens by stressing the need to “purge” the past in order to skate past the present and this government’s antics. We are most definitely in for a very bumpy ride.