We live under the illusion of our ability to emerge from the depths, but we fall pendulum in a Manichean vision where ghosts or messianic saviors are the cause and the hope of our misfortune.
This superficial view leads us to create cracks in society, where those who are apparently different from us become enemies and cause of our misfortunes. under this gaze, everything that is different becomes the scapegoat of the problem. The antinomy, the Peronism, the anti-Peronism is the clear example of this conception that we have dragged on for decades, but it is not the only one.
This twisted circuit leads to a dead end where the crossed accusations justify the existence of good or bad corruption depending on the space in which you are located.
To attribute the origin of our decay process to a single group is to fall into the sin of arrogance and superficiality. Believing that the cause of our misfortunes is always the antagonist group limits us.
Part of the response to our frustration has already been explored in the past, but for some reason it has lain dormant among us. Eduardo Mallea, one of the brightest men in our letters, was the one who plunged a dagger into the source of our despair. In History of an Argentine Passion (1937, Ed. Sudamericana) the author writes accurately “Argentina is the person who replaced life for representation”.
This behavior has spread throughout our society and added to our authoritarian brand could be the key to understanding our prolonged tribulation. Everything around us has been corrupted. Ideals are just fuel for an illusion that quickly fades in a sea of frustration.
From religious nationalism, which seeks to transform Argentina into a state with the obligation to impart morality, transforming its genuine sentiment into arbitrary impositions, to the presumably progressive left, which wants to impose privileges on minorities by force, violating the equality before the law, to finally reach the political center that maintains only a speech empty of content, we see that in all of them the common denominator is simulation.
This nationalism of “short reason” according to Mallea, this left Neruda criticizing by writing that there was “an hangman’s noose in every garden …” and this political center which represents the opportunism of the verb never uttered, transforms the its leaders in caricature experts in the art of sleight of hand.
All of them, in Argentina, need each other to consume a permanent decline and leave the individual lacking a clear vision of his future. In this culture it only serves to survive at the expense of the other. In this impoverished society, intolerance disguises itself as tolerance, confusing everything.
On both sides, all groups are complicit in highlighting the dot in someone else’s eye. On both sides, they are all functional to perpetrate the fall into the abyss.
This pendular movement has a common denominator, intolerance and complicity in disguise. In this climate, thinking about permanent reforms, institutional strength or economic stability becomes an impossible puzzle to put together.
In this sea of confusion, a group has taken over politics by practicing the art of deceiving the voter so that nothing changes. From this point of view, the mega devaluations, the corralitos, the stocks, the confiscation of funds from the AFJP, the bonex plan, the social plans, the tourism subsidies, the Hour 12the trivialization of justice, they are nothing more than the reflection of the need for nothing to change.
Both sides have always hoped that their factions would rise to power, only to be disappointed when they realize that in this game politics has always succeeded in substituting being for what appears to be.
Trying to change politics from the traditional spaces represented by the methodology of decadence will never be a solution. The anointed leaders of the hypnotized masses are just our mirage to leave the solution to our problems in magical thinking.
If we don’t start to open our eyes and try to denounce those who perpetrate our decline, we will continue to be in deep agony. However, we must never forget that those who keep us disappointed, as Miguel de Unamuno said, will be able to win “because they have a lot of brute strength, but they can’t convince. To persuade you have to persuade… ”The first step in convincing ourselves of our reality is to realize that we are all part of this decline.
Mariano Fernández: (1) Economist, UCEMA full time professor
Adolfo Paz Quesada: (2) Lawyer, Director of the Firm, Titto, Paz y Asoc., Professor of Constitutional Law UBA * The views expressed are personal and do not necessarily represent the position of UCEMA and UBA
Mariano Fernandez and Adolfo Paz Quesada
Source: Clarin
