“If I told them what I was going to do, they wouldn’t have voted for me.” Carlos Saul Menem
Some time ago, back in the first days of March 2018, the first column of the so-called “Peisadillas” appeared in the pages of the newspaper El Litoral. Together with my father, Peiso, we had decided to write about “a lot of nothing and a little of everything”, which was his way of dribbling around political reality and the news bombardment. In accordance with his idea, he put dreams as a common thread, and through them he played with words, intertwined them, braided them into the dreamlike and the playful. In that first publication, where we explained what the column came from, with the title “Peisadillas” it said among other things “This introit or something like that that pretends to be a column, is the basis so that it does not fall, because as architects say and the architects ‘if there is no foundation (I’m not lying) the column will collapse’ (…)”
In that March of 2018, things began to happen, and one could not be on the sidelines of a reality that was entering Argentine society with force and virulence. A society that was split in the middle and divided waters: the so-called crack was at its highest point. Mauricio Macri’s popularity was eroding day by day, inflation was rising at a rate of 40% annually and all values were in a worrying red. It was almost impossible to stay away from a punishing reality that provided juicy headlines and fueled fights, screams, and stunning silences. Let’s not talk about politics we told ourselves, but it was impossible not to do so.
In the first two years of this column, while Peiso was alive, we experienced a change of presidency, allegations of corruption, the ineffectiveness of Macri’s economic plan, the largest tax increase in history (so far), the first months of Alberto Fernández’s government and the Covid-19 pandemic… which was where everything changed. It was impossible for us not to talk about reality, and obviously, talk about politics. What in its genesis was going to be a weekly costumbrist column with all the surreal madness based on the crazy dreams of a character in himself that was Peiso, decanted into a monthly chronicle, a critical vision with a certain aplomb and a hint of sarcasm, some other exercise of memory and a certain dose of humor.
And you, dear reader, may be wondering… What’s the point of all this introduction? Simply to justify myself. It’s that every time I sit down to write this column, I tell myself: “Today reality will slip away from me, I’ll go for the dreams, the traditions, the customs, the anecdotes. Today I’m not going to talk about politics, today I’m not going to talk about Javier Milei.” But it’s impossible for me, I really can’t. In this blessed country, which I’m more convinced with each passing day that we hate to love, things happen… but not only do things happen permanently, since that is part of life itself, but what happens happens with a speed and an immeasurable “waterfall” of information, full of nuances and colorful characters that blacken reality with impassive faces (if I may use oxymorons), with the hardness of titanium in their stony features, which rewrite their truths based on lies that become real.
Many of these characters parade through channels and radio stations that are television studios where their interlocutors only know how to nod. Obedience to the power in power, cronyism and disinformation channels are the order of the day. The “enveloped criminals” are condescending little lambs in the face of the messianic presence of their own executioner. An executioner who used his words, his anti-politics stance as a remedy for the evil that has afflicted Argentina for a hundred years. As the messiah he came to save the masses from the ruling caste. Executioner who appropriated the media circus that ended up being the platform and becoming supporters of that unconventional, complex, picturesque, aggressive character, who presented a disruptive paternalistic sensitivity with his mascots as the opposite side of his discursive harshness. Like Dr. Henry Jekyll from the real Edward Hyde, from the novel by Robert Louis Stevenson.
His evident eloquence and histrionics generated complacency, among the laughter, astonishment and complicity that was the highlight on television sets and in related media. That character used the State to get where he got, and he uses the State to finance his trips, to pose with a duck’s mouth and in a dive with his greatest references and to give interviews in international media where he looks, feels very comfortable and that after six months and almost as if in a trance of mystical delirium, say: “I love. I love being the mole within the State. I am the one who destroys the State from within.”
Some time ago I read an article by a Spanish journalist where he analyzed the position of a particular politician from the ” Podemos ” party. The journalist in question wondered why some politicians arrived thanks to the clamor of the people, and once in office, became deaf to the same clamor that had put them in the desired place. Among other things he said: “They will be the frequency inhibitors used by the security services (…) The iPads that atrophy the sense of hearing (…) Frequent exposure to journalists’ microphones.” Then he came to the conclusion: “I don’t know what it is, but politics may produce deafness or some kind of strange alteration in hearing.”
For my part, I would add the excessive brightness of the lights on the television floors and the exaggerated use of social networks, such as X, the former Twitter. A place where hate is the bread and butter; where hate is recycled and multiplied in tiny little hates, which add to the big hates and reinforce hate on a gigantic scale (excuse the redundancy). What good can come out of that place?
Milei keeps flying, from the heights he only comes down to post and give a couple of notes… and keep traveling. He has already made eight tours to different parts of the world and has not brought a single investment to a country that urgently needs it. Of those trips, the vast majority had a religious character or were to receive awards, adding ribbons to his proud little chest as a famous anti-inflationary president (ahem) and guru of the libertarian dream as a verb made flesh. In that hustle and bustle there were presidents who avoided him, apocryphal awards, protocol problems, and nothing, but nothing of anything positive for the country/state that he tries to destroy through threats or future vetoes.
Democracy? With earache. Let us hope that the institutions responsible for ensuring the well-being of the population do not turn a deaf ear to the clamor of their people. A clamor that for now is only a whisper.
