Antonio Muñoz Molina has described it as the era of vileness, but, complementing this lucid definition of what is happening to us, which Ortega said at the moments of greatest uncertainty in Spanish politics during the interwar period, perhaps we should start also to talk about the era of stupidity. Stupid in the sense that the RAE gives it in its entry: 'foolishness, nonsense'. Or, what is the same, “nonsense and little knowledge”, in the words of Lebrija.
In an increasingly complex and interrelated world, in which technological advances, the consequences of aging on global productivity, the role of bioethics, new ways of working, climate change or what is happening in Niger, Ukraine or Bogota affect the entire planet, the public agenda has been filled with trifles. of insignificance. As if politics were a game of rogues and only served to distract and fuel bizarre culture wars whose sole objective is to convert politics itself, almost always cradled in its own particular inbreeding, into an essential part of the entertainment industry..
Undoubtedly, due to the emergence of social networks and the loss of relevance of the traditional media, which today, on many occasions, dance to the tune set by the political class and are the first to encourage polarization and opportunism, but also because democracy itself —defended from mediocrity by the distance of the elites from public affairs— may be dying of success. Democracy, by becoming widespread and having become a bland raw material — without substance — that everyone considers inalienable, as if it were a blessing fallen from heaven, has lost its social prestige, which makes it more and more something irrelevant to many. In particular, for demagogue leaders, who have found an extraordinary breeding ground for their growth by exploiting emotions..
It is not, of course, an exclusively Spanish phenomenon. Trump's adventures with the US Justice ceased to have anything to do with politics in the ontological sense of the term a long time ago. That is, the one that has to do with the management of public affairs outside the private sphere.
A waste of time
Today their war is nothing more than a struggle between the system and an individual whose last thing they care about are the institutions, but who has managed to degrade the citizen conversation, which ultimately is the best definition of what democracy means, to unbearable levels. As happens when the issues to be debated ignore the most transcendental issues in favor of matters that either affect few individuals or are irrelevant by their very essence, but that occupy precious time and space that is often wasted..
Of course, it is not inconsequential who will be the next president of the United States, on the contrary. What is significant is that the Trump character —not the politician— has been able to strip political action of its content, which ultimately has led to a personal confrontation —or the system or I— devoid of ideology, which is the most important perimeter. or less coherent in which reason moves, which is the support of democracy.
The abuse in the use of isms to define political action in order to simplify language and increase its pejorative function goes in the same direction.. The consequence? The impoverishment of politics, which necessarily leads to the triumph of the vacuous.
In this sense, one of the most useful social experiments that can be carried out today is to verify whether the agreements reached by Vox and the PP in various regions, particularly those in which it has entered the Government, are the most relevant issues for the population of those territories. Specifically, if at the center of concerns are issues such as democratic memory, agriculture (which already represents 2.5% of GDP), the trans law, bullfighting or the defense of Spanish, as if it were a language persecuted and threatened with extinction.
What is unique is that it is precisely about spaces in which a certain left —entangled in political correctness— has in turn drilled as if it were looking for the holy grail, which ultimately reflects the triumph of a scheme of action -reaction that turns politics into a collective imagination devoid of substance.
material action
Precisely, the scenario in which what has been called the alternative right (alt-right), born in the US, but which has settled in Spain through Vox and, unfortunately, with increasing strength in one part of the PP, and whose strategy involves stripping politics of its material transformative capacity —wages, pensions, taxes, the distribution of income and wealth, housing or public health— to make it mutate as a instrument of mastery of the brain from emotions. This, in fact, is the greatest risk for conservatives, moving away from their fundamental axes.
The trick is to want to govern not to manage fundamental issues, since that wears out politically when having to deal with the electorate, but to influence social behavior, a space that has historically been the heritage of religion and identity movements.. Something that explains the recovery of ultra-conservative values —for example, the Reconquest or the colonial Empire—, which social progress had pushed aside, not because they were good or bad, but because they belonged to another era in which economic, technological or social circumstances they were very different.
That is why it is surprising that Vox, which is above all a reactionary movement, which is not the same as conservative, does not intend to control the urban planning departments, as happened before the real estate bubble in innumerable municipal pacts between different political forces, or the ministries of the Treasury, which are the irrigation through which public funds flow, but rather something more subtle, emotions, which lack electoral wear. They are not managers, they are officiants of a materially inane liturgy, but fertile and useful as an electoral project. And the only way to stop this degradation of the democratic system is to go back to talking about politics and its transformative action, not trifles or eccentricities..