In other times Politicians did not have as many incentives to avoid the truth, nor to accommodate the surveys. In reality, fickle societies demand it of them. During the long days of the economic crisis we confirmed that, in the best of cases, who understood politics simplified economics; those who knew economics were ignorant of politics. We built non-stop apartments with immigrant labor that arrived en masse and we bought them with credits that one believed they could pay back in a heartbeat. But the blow of the ‘subprime’ put an end to everything. A handful of politicians are still in jail for having stolen in those days of the real estate bubble. When the loss of confidence among banks blocked the credit markets, the bubble burst. It was the umpteenth column of smoke, with a pyramidal profile.
Then it happened with the independence movement. Now it is the Middle East, yesterday it was Ukraine. At all hours it is the public debt, the denial of the Pisa reports, the struggle between governments and the judiciary. It does not matter. Suddenly, we are all jurists, experts in constitutionalism and comparative law, in fluctuations in the price of a barrel of crude oil. The classics of political analysis always warned that one of the main tasks of any government – some more, others less – are smoke screens.
We see it with expressions and words that lose semantic meaning in two days. “Dialogue; sitting at the table and talking”: it’s like if the Congress of Deputies did not exist, nor the municipal plenary sessions, nor the autonomous parliaments. A few years ago it happened with post-truth. There is no longer talk of post-truth but its practice is still active, with the addition that even banality is radicalized and becomes a court of the new truth. Post-truth and smoke climb into the digital fluid of social networks, adding layers of fragility, obsolescence and one-dimensionality. In parallel, artificial intelligence puts fictional faces into circulation, 100% fake news. The votes come next. If you want, everything comes to your iPhone screen. It is a self-referential ecosystem.
Related news
Post-truth has antecedents such as ‘The Protocols of the Elders of Zion’ – an evil fraud about the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. It was an example for himTotalitarianisms, which were the most serious metastasis of the 20th century. In their feedback, the two great totalitarian systems of the 20th century required a foundational post-truth: for Lenin it was the storming of the Winter Palace; for Hitler, the Reichstag fire. Previously, there were not even half a dozen prisoners in the Bastille. Again, post-truth at the service of the revolutionary myth.
Tocqueville preannounced a new despotisma form of tyranny that is a calm force that does not truncate wills but rather softens them. The connection of selfishness disturbs the idea of a common good. Let us be oblivious to the fate of others. There are no fellow citizens or we do not see them, nor do we want to know them. It is the risk of a ‘soft’ despotism. Uncontested. The sweet monster. Large contingents of equal and similar men, egos in incessant search for small and vulgar pleasures, at the antipodes of the desire for truth and the will for knowledge. We are already false communities, bubbles of emotionalism, illusory identities, networks of evil and at the same time inexhaustible sources of knowledge. It is cause and effect of the smoke policy. It is not surprising that the political chimney sweep is a professional figure with a great future.