2023-08-26 15:30:00
There is a poem by Constantino Cavafis that talks regarding false expectations for the future, when the worst disasters are expected and even they do not occur. It’s called Waiting for the Barbarians and it starts like this:
“-What are we waiting for, gathered in the square?
It is because of the barbarians arriving today.
Why is the Senate so idle? Why do senators sit and not legislate?
Because the barbarians will arrive today.
What more laws do senators have to dictate? When the barbarians arrive, they will be the ones to legislate.”
The poem asks why the routine of Rome is altered, with the entire leadership paralyzed, with the rich dressed in their jewels at the gates of the palaces, all doing nothing but waiting for the fall of the empire. And it concludes with the greatest disappointment: not even the barbarians come to Rome anymore. Nobody is interested in destroying an empire that has already fallen by itself.
A similar feeling runs through Argentina following the PASO of a couple of weeks ago. It is not for less. The native barbarian, Javier Milei, obtained first place (as we had already anticipated in a column from just three months ago) and the sensation that we already analyzed in that column was produced. (and in several other previous ones): the country assumes that Milei has the best chance of being the new President of the Nation and, as He has no team, he only proposes inconsistencies and is surrounded by people who look like characters from horror films, nobody has much hope, except the millions of hopeless people who voted for him.
Will Milei win the Presidency? Nobody today knows. But that we are talking regarding this in all the media, that all the pollsters are focused on whether Milei can win or not, and that international organizations and the embassies of the countries with which we trade are all interested in knowing if Milei will declare the Third World War in case of winning, all this speaks very clearly that the possibility of Milei being the next President is high, although it is still far from being definitive.
For years in this column we have been talking regarding a world of ideas, sensations, taking political positions that were shaping a sociocultural and political panorama. that generated the vacant place that a Milei (or any other very similar to it) might fill.
In these last 7 years, we have analyzed here several of the main current electoral trends worldwide. Let’s remember, although most Argentines are so prone to gazing at their navels, that we are on the planet and that we are part of global currents. Although we don’t want it, the reality of the world finally comes to us. The negative vote is one of those tendencies and for almost two decades in Argentina there has only been a vote once morest the other, as in the US or in Spain or in Brazil.
People might not love the candidate they voted for, but they voted for him so that the one they hated wouldn’t win. 30% of the PASO votes in favor of Milei are actually votes once morest the other options: Milei’s voters are saying we don’t want Kirchnerism or the anti-Kirchnerists: we already bet on both and both have already failed. Now we bet on the unknown because at least it did not disappoint us. Still.
The voter never judges himself. Less so the younger voters, who are the ones who vote the most massively for Milei. Among other things because it is the first time they have voted or because at most they have had one or two elections in their democratic history. They don’t see a tradition in that. Even older voters, who they voted in favor of all the governments that later let them down, they never realize that the presidents they don’t like now came to power because of their vote. That is why all voters can be eternally wrong.
the identities Traditional, family policies, those that organized the life of the communities until just 20 years ago are very weakened or no longer exist. Everything has dissolved into thin air. Most are no longer loyal to their soccer team; and even that is also declining. The 21st century destroys all certainties.
Why wouldn’t young people want to bet on a candidate who appears to be punk, who is so similar to them, who has oddities that make him similar, who makes them feel that he suffered the same bullying as them? Milei gives hope to the desperate and is the weapon at hand for those who have already used all the others and did not even get the shot at the end. Since she never managed anything, she never failed. It has no past. That is why our future is delegated to her.
Milei today is the barbarian of Cavafis’s poem. Everyone awaits his arrival to start a new phase. Will Milei come or, like Cavafy’s barbarians, leave us alone with our eternal decay?
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#Waiting #Milei
