2023-11-05 08:03:55
It is in these moments when the priceless need for a driver on the field becomes apparent. One who, in the midst of the commotion, stops the ball, steps on it, kneads it, takes it to a corner, shows it, hides it, advances in the midst of pirouetting, goes back, confuses, pisses, pauses, raises his head and, when the striker finally wakes up and starts with enthusiasm from the side inwards, the “teacher” magically puts the ball on his foot, as if telling him “it’s yours, champion, do it”, before the desperate gaze of a goalkeeper who He sees the ball pass just below his waist, in that demonic and unreachable space for arms and legs.
The following scene is also classic: the scorer running towards the stands, which caresses him with infinite screams, in a roar of happiness that falls, while the one who made it possible, modestly, approaches from afar, from that inaccessible place from which The missile arrived that landed on the loot for which it now receives all the glory. Meanwhile, the defenders, devastated, look at each other without understanding how they didn’t see that bomb that came out of nowhere.
Mauricio Macri, who got tired of witnessing celestial events like this, staged on his own field, starring the last great magician of Argentine football, is trying, these days, to emulate that Juan Román Riquelme who made fun of his critics by enlarging his ears with the palms of his hands, pretending that he needed them to hear the roar of the fans who knew perfectly well who everything was due to. A metaphor that is difficult to transfer to other fields.
Overflowed. It is clear as daylight that Javier Milei is completely overwhelmed and that he collapsed in public during Esteban Trebuq’s interview. Uncontrolled gestures combined poorly with obviously failed attempts to connect an incomprehensible discourse with a rebellious reality. Trebuq might have said, like Diego Sehinkman, “I didn’t understand,” but this time, every two minutes. What’s more, he might (should) have stopped the report. Better yet: someone on the candidate’s team should have demanded a pause. I don’t feel any sympathy for Milei, quite the opposite. But the man was there, all alone, suffering needlessly. Just a month of systematic attacks and real pressure, just a not very important electoral disappointment, were enough to collapse it. Surrounded by a disparate group of improvisers, Milei, himself an improviser, to put it mildly, lacks a Corach, an Aníbal Fernández. One who puts his chest out, he concentrates attention and distracts the audience while the candidate rests, safe from bullets. But not.
Instead of a trusted sideman who invents a “spiritual retreat” and takes him off the field for as long as necessary, his “team” includes María Julia and the Alderete, dedicated to the scandal that worsens the situation and exposes him more. It is him and only him and he cannot leave the stage, at the risk of leaving the stage fatally empty.
It is also obvious that Macri appears at the last minute to support him. Perhaps this is partly why there is so much rush to position themselves in favor of the libertarian candidate. As much as his own desperation to escape the fair reproaches of his former colleagues, who were going to charge him with his obvious bad faith in producing an expected failure. Macri wanted to guarantee himself a theatrical piece starring, if not his two favorite actors, at least the most beloved of them. So, when he saw that his “fetish actor” was trembling, he ran to his aid.
The maneuver, late and inorganic, probably has the opposite effect, because it deprofiles the candidate, exposing him as fragile and unfit for the job. Exactly the opposite image to the one that Javier Milei got tired of displaying, who went from lion to scared gazelle in a matter of days, in need of the indispensable support of “the same people as always.” Incapable of proving himself to be an alpha male, even his own followers begin to abandon him who can no longer talk regarding his main campaign promise, dollarization, nor regarding his favorite imaginary enemy, caste.
Miracle. In front of him, a walking miracle, Sergio Ma-ssa, appears active and fresh as a lettuce, following having gone through a hell that would have caused the resignation of more than one high-profile politician. Teflon, he resisted all possible scandals for the last two months, in the midst of a currency run and an inflationary explosion at the very moment of casting the vote. Again, it is clear that this is where his merits end. The rest was provided, abundantly, by a useless opposition from any angle. JxC has had everything in his hands since 2021, and he has lost everything. Neither sword nor head.
If Milei were not an incoherent rioter, surrounded by cosplayers who propose pornography as sexual education, denial of paternity as the right to freedom of choice, sale of organs as an instrument of social advancement, schools in which perverse teachers can pass their private parts by the faces of his students, ruptures with the Vatican and the main markets for Argentine products… The list can be endless. But people are not crazy enough to massively follow someone who is a cosplay of themselves, made with used EVA foam and the remains of frayed rags.
Sergio Massa looks like Bobby Fischer and Magnus Carlsen next to these people, although, in a more serious political world, he might hardly win a game once morest some retiree in Parque Rivadavia, on a cold Sunday morning.
What would? However, Javier Milei still has a certain chance of being president. But the question that has been floating in the air since the ill-fated meeting with “Pelado” is what kind of president he can become. An uncontrolled, arbitrary and hilarious driver of a political disaster of infinitesimal duration? Or will we see Mauricio Macri governing in his place, from the outside, from an invisible position more unlikely than the vice presidency? A Macri who does not have, like Cristina, an absolutely loyal force behind him, a true praetorian guard. And he is going to have to face a situation of extreme complexity without the union shield of the PJ, with his own ranks populated by fifth columns strategically located there for his hated “Ventajita”, with the province of Buenos Aires governed by a presidential candidate who is going to make life impossible, with a picketing movement that would only forgive him some weekends if he put a Carolina Stanley back in her place. Again, the list might be endless. An experiment like this is going to end worse than 2001.
While all this is happening, the crazy Argentine political system is preparing to deliver a new useless blow to an unprotected population. It was no longer necessary to have to endure an absent president, who is better in his absence than in his activity. In a slightly more rational political system, there would be no need to wait four long years to make the obvious decisions. Without the need for a coup d’état, there are democratic mechanisms as old as politics itself, for the people to express their will for renewal. And perhaps, between so many successes and errors, we would have been spared a senseless ordeal of million-dollar magnitude, in a situation, that of the Argentine economy, which is already terrible without the need for the “noises of politics.”
Now, if Milei stands up for Macri to return without returning to the presidency, that is, for him to climb through the window into a house whose door he did not have the courage to knock with determination and energy, how long will we have to wait? to sustain a new version of an experiment already invalidated by experience itself? How many more times will we see Milei collapse in the midst of the inevitable crises that are coming, surely of greater magnitude than the nonsense that caused her disaster a few days ago? And all this while, in the middle of nowhere, prices skyrocket and the dollar laughs at her apologist, taking it to the edge of the precipice. He clearly understands the meaning of “let them all leave”: with these people, it is not possible.
I do not believe in “the worse, the better”: the “the worse” is more hunger and more misery for a population that already suffers from it to a high degree. So, may Massa win? I am very afraid that a government built in this way, due to the ineptitude of others, does not have much future either. Whatever it is, Argentina needs a true political revolution that forces us to think the opposite of what has been done in the last forty years. Another court, other players, another game, other rules.
*Doctor in History, political analyst and member of Vía Socialista.
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