[TLDR (too long didn’t read): If you are reading this, chances are it behooves you. This Reader brings to you a brilliant characterization of how some make it into the political limelight. For a quick overview, just read the bolded text]. Traducir/traduire los/les Readers; usar/utiliser deepl.com
A. The candidate runs for election: press conference
1. At the press conference, the setting is solemn, the context demands dignity, and the questions are at the level expected when journalists and academics question those in power about security and due process, about international relations, about education, institutionality and governance…
2. The questions open up the possibility of articulating thoughts, elevating the conversation and demonstrating that there is more to the position being contested than just small talk.
3. But when faced with such relevant questions, our candidate appears uncomfortable, off script, unable to rise to the occasion, shrinking; he does not respond: he evades. He does not think out loud: he repeats formulas. He tries to cover-up his precariousness with solemnity, with learned phrases, with moralizing. But this does not work –it never works.
4. In reality, none of this is exceptional. Leaders without complex language, without articulate thinking, without a real capacity to govern diverse societies, but experts in turning mediocrity into an identity exist in many places. The world is full of indignant people without a plan, of libertarians without thought, of ultras without a horizon, of neo-Nazis with meme language, of leaders incapable of articulating a sentence that is not a slogan.
5. What is shown at the press conference is a man comfortable at home, incapable of moving beyond colloquialism, facing questions of state as if responding from the dinner table, and who, without ever raising his gaze, lays bare what power had already legitimized, namely an intellectually limited candidate who, when faced with relevant questions, is incapable of transforming closeness into broad thinking.
6. Those present see him dodge questions for which they know he is unprepared. (That is why the candidate avoids critical universities, complex fora, and demanding journalists. He prefers friendly, controlled settings where nothing gets out of hand and no one asks follow-up questions). This is not closeness. It is evasion –not necessarily a disqualification, but a savvy political diagnosis.
7. That is why nothing happened at the press conference. The questions did not lead to conceptual reflection. There was no data management to organize a vision, there were lies thrown-in. There was no rhetoric capable of transforming experience into a project. There was no political imagination. There was no abstraction. There was no structural narrative. What there was was something else: comfort in the neighborhood, ‘a certain intellectual domesticity’ that nullified any demands. There was ‘a persistent allergy to the slightest abstraction’. And this is not an exaggerated metaphor. It is a fact.
And here it is worth pausing.
B. …and now he was elected
8. Then came the victory. And with it, something more disturbing than the election result: the public legitimization of that precariousness. Because it is one thing for a limited candidate to compete; it is quite another, infinitely more serious, for that limitation to become a virtue once power is attained.
9. What is truly serious is not that a limited man comes to power. That has happened before. What is most serious is that this limitation is celebrated in the way his followers enjoy doing. The limited man’s intellectual poverty is read as authenticity. That the lack of abstraction is sold as common sense and not as a national anomaly does not worry supporters. It is yet another expression of a declining global cultural climate. (Trumpism in the United States, Bolsonarism in Brazil, Vox in Spain, authoritarian Orbanism in Hungary, Melonism in Italy, Mileiism in Argentina and add to these: libertarians, neo-Nazis, ultras that maybe different, but are united by a common thread, namely contempt for complex thinking). And this works, because a part of society is tired, depoliticized, resentful, willing to demand less and less every day. And when the standard falls low enough, any elected candidate seems good or adequate.
10. What remains, then, for the elected official is to manage basic emotions like fear, resentment, fatigue, nostalgia. This, not to build a future, but to manage a degraded present. And that has consequences. Because when ideas are lacking, orders abound. When thought is lacking, authoritarian reflexes appear. Not necessarily brutal (yet), but constant, persistent, normalized. The lack of prospective ideas is not harmless; it reflects the power structure with a discourse that abounds and is loud, but that is devoid of a political plan and has no conceptual density. The discourse does not have the ability to identify and name real conflicts, to prioritize, to articulate meanings, or even to sustain a complex idea beyond a slogan.
The consequence: When language becomes impoverished, democracy becomes increasingly fragile
11. Once elected, with no electoral pressure and no need to pretend, there may be lofty projects that, nevertheless, risk political domesticity; that have no historical ambition, that represent only a minor staging; that show no real seasoned leadership, only acts born out of closeness. This is not neutral and innocent. It reveals a short-sighted outlook. A poor conception of power purportedly used as needed ‘for the good of the many’.
12. Because our elected candidate has difficulty thinking about complex public policies, he cannot anticipate conflicts. He justifies unnecessary sacrifices; he does not foresee long-term consequences.
13. And now, he announces upcoming visits abroad as if they were trophies, without realizing that the list of countries to be visited reveals not strategic ambition, but narrow ideological alignment.
Bottom line
When the bar is lowered, mediocrity becomes merit
14. I have referred here to politicians:
• Who have no judicious words, and without such there are no ideas; without ideas there is no project; without a project, power becomes pure reflex.
• Who have come to power without depth, without thought, without the conceptual tools to sustain the position to which they aspired.
• Who feel comfortable with the small and uncomfortable with the big.
• Who have contempt for complexity.
• Who glorify violent gestures, the replacement of thought with shouting, the use of exploitable slogans.
• Who use words that only adorn politics (that do not make progressive structural political change possible). But it is from words that ideas arise; from ideas: diagnoses; from diagnoses: decisions; and from decisions: the conflicts that a society is willing (or not) to take on.
• Who do not have a robust multilateral proposal; who do not have a complex reading of the fragmented world we inhabit.
• Who are comfortable in scenarios where not too much is demanded of them, where conversation can be kept at the level of niceties, where the lack of judicious words is not noticeable, because no one expects them to have any.
15. This is not an ideological criticism, but rather a denunciation of intellectual poverty. In other words, this is not a personal problem. It is not ideological animosity. It is something more serious: the normalization of imperfection as a form of leadership (not to mention the vested interests that financed the election campaign celebrating the victory). Because when all this becomes normalized, applause replaces judgment. And when a society begins to applaud what it once demanded is now overcome; when society turns mediocrity into identity and lack of thought into virtue, the problem ceases to be a candidate or a president and becomes a cultural problem. Fascism does not always come-in shouting. Sometimes it comes-in having lunch with neighbors. (M. Vargas)
16. Do I need to say that, even if the above may be a bit of a caricature, this has profound human rights implications…?
Claudio Schuftan, Ho Chi Minh City
Your comments are welcome at schuftan@gmail.com