The recent Housing measures have once again awakened this doubt in me. Ostensibly, not even with Olympic-level political gymnastics can we overcome the absurdity of calling houses costing 648,000 euros or rents of 2,300 euros “moderate price”. The concept is born so disconnected from reality that we are not even allowed to reach the stage of discussing the quality of the measures. As the old aphorism goes – legal or popular, a confusion I often make –, if the tree is poisoned, its fruits will also be poisoned.
To be strict, I have been cultivating this feeling since the presentation of the employment package. “Precarity” entered the collective lexicon with force during the Troika period, but, however, it has not been discussed as much in recent electoral debates. Not because it’s over, obviously, but because progress has actually been made. What would lead a government official to want to recover this putrid specter from our recent memory, proposing measures that objectively conjure it, such as extending the duration of fixed-term contracts? Necessarily discounting the author’s political views, I am sure you will find other personalized examples that upset you to similar degrees.
It is said in political circles that, if a minister wants to solve a problem, he only has to present a solution. This joke has some method behind it: complex problems generally result from imbalances, and correcting them involves annoying someone, often with legitimate interests. However, the sound volume of the reaction is quite clear: the costs concentrated in the immediate always echo louder than the applause of the beneficiaries who will only see diffuse effects later.
In the current media ecosystem, the greatest temptation for a ruler is to survive the next day’s cover story – or the next minute’s news – and not waste time imagining how his legacy will appear in the books of history. The incentive model is broken: reforms that interest the majority generate trouble before producing visible benefits; Surgical measures that please some tend to buy that valuable asset they call time.
“What about us, the citizens?” I confess that, empathizing with the prevailing disenchantment, cynicism generally proves to be counterproductive. This legitimate state of mind ended up reconverting the citizen into a kind of consumer voter: each one seeks the most immediate individualized solution, even if, in the long term, the exercise of collective rebalancing is more rewarding for the overwhelming majority of people, including himself.
I think it is peaceful to recognize that social conflict has moved from the classic confrontation, between those below and those above, to the horizontal cleavage – between people who choose to emphasize what socio-culturally can separate them, instead of embracing the desire to have a better life that, fundamentally, unites them. The result of this involuntary alliance is a perfect climate for inertia. And here lies one of the biggest contemporary problems. At this moment, what separates the populist from the democrat is above all dynamics. The appearance of a movement somewhere.
On the one hand, revolution and nonconformity, on the other, the fragile defense of the acquired state of things. It turns out that democracy – the mother of progress – sits tiredly on the wrong side. The Democrats, vibrant yesterday, today reveal themselves to be withered, disoriented conservatives. “Do leaders lead or follow the people?”, David Dinis recently asked in this house, using the talent of questions that seem to leave us little alternative to answering “both”.
I would also like to take this opportunity to ask the reader: when was the last time you heard something truly transformative for the benefit of the vast majority? And, above all, would you be willing to believe it if they proposed it? It is common to invoke the great achievements of our democracy. There are many in fact and they deserve fair defense. However, what is our next equivalent society project? What’s the next SNS? The next public school? The next Social Security or even the next Labor Code, in which we had the audacity to legislate recognizing, without reverential fears, that sometimes there is a part of the equation that deserves reinforced protection.
The drama lies precisely in the fact that we were actually capable of imagining and implementing great transformations in the past, but the present seems so cloudy and the future so unpromising. Let us ask ourselves honestly, what will the next generations have to be proud of in what we are building now?
There is, I am not unaware, the B side of this text. Sometimes, capture exists, sometimes incompetence takes place, other times, perhaps, vested interest dictates. Denying it would be childish. But, most days, what we see is a mixture of rational immobility, survival instinct and a lack of that extra courage that generates leadership.
Who knows, this is one of the lessons to be learned from the times we live in: without a shared horizon, there is no courage; without courage, there is no defense of the majority; Without this truly mobilized majority, politics will inevitably end up working against us.
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