A Slightly Off-Kilter Psychological Drift

Sanguinetti referred, in a prudent and elegant manner, to a blind spot in political analysis: the stormy mind of the Lion, a place no one can access and therefore unravel, which is a problem in a hyper-presidential system. To speak of an “off-kilter psychological drift” is the least one can say about a leader who publicly proposes burning his enemies at the stake, and let us not forget that verbal violence is violence. His former makeup artist Lilia Lemoine tweeted in response that Sanguinetti was immoral or senile (sic). Vernacular politics, echoing the discepolian leveling of social media — “the same whether it’s a donkey or a great professor” — allows these insolent disproportions; the fact that Ms. Lemoine managed to win a national seat confirms that miracles are possible in the homeland and that the degradation of our parliament has no floor. It is not only the ineffable cosplayer, but many newcomers who, like her, have taken advantage of the precariousness and the alluvial nature of Libertad Avanza to insert themselves into fundamental positions: some of these figures work more in the media than in their official roles. Their daily method consists of asking for directions at the Casa Rosada, securing a seat on evening or late-night television, broadly deploying government advertising there and defending what is indefensible; producing some argumentative misstep and then clipping that part and proudly posting on X how they “tamed” the journalist who deigned to summon them, thereby achieving the maximum: a repost from the Olivos prophet, something akin to a sugar cube for the trained pet. Before and after that foray —a task they pompously call a “cultural battle”— they do not hesitate to harshly criticize the outlet that gave them air, nor to then align themselves with the hate campaign (against journalism) that their leader orchestrates and that has already become state policy. This modus operandi, tolerated by indifferent colleagues, combines with the jocose cruelty imported from the networks and turned today into official language: the new right-wingers realized that the suffocation of the “woke dictatorship” — when what is politically correct becomes unreasonable and cancelatory — enabled a “counterrevolution,” a pressure valve where almost anything goes: not only practicing racism and homophobia, and any other discrimination, but boasting about it and laughing at the victims. That magma turned into a gloomy culture may explain a bit why Flávio Bolsonaro came up with the repugnant idea of mocking a mutilation during the presidential debate: Lula lost a pinky finger in a work accident when he was 17 years old.

The dark and insulting joke is astounding for what it implies, and in any case it reveals a mood of the times, although there are still—admittedly—some contraindications: they say that bolsonarism had precisely with that last gesture its Herminio’s coffin. Lula later exacted his revenge on Milei, who was unable to acknowledge his victory at the polls, with a tweet to Mauricio Macri that was a shot across the bow, but it also contains a deep reflection: there Lula expresses “nostalgia” (he used that word) for the times when differences between brotherly countries were resolved in a “civilized and republican” manner. Some of that same nostalgia resides in the statements signed by Argentina’s leading companies in defense of the press and in pursuit of a better climate of social coexistence: the noun “respect” appears here and there, and there is a warning that the opposite—the disdain and aggression—erodes democracy and progress. Or, to put it plainly: the off-kilter psychological drift, transformed into a government system of shouting and bullying, ultimately also harms the economy. This is bad news for the testosterone theorists: across both ideological sides there is a temptation to believe that the “magic formula” — each side has theirs — does not work or did not work because it has not yet been applied with enough harshness. “Let’s get worse, because better didn’t work for us,” some Kirchnerists quip. Or we radicalize our positions and care little for what the “kukas,” the “zurdos,” the “mandriles,” and the “ensobrados” think, proclaims Milei-ism, placing any dissenter within those compartments. Blinders and radicalization, no self-examination and more therapeutic brutality: things will eventually turn out well, comrades and friends, because we cannot be mistaken. That is impossible. Fat Dan denounced this week the “left dressed as center-right”: any liberal who thinks it necessary to recognize Lula’s victory in Brazil and who raises objections to official policy. And several of his militants have returned to the old refrain: “Taking care with appearances didn’t work well for us.” It is a facile superstition, as if saying: playing with jerseys got us beaten, so we must play naked. It resembles, in turn, that fallacious line of thinking which holds that democracy is the mother of the great economic backsliding of recent decades: they blame the football rules for having lost several championships; it is harder and more painful, of course, to examine the fault of the coaches and the real skill of the players. Rules and institutions look like soft chocolate in the sun when extreme polarization takes hold, the referee loses his enforcement authority, and jersey ideology spreads, and thus chaos and hypocrisy spread. And that democratic degradation is driven by international left and right leagues, which place their personal desires above national interests, and provide mafia-like protection to their members when their freedom is at risk. The Kirchnerists, who offered shelter to Evo Morales, have no moral solvency to criticize Bolsonaro’s rescue now. And vice versa. Sartre said: “Bad faith is the art of convincing oneself of a lie, while fully knowing one is lying.” And that is the kind of binary, dishonest, demonizing mindset that requires a model of a deep rift, where one always votes or thinks with a tribal spirit or under coercion, where politics is about managing resentment, and where the camps implement substantial reforms with circumstantial majorities and aim to generate hegemony. Although it seems highly sophisticated, modern populists from any faction do not intend something very different from the Formosa regime. It happens when one bets on a messiah and believes they embody the good, two irrational ideas that seem new but are older than Aramaic. The social herd that accepts these Manichean terms also has, as Sanguinetti would say, a misaligned psychological drift.

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