What bothers me isn’t that you lied to me; it’s that from now on I won’t be able to believe you. Nietzsche expressed something in that way that, years later, the American philosopher Eric Hoffer —a scholar of mass movements— picked up and continued: “Disillusionment is a kind of fracture. The fracture of a soul that spends too much on hope and expectations.” Bound together, these two maxims can be applied to romantic life, narrative art, and political faith. The most feared moment for a writer is that point where the suspension of disbelief is lost, and their reader wakes up and can no longer swallow the tale: the book then slips from their hands. The same danger looms over the story of any government: the risk of becoming improbable through erroneous forecasts, glaring misdirections, empty promises, and disappointing results. The libertarian administration lurks at the edge of credibility’s collapse and the precipice of disillusion. Because the main game it has played in these two and a half years consisted of making society feel that pain and effort would be worthwhile after having sworn during the campaign that ordinary people would not pay for the adjustment. A substantial majority forgave that grand lie and pressed on: once the river had been crossed, recovery and prosperity would follow. Diver’s breath, dollars by the ears, green shoots, consumption taking off, a stroll in the park: the reward after the sacrifice. As the promised paradise dragged its feet, people fell into heavy debt to subsist, while the President laughed at the polls, enclosed in his media bubble: “If people can’t make ends meet, there would be dead bodies in the streets.” Numerous Argentinians took on debt to avoid dying and to endure the leader; they believed they were buying a bridge, and today there are close to six million defaulters due to miscalculations and pleas that were neglected. And because the program fails at something essential: the boom takes longer to reach the streets than Odysseus to Ithaca.
With the empathy that marks him and with that propensity to distrust the weak, the man responsible for this sad tale emulated Pilate, and told the sufferers that he would not lift a finger for them —suggesting they had been reckless to take on credit— and that this phenomenon was, in any case, “a private-sector problem.” He also implied that his brilliant overall project was practically finished, and that the impoverishment of those middle classes was not his responsibility: he left them to the invisible hand of the market. He added, of course, multiple prophecies that inflation would have collapsed by these dates and would be zero. His assertive phrases, spoken months ago with the emphatic tone of an electronic pastor, filled the networks these days and are a source of secondhand embarrassment: inflation registered in July at 2.1 percent, productive investment is declining (“I am worried,” Fausto Spotorno declared yesterday), wages fall behind the cost of living and the plan circles back on itself: the poverty of popular consumption translates into reduced activity and a consequent drop in revenue, with the fiscal balance still depending on future, cruel cuts and “creative accounting,” such as freezing roadway allocations and neglecting highway maintenance. It’s like sawing off a leg to claim a balanced scale. All of these episodes erode the symbolic capital of the head of state, since he had managed to persuade the Argentine people —including many who opposed him—that he was an “expert in growth with and without money” and possessed such sophisticated knowledge that he could afford to publicly sneer at his most eminent colleagues (the mandarins, the econo-charlatans, and the idiots) and even run for the Nobel Prize. That supposed infallibility now shows itself to be hollow, at least to a majority of society: a huge number of citizens disapprove of the government’s performance and think they cannot or do not want to change anything. One can imagine the general anarcho-capitalist —locked away and alone in the Olivos residence— poring over the books of the Austrian School and asking Hayek, von Mises, and Rothbard in his imagination why the hell this isn’t taking off and, above all, why the markets doubt his genius: the country risk does not fall because the sacred markets do not believe in Argentina under the outsider. At this point it is worth recalling the responsibility of the great elites and international corporations who toasted “the greatest adjustment in the history of humanity” and who ignored objections from prominent macroeconomists, almost all liberal and credentialed: now, instead of backing the reforms, they worry about the victims of the prescription they themselves approved. And they do not do so out of sudden mercy, but because those harmed vote: the “magic formula” — look, indeed — could cause the libertarian to lose the elections. Great hypocrisy and persistence in the error and in the stupidity of bettors and analysts who watch the spectacle from afar and safe from everything, as if they were playing the game of TEG with our lives. What could Milei promise to win and calm the gamers of Wall Street after this cascade of breaches? Fighting the caste is no longer an asset nor a solid argument since the Adorni case — the clearest evidence that the new, pristine ones take advantage of their seats — pierced his moral authority as well. And it wasn’t due to the alleged “postponed consumption” of his former Chief of Staff, but because of the denial and complicit attitude that the Topo adopted in defending the indefensible: public opinion saw him naked then, and surveys show the considerable damage that milestone inflicted on his image. To this anthology of disappointments are added other self-inflicted blows by the Government itself, without any help from critical press or the opposition. Its choice, at every crossroads, for the strong and powerful, the fear of taunting that nonetheless pervaded and was secretly borne by many local businessmen, the explosive and haphazard reforms, the devastation of science, its contempt for the university and culture, and its crude, confrontational stance — at first amusing, today repulsive — turned the haters into despicable beings. The use and abuse of the flamethrower occur: when the wind shifts, the fire can set your clothes alight, giving you a nasty shock. The libertarians, who have a particular talent for infuriating others, fostered bullying and are reaping what they sowed. Fortunately, their hot misfortunes lie fourteen months ahead of an election; the Argentine public mood has proven to be volatile, the crisis did not touch its core, the clearest contenders look like they came from an Ed Wood movie, and Milei still holds the chance to prove that his ticket isn’t punctured and that he can offer more than the classic contrast with the worst. This window of time will also test his ideological rigidity. The poet William Blake said: “The man who never changes his opinion is like stagnant water: it breeds reptiles in the mind.” And Unamuno teaches us that it’s easier to believe than to think. But beyond all of that, the question remains the same: what promise can he make that will not be broken? Only the facts defeat distrust.
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