Luis Rubio
Radicals -of any stripe- tend to perceive themselves as being the advance party of a society that shares their truth and desires a thoroughgoing transformation, right away. But that notion clashes with an obvious truth: most people want nothing other than to live normally: work, enjoy security, educate their children and have the best possible of lives. The notion of normality naturally recalls nostalgia for the “good times” of yesteryear but does not for that reason lack relevance for the majority of the population, thus entailing political consequences.
In plain words, how far can the elastic band be stretched in a society that, while preferring something better, remains unwilling to break with all that exists? Mexico -and, in many respects, the world- is undergoing a series of crises, maladjustments, and contradictions that are the product of the inevitable clashes between expectations and realities, promises and failures to honor them. The tensions caused by those disagreements are the natural ingredient for politics, which is additionally exacerbated in electoral times.
“The supposed crisis of politics, says Daniel Innerarity, is nothing more than a crisis of the modern apotheosis of the ideological certainties, their guarantee today more provisional than ever. I think that it corresponds to us at present to develop some novel inclinations to think up and carry out another politics, without heroism but more responsibly and democratically. Perhaps the normal is not the ideological confrontation under which our habitual political dispositions have been formed, and it may be that the current lack of ethics, mistrust of politics or the difficulties of governance constitute the new normality, outside of which there is nothing but nostalgia.”
Crisis or not, no one can doubt the growing complexity characterizing daily life, mollified in customary fashion by the political rhetoric emanating from the President and those parroting it. The sum of the changes in the way of working, the ups and downs in the demand for goods and services to which the population dedicates itself, the rises in prices and the uncontainable long-windedness emanating from politicians, influencers, YouTubers, aspirants to candidacies and of the urban hubbub create an environment of conflict and anxiety. If one adds to this the effervescence generated by the political processes of the nomination of candidates and later the campaigns, the notion of normality is in the end clearly nostalgic. The world we live in is one of constant clashes and misunderstandings.
The precandidates and their parties have good and bad ideas for dealing with the problems confronting the country, but instead of pushing for solutions, they devote themselves to mutually disqualifying each other because their mission, especially within the group in the government today, is not that of governing, but of perpetuating themselves in power. While the country requires a vision of development, the politicians offer a proposal of power. On discrediting the opponent as traitorous and antipatriotic (whether in the internal nomination process or, later, in the constitutionally mandated contest), the extremists triumph and the citizen and the country lose. What should be abnormal ends up being not only normal, but also systemic reality.
The internecine skirmishes that have poised the legislature against the Supreme Court are not more than manifestations of the confusion Mexico is living through, but also of the clash of two ways of perceiving the world and the citizenry. One believes that the legitimacy bestowed upon the Executive Branch through the citizen vote grants it full powers to command and impose its vision of the world; others see the system of separation of powers, which appeared since the First Constitution of 1824, as being there to avoid excesses and protect minorities. The presumption should be that both ways of understanding are legitimate, but the everyday events of recent times demonstrate that the differences are about irreconcilable perspectives. The question is whether Mexicans presently find themselves before an exception or facing the beginning of a new normality.
Mexico today is an assemblage of ferociously opposing forces, all these believers that they are the sole legitimate party, surely by divine right, face to face with the absolute illegitimacy of the others. For Lord Acton, that great scholar and power practitioner who coined the famous phrase that power corrupts, the great confrontation lies in that freedom calls for the separation of powers while absolutism requires its concentration. When the political offer is the disqualification of counterweights, freedom and, therefore, the opportunity for development, fade.
Innerarity concludes with “we must bid farewell to absolute consensus, irreconcilable differences, rigid counter positions between us and the others. We need projects that are not predetermined, which are not safe from criticism, nor are they irrefutable, and do not provide absolute securities nor complete protections.”
Mexico is in waiting, in transition toward a new stage. The unknown factor is whether this will be a new normal, a changing new reality within frames of reference compatible with development and peace, or whether, contrary to that, the last few years herald a process of permanent and systematic destruction. Not a small difference…
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