Antonio Navalón
Societies are falling apart, and with them, collective life projects and hope for the future disappear, which in the end are the only ones that maintain social cohesion.
The flagship that President Joseph Biden is using to relaunch and stabilize the political and economic life of the United States is the implementation of an accelerated infrastructure program to combat the effects accumulated thus far. On the one hand, these effects are the consequence of more than a century of neglect – derived from the fact that the United States has ceased to be the world leader – and, on the other, have caused significant economic erosion. Little by little, the US economy has entered a semi-comatose state due to the absence of activity in its main productive sectors, except in those that concern technological services and financial speculation.
At the time, Donald Trump also offered a great infrastructure upgrade package and plan. And the reality is that for years the United States has needed to make a large investment in all its services and infrastructural aspects. Otherwise, the country will go from becoming a nation that once represented the highest levels of development to a country that is simply falling apart. Every time I cross the Lincoln Tunnel or the bridges that connect the island of Manhattan to Queens, I wonder how much longer they will hold. It is evident that what at one time were the great examples of engineering, development, and investment in the country, today they have been surpassed both by the times and by the lack of maintenance and updating. In short, what is currently happening in the United States – and especially in some of its most important cities – is a clear sign that the country has aged. I will resist the temptation to compare the latest airport built in China with major US airports, as it is an experience from which the Western world as a whole does not fare well in the face of expansion, development, and investment in infrastructure that the Eastern world has.
The world we knew, the world we belong to, and the world in which we pay taxes – increasingly higher, by the way – is a world in which, to begin with, the consequences and limits of the existential capacity of States have been undermined by the Covid-19 crisis. This is a world that is falling apart. A world that not only produces – as has happened recently in Mexico – great catastrophes due to system collapse but these catastrophes are inevitably accompanied by loss of life. This falling world needs an economic reinvention, and it needs to get back to work. Not only does it need to rebuild its bridges, roads, trains, or its own communication systems, but – in my opinion – what it needs most is a new philosophy and job education. A labor education that is oriented towards those who are of retirement age and towards young people who are entering a labor market that definitely needs to be transformed fast.
They say that Biden dreams of Franklin Delano Roosevelt every day. It does not surprise me since I believe he is the greatest president that the United States has had throughout its existence. Above all – in my opinion – Franklin Delano Roosevelt was great because he knew how to understand and face the main problem that afflicted its citizens, which was the risk of starvation from the consequences of the economic crisis of 1929. In addition, FDR understood that his country needed a new deal, the New Deal, a new social agreement, and a new development model that would create limits to speculation and the spread of harmful economic elements. A model that, firstly, allowed to consolidate the social unity that his country needed to get out of the situation and, secondly, that allowed establishing a model that would ensure growth. In this sense, the model that Biden is adopting seems logical, reasonable, and advisable to me.
We are living in a situation in which we have to recover what, in turn, is also one of the main current problems: the creation of jobs and the reinvention of the system as a whole, from the educational systems the aspirational search of the world of our children and grandchildren. And it is that at this moment, the ravages of the cessation of economic activity are not alone, nor are they the only problem. Still, these consequences are also accompanied by the terrible results of the collapse of the health system and the effects that the pandemic has caused up to now. Covid-19. A pandemic that will probably not be the last.
Naturally, this fall into pieces leaves – as happened in the crisis of 1929 – examples of all kinds. It is no coincidence that this year’s Oscar for Best Picture was awarded to a film that – from my point of view – is a reissue of John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath. It is a novel written to narrate the consequences for an Oklahoma family and their exile to seek golden California to continue eating. A story that, in turn, is one of the great testimonies about the social consequences of the crisis of 1929. At this moment, the Oscar for the film Nomadland and Frances McDormand as the best actress is as if it were repeating itself from the novel The Grapes of Wrath. Naturally, at the time of this novel, the system or its maximum expression was provided by books and their translation into films. At this time, culture is expressed through streaming, while Netflix has become the great propaganda center of the current situation about how the world is in its conquests, but, above all, how it expresses its sorrows.
Democracies are suffering the consequences of a world that did not know how to update itself and does not have economic or social models of action defined. If we add the irruption of populism and the failure of so many simultaneous models, we have a picture that is worrying but not insurmountable.
In politics, it is always better to start with low expectations, since in the exercise of power, it is easy to disappoint. Joseph Biden started with everything against him, especially since he was facing such a colorful and eccentric character as Donald Trump. Not much more was expected of him than – because of Trump’s own mistakes – to replace his opponent in the White House. But, in addition, Biden had to start his way going through the torment of doubt as a state policy about the apparent fact that the Democrats – with him at the head – had stolen the election from Donald Trump, this being the latest trap in the presidency by the Republicans. From the beginning, Biden, who is naturally on the best train that a politician can have that is the presidency of the United States, was aware that this is his last train. Therefore, the only thing he can hope for is glory and a job well done.
Although the human being will always be the great enigma of our history, I do not believe that Biden’s mental and political program is designed to achieve a second term of government. That is why, perhaps, he is as free as to face the coronavirus crisis the way he is doing it. Having vaccinated as he has done, being one of the few – if not the only – successes that the United States has had in the last 50 years from an internal organization point of view, is something that deserves recognition. In addition, Biden has the ability to undertake what is necessary to force the nouveau riche to modernize the country. And, most importantly, the current president will succeed in changing the bridges, roads, and bricks and lay the foundations to change the mentality and economic model. The only thing that could prevent this is that the economic system – as has happened in other countries – ends up being used as a democratic product to end democracy itself.
Modern dictators tend to settle not on the tips of bayonets but by dint of votes in the places from which democracies are later dismantled. But before that happens, societies fall apart, and with them, collective life projects and hope for the future disappear, which in the end is the only one that maintains social cohesion. From the point of view of defending a way of life, but above all, a way of ordering oneself politically and socially based on the opinion of the majority, hope and life projects are the only things that can prevent societies from falling apart.
