Antonio Navalón
In the day after this crisis, what lies ahead is a difficult job, but it cannot be delegated.
Before, long before February 2020, States had already entered a phase of accelerated closure and liquidation. This century, the century of knowledge, the century of communications, the one that should have been the century of culture and the age of enlightenment and the new renaissance (rebirth) of human beings, got off to a bad start. One bright morning in September 2001, the lights went out. The 21st century was born with the attack on the Twin Towers, but, above all, this attack was the advancement of all the darkness and gloom that awaited us in the century that is called to be the brightest century, from the point of view of human communication. From there, the paste became especially difficult to handle. Meaningless wars unfolded, and everything went back to the way it was at the beginning of time: killing in the name of the gods.
The States’ crisis began in a moral instance, having the lie as a system of government. The lie, among other things, allowed the invasion of countries such as Iraq and events such as the invitation at the time of President George W. Bush to its citizens about the best way to make a homeland in the middle of a great war, such as the invasion of Iraq, it was to go shopping.
There came a time when neither the principles nor the limits nor the moral codes served for anything, which ended up leading us to the economic crisis of 2008. A crisis motivated by many things, but, above all, because after spending 20 years of the beginning of speculation, the transformation of the dismantling of the industrial fabric, and the substitution by financial speculation, the world became one dominated by services. This pyramid scheme of falsehoods and illusions without limit and control caused the outbreak of a crisis of magnitudes greater than the economic crisis of 1929. The difference? That a new generation of politicians – no longer the baby boomers – came to power, and they established that, for the first time, a crime would go unpunished.
The 2008 crisis showed that the thieves and those responsible for that economic crisis, instead of going to jail, could take advantage of our taxes, our hunger, and the loss of the mortgages of a few without having any repercussions. Also, the crisis of 2008 – which was undermining the States – is the mother of providential men, as is the case of Donald Trump. She is also the mother – united to a time of the overdose, corruption, and impunity – of examples of such overwhelming victories, as is the Mexican president’s case, who is the president of Mexico with the most votes obtained in the history of the country.
A crime without punishment is always a bad example for societies. For this reason, after what happened in 2008, everything fell into a kind of domino effect: the occupation of Wall Street; the occupation and uprising of the misfits on March 15, 2010, at Puerta del Sol in Madrid; the repeated crises of the States and, in the end, what happened in 2020. In February 2020 – while the dilemma was between whether the Internet of things would be dominated or not by the Chinese – the world was preparing, without being aware of it, upon the arrival of an insolent virus. We didn’t know it at the time, but that virus was destined to destroy and undermine – to the ultimate consequences – the world we knew.
It is difficult to know where or how the day after will start, when the pandemic or Covid-19 is no more than another influenza with few consequences on health and on which we have to get vaccinated year after year. What is evident is the immediate consequence that will occur in the face of the disappearance of the governing role of the States in people’s lives. No matter how the day after begins, we must be aware that it is impossible for this new beginning to take place on the basis of states that are loved, respected and followed. States were exhausted before the pandemic and with the pandemic they have been the first to die as a result of their own inefficiency and under the bombast of the promises made. And all this happened under the understanding of the States as the product of generations of politicians who have administered them on behalf of their peoples, many times at the mercy of the ballot box and others simply at the mercy of force.
The Covid-19 crisis has shown many things: the most important is that a fundamental key to social organization, curiously, is frontally and diametrically opposed to democracy. The countries with strong discipline and adequate technological capabilities have been able to overcome – albeit partially – the first stakes. Given this, many people argue that, in China, Covid-19 is no longer a problem for two reasons: the first is that – by knowing the origin of evil – they already know how to combat it. The second reason is that, at the end of the day, having a quasi-militarized or completely militarized system, they have been able to exert control over their society without the need for any explanation. In addition to the above, China has the necessary technology to exercise such control over its society and ensure the monitoring of what is ordered. The Chinese government has not only controlled all the movements of its citizens but has also imposed on them a way of life in which they have learned to coexist in confined spaces and with the minimum essential elements. But, outside of this example of authoritarian power, the states have failed miserably in handling this challenge, starting with not being able to guarantee our freedoms and not being able to attend to our needs.
We need to know that the day after the pandemic will begin to rebuild the States, which is when my skin cramps. It is written in the Bible that the collapse of the small State of the first king of Israel, Saul, brought as a consequence – through divine intervention – the emergence of David, who was a strong man. The coming to power of David demonstrated an undeniable fact. In the face of the collapse of institutions, all peoples seek refuge in a strong man who takes command regardless of their instruments. A leader who controls us, who tells us what to do and who wields solid power. Since this happened in Israel and until today, this has always been the future of all institutional and democratic crises. When institutions are shipwrecked, a savior appears at the door, and in the end, it does not matter all the apparent damage that he may cause; what matters is that we can believe – even for a few hours – that he is the solution to all our ills and that he will be the one who takes us out of the darkness and the abyss in which we were stuck. Hence the fact that the political reorganization from this moment on will have consequences – the same ones that I aspire to develop in the political and social order in a more orderly manner – that will no longer resemble caudillismo rather the absolute Caesarism.
We have reached a situation in which we have no choice but to know that States’ organization has to come from the organization of our societies. However, at this moment, our societies are organized, first, by fear; second, by necessity, and, third, by the permanent demand, someone takes the reins of this nightmare that seems to have no end. It is a nightmare that involves the fact that all our rights have been taken away from us and that we – apparently in a strange, almost universal coordination – have let this happen. They can lock us up in our homes, put on a mask, inject vaccines, or anything in the name of saving our lives and, we will be willing for this to happen without major problems and without major consequences.
If a man can sacrifice the freedom that it has cost him so many centuries to build and obtain, how will he not be able to sacrifice whatever it is in exchange for someone knowing what to do and guaranteeing him to continue living in the bubble of ignorance? There are many reasons for the crisis we are facing. These motives begin on a path started by the pride of September 11, 2001, followed by moral rottenness, continued by the unlimited destruction and looting of the 2008 economic crisis, and, finally, consolidated in the health crisis that we are living. And all this happened to demonstrate how fragile those inaccessible walls were that we believed we had built to guarantee the States’ preservation. Simply the rain of a pandemic was enough for those walls to crumble like a sugar cube in water. States were not made of stone, nor were they made of iron; they were made of papier-mâché and – as is often the case with the social organization – they were built by the needs of security, dreams, and the inability to face the truths we build.
What’s next from this moment on? Frankly, I believe that the social reorganization of the day after the pandemic is going to go through a series of strong men and the attempt to regain freedoms that none of us have defended and that we have easily given in exchange for the failed promise that they were going to save our lives and take care of us. We have reached a point where the first thing we have to know is what is necessary, which is to rebuild the foci of our dull social organization. But we have to be vigilant because –facing the imminent crisis of the States and their institutions–, if we do not take due care in this process, we will be in the hands of the first dictator to convince the majority of the nation that he knows what needs to be done.
In the day after this crisis, what lies ahead is a difficult job, but it is a job that cannot be delegated. It is a job that corresponds to all the citizens of the world, and that must also be based on the fact that at some point, we had everything and that we lost everything almost instinctively. It is a job that can only be done if it is accepted that we lost the great social conquests simply because we did not know how to defend them or because we delivered them without any consideration. The most difficult thing about the first day afterward is knowing, as happened to Noah at the time, that the world has died under the waters and necessary to rebuild it. Only this time, we will have to build it without the promise that God made to Noah, that he would not destroy our world again.
