Antonio Navalón
Since the mid-nineteenth century, the struggle for achieving objectives through the political game and the defense of parties has been aimed at guaranteeing the legality of individual rights. This struggle has been so intense and disastrous that it has been characterized by their inability to defend themselves against the State and the dynamics that have left them in the background. Thus began what was the supremacy of political parties in the political organization of the so-called free or democratically structured world.
What is happening now so that the shadow of the Führers is cast with seemingly inexhaustible force over political structures? Why is it that in the United States and other countries, populist leaders are emerging whose fundamental objective is to liquidate political parties to maintain governments that destroy the guarantees of minorities and eliminate the ability to prevent the will of a single man to define the actions of the State? This has already happened and will happen again in the United States with Donald Trump, just as it happened in Mexico with Andrés Manuel López Obrador. Two leaderships personified by the figure of a single man highlighted the great crisis that political parties and, to a certain extent, the institutional framework of both countries are going through.
The victims of all this are the societies. And this mechanism of victimization increases with the defeat and annihilation of political parties, often by their own merits. Political parties that, in theory, are or should be those who represent and materialize citizens’ interests.
The State is in crisis mainly due to several new phenomena that have altered social organization. The technological and communications revolution has brought a disruptive and powerful instrument: cell phones. Today, the problem is not in the concealment of information but in the constant flood of data that prevents a serene and qualitative analysis of what will really alter our lives, as opposed to what shocks us for a few minutes or even hours. Today, this indirect manipulation of the masses takes place through those devices that we have in the palms of our hands and that are fed by those mechanisms that are so useful – if we know how to use them correctly – but at the same time so destructive, which are the social networks.
We must not deceive ourselves; having the capacity to shout, denounce, or project the errors of the States is not enough to make them work. The problem is not that we do not know how to counteract the unequivocal will of a single man. We do not know what to do to be able to confront the irrefutable interests and desires of leaders who believe that their will is the only one that should prevail, however much they may have had an overwhelming democratic vote.
In the United States, in analyzing the consequences of the Trump era, we discover that the two parties that have traditionally organized the politics of American society – the Democratic Party and the Republican Party – have simply been liquidated. The former, on its own merits and due to the confusion and incorporation of the “woke” agenda; the latter, by an absolute surrender to the designs of the maximum leader.
The only thing that remains is the organization that persists in the House of Representatives and the Senate, which gives the impression that fortunately for the American state structure, it will last for a while. Moreover, this guarantees a balance of power, although I do not know how much longer due to the majority of Trump and his party.
Against this background, in the context of the game that Donald Trump has set up to inaugurate his second term, reactions against him are already beginning to emerge. The case of the attorney general initially proposed by Trump, Matt Gaetz, who was rejected by himself due to problems related to possible sex scandals involving minors, is a clear example of the tensions at play.
Regardless, Capitol Hill is witnessing a confrontation between President-elect Donald Trump’s supreme will and the competencies and powers of the Senate and Congress. Some seek to legitimize the members of his government, whose approval by the Senate is mandatory, while others aim to shape the budgets, which are essential for providing the government with instruments of political action.
This is only the beginning. So far, we see a blessing and a permanent appeal to what the people have elected – although we do not know how long it will last. The people did, indeed, elect that candidate and that platform. What is not clear, however, is that the cost is institutional destruction and the modification of the elements of representation and social defense by deed.
The problem is not exclusive to the United States; it is a global phenomenon. It is as if the failure of the States, together with the bad and mediocre administration of the politicians who won elections, were the elements that led them to dig their graves. We are facing the disappearance of political parties, and their absence has left the State and societies completely defenseless. Now, the only thing that can save – or condemn – countries and their citizens are individuals with strong personalities who – for better or worse – believe they are or, in some cases, are already above any institution or law.
Between the shadow of leaders, populism, and the liquidation of parties, the world reaches the quarter century of the 21st century with a big question: How will it be possible to organize ourselves and defend individual rights in failed states? How will new leaders be elected if parties are no longer the mechanism or representative platforms? Faced with the ability to change the power structure by the wills of individualistic leaders, what mechanism or legal framework will protect States, societies, and, above all, democracies?
These questions characterize the first years of the most convulsive and dangerous century we have ever lived through. It is difficult and significant enough to say this when the 20th century was marked by two world wars, by the image of the Oppenheimer mushroom and the nuclear abyss that almost destroyed the whole world. It seems that the only “fungus” capable of competing with Oppenheimer’s in the creation of collective fears is the cumulative effect of the telecommunications revolution, which has plunged us into an absolute and total dependence on another “fungus”, this time immersed in each one of us. That “fungus” is the cell phone, which gives us the sensation of being makers of stories from the palm of our hands and not victims of the result of history itself.
This 2024 that is ending has been harrowing in many ways. We leave with it prepared to see how life and history will go on from January 6 next year. Happy life! Happy new opportunities!
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