The "slime" of the instant
I no longer remember exactly where I read or heard these words. But it is something I had already thought, almost instinctively, and which becomes clearer and clearer to me: our political class is a societal reflection of everything around it, including the poverty of our political and economic thinking beyond the boundaries established after the fall of the USSR.
Just think of how many politicians of old, elected or otherwise, kept at least a diary about their daily lives, their actions, and the thoughts that crossed their minds. Thoughts that were obviously political, social, and economic in nature. Today, what we have across much of the modern democratic world are corporate and civil lawyers serving as legislators, or even sitting at the very top of their respective political systems, leading nations in pursuit of their own interests and, perhaps, those of the parties they represent.
There is a great irony in this because these people, in theory, have professions that require them to write copiously and argue in favour of causes, whether those of their clients or their own. Yet they seem to see little value in laying out their underlying political thinking in anything resembling a more formal manner.
Part of this can be explained by the fact that professional politicians are also reptiles with levels of slime never before witnessed. There is no room for definitive statements about fundamental values when you are a prime minister, or aspire to become one. Taking something as your banner today might look bad a few years, or even a few months, from now because it reveals a worldview that is simply too ideological, whether from one side or the other.
However it is not difficult to walk into a bookshop and find books about the fundamental thinking of our political leaders in the form of an "unauthorized biography", particularly once they leave office and begin making their way towards eventual retirement. Which is strange because even when "unauthorized", these biographies are for the most part vehicles of propaganda every bit as blatant as a television commercial during an election campaign.
But even these biographies tend to be extremely rich in content and desperately poor in thought. Such books are far more useful as doorstops than as reading material. One could argue that the reader finishes the book with more questions about its subject than answers, because even within their own biography the fog is so thick that no light can pass through it.
This argument could be seen as romanticizing the politics of the past. To some extent, that is exactly what it is. Even if someone is a genuine "chameleon" in the Assembly of the Republic, I want to know what motivates those instincts. Even if that instinct is nothing more than tactical manoeuvring and personal gain, in a place where political and ideological banners are cast aside in favour of power for power's sake.
I would have far more respect for a politician who was honest about those motivations than for what we have today, where the suits are becoming increasingly empty and democracy, in turn, increasingly declines as a consequence. But the central problem is still the poverty of thought that surrounds us.
I count myself among the victims of this problem. My job gives me moments of freedom throughout the day, moments I could use more productively on the intellectual side of things. But laziness gets the better of me and none of that happens.
I am not making a defence here of the "productive man", another syndrome that has plagued me since my earliest days. It is simply that intellectual work, such as writing this text, reading a book no matter how bad it might be, and thinking about my own motivations in a more structured way, genuinely brings me pleasure.
These are things I used to do very easily before and during the pandemic. Everything has become much harder since then.
On the one hand, developments in my personal life have left me much busier and with far less mental space for this kind of intellectual exercise. On the other, it really is much harder to stop and think properly about the things around me when everything that happens seems designed to provoke an immediate reaction.
It is like this with the news and its comment sections. WhatsApp messages. Even the highlights generated by the Google Photos app. There is no room for reflection and processing. Everything is an event to be consumed in the blink of an eye, multiplied again and again throughout the day.
I still have the "privilege" of neither needing nor wanting to use social media for much beyond looking at menus from local restaurants and watching the occasional video of some lunatic in Rio de Janeiro performing stunts with cars and motorcycles in the middle of city traffic. That does not mean I escaped being infected by this craving for immediacy after spending so many years consuming social media when these platforms were first created and popularized.
I do not think I am alone in this. And from what I can see here and around us, our political class suffers from exactly the same problem. If an instantaneous decision that goes against the principles of the party, its electoral programme, and above all the politician's own principles can win them a few more supporters and consequently guarantee a few more days or months in power... then screw it, let's go.
But do not complain when the political system that gave you that power in the first place eventually comes to an end. It is a lesson that I suspect will be learned very painfully, particularly in Europe, within the next few years.