Analysis. An unjust and hyperbolic PresidentBy Joaquín Morales Solá

It will always remain Cristina Kirchner. When it seems that the President is about to run into serious political obstacles, the former president emerges again with her self-referential sermons and a social majority once again places itself on the side of Javier Miley. This broad social sector that trusts the head of state has already overcome the tests of the worst inflation and recession of the last two decades (stagflation), but no one can specify if it is because of Milei’s merits or because the politicians he faces -Kirchnerism, above all- is much worse, no matter how you look at it. Last Monday he rambled again in Corrientes about the core of his libertarian thought in a meeting of that ideological strip and fell again into the excessive use of adjectives.

Despite the risk of repetition, It is worth remembering that the violent words of the President (any president) can end in violent acts. Argentina is a country that has spoken a violent political language since the Kirchners came to power 20 years ago. In two decades he was never able to get away from the danger of a probable fatality as a result of verbal violence. Before, there was the division between the people and the anti-people, between the supposed patriots and the also supposed return home or between the popular and the elitist. Pure phraseology that said nothing. Now the watershed is between the new and the old, between politics and antipolitics or between change and the state in which. She is talk without substance.

In Corrientes, the President perceived himself as what he is not: the head of a criminal organization. In fact, Milei said in the coastal province that “The State is a violent criminal organization that benefits from taxes”. One of the functions of the President of the Nation is to be head of the State; that is, it could be deduced, head of a criminal organization. But is the State really a violent criminal organization? One thing is the use and abuse that Kirchnerism has made of the assets – and money – of the State, and another thing is that this is an organization dedicated only to crime. What will the security forces think then if their boss in the State organizational chart tells them that they serve a criminal organization? How will doctors, nurses, teachers and professors who work in public hospitals, schools and universities feel if the President notified them that they work for a criminal organization?

The evident inclination of the head of state towards a hyperbolic conception of life He always stained his speech; The difference is that before he was not the first president of his country. His libertarian ideology leads him to an anarchist view of capitalism, according to which private initiative can solve all of society’s problems. The Kirchner State owned nine hotels in Chapadmalal (it still does), and that is already an anomaly. But There are non-delegable functions that are specific to the State. No major country on the planet destroyed the State just in case, to try their luck along paths unexplored by man.. A convinced anarchist, however, should not aspire to public office in the State that he so despises.

Of course, Milei is right when he reproaches the governor of La Rioja, Ricardo Quintela, who has hired several artists and then complained about the lack of resources in his province. Quintela’s case is applicable to many governors, accustomed to a generous federal government that allowed them to spend, as long as they were obedient to national rulers. However, Milei reproached Quintela for “paying fees to artists who were active in a certain idea.” He means, then, that the President would not have objected at all if those artists had been active in libertarian ideas. Logic has a surprise in store for Milei: bad practices are always bad, no matter who practices them.

The President falls into the same injustice when he accuses any critical journalist of being “enveloped” for having received advertising guidelines from the previous ruling parties. He surprises with silence in response. A clarification is necessary before continuing: this journalist wrote a formal letter in 2004 to the then president Nestor Kirchner to ask him to remove the federal government’s advertising schedule from his television program. A political dispute then began because friendly journalism received advertising guidelines, but the same did not happen (or there was great inequality) with independent journalism. Kirchner responded, also by letter, expressing his displeasure because he sensed that in those paragraphs a great doubt was hidden about his respect for press freedom. Disgusted or not, the truth is that he lifted the advertising schedule for this journalist’s program, and no subsequent government replaced it. Not everything is solved with money.

In his Corrientes monologue, Milei pointed out that it is clever of him to confront artists because if he talked about Gramsci, one of the great Marxist theorists on the cultural influence on the dissemination of ideas, no one would listen to him. He returned to his coincidence with Cristina Kirchner, who described him as a “showman”; He replied, kindly, that now the show is necessary in political life. So is everything you do a show? This reflection of the head of state can explain, at least in part, his predisposition to perpetual public shouting; It would be a communication strategy or new adventures in the cultural battle to which he clings. Was it necessary, despite everything, to describe Congress as a “rat’s nest”? Leaving aside the Kirchnerist blocs, which will never support him, why did he confront the rest of the political blocs in Congress? Why, if many of those blocks are willing to help you? Have you never appreciated the 144 votes in favor of the general approval of the omnibus law? An enormity of votes. Why did he say that his biggest mistake was “believing that he could negotiate and make an honest proposal to the governors”? To all the governors? Milei will be in the minority in the Chamber of Deputies until the end of his current term, even if he wins next year’s midterm legislative elections.

Just when he said that about the governors, in Corrientes he was received with the best manners by the governor of that province, the radical Gustavo Valdeswho openly differed from the president of his party, Martin Lousteau. “I don’t give a damn what Lousteau thinks,” said Valdés, who recalled, in passing, that Lousteau “was Cristina Kirchner’s minister and I have been a radical for 40 years.” A day later, two delegates from Milei, Vice President Victoria Villarruel and the Minister of the Interior, Guillermo Francos, they landed in Salta to meet with several governors of the northwest. They went to ask them for help to remove some of the measures (or all, if possible) included in the omnibus law that Milei withdrew from parliamentary treatment. It is very difficult to remember a case of such contradiction in nearby politics. He said worse things. For example: “Politicians assume that people love them. I assume that they are shit (sic) and people despise them.” There is another surprise waiting for the President: he is surrounded by politicians. Daniel Scioli He has been a politician for almost 30 years, no matter how much he likes to present himself as a retired motorcyclist; Mauricio Macri, with whom Milei speaks more than is known, is a politician who has been in public life for 20 years, twelve of which were spent in charge of the city and national governments; Francos, her minister, is a politician who should be listened to more in the Government; Martin Menem He is a politician, son and nephew of politicians, and Oscar Zago, the president of his bloc in Deputies, is a politician who, before joining La Libertad Avanza, was a member of the Unión Cívica Radical and Pro. Milei himself is a politician; No one reaches the presidency of the Nation without minimally accepting the precepts of politics.

Maybe Ricardo Lopez Murphy is the politician with ideas closest to Milei, although there is a significant difference between them: one is a liberal, López Murphy, and the other is a libertarian, Milei. However, the President did not offend any politician as much as he did with López Murphy, whom he called a “traitor” and “trash.” He also accused the former Minister of Economy of sending his people to call Milei a “Nazi.” It is unlikely, if not impossible, to imagine López Murphy ordering the public defamation of someone. By the way, it is time to stop talking so lightly about “Nazi” in public spaces. The warning is relevant due to the nonsense that the president of Brazil has just committed, Lula da Silva, when he accused Israel of committing a genocide like the Holocaust in Gaza. Nothing is comparable to the Holocaust, nor is anything similar to Nazism.

In any case, Milei has been angry with López Murphy since 2021, when he decided to integrate a list of candidates for legislators from Together for Change instead of sharing a list with Milei. Rancorous? It would not be good news, nor good policy. History attributes to the former Brazilian president Getulio Vargas a phrase loaded with political pragmatism: “No one is a friend enough not to end up being an enemy, and no one is enough of an enemy not to end up being a friend.” The phrase is applicable only to politics, of course.

A few weeks ago, the President wrote a tweet that is worth rescuing. He says like this: “I don’t give a damn about covers that put form over content”. She hovered over that idea again in the last few hours. Unfortunately there is another surprise for Milei: the forms are as important as the content in democratic life. Theorists in political science maintain that democracy, as a modern political system, is a way of living that is only viable if it is based on values ​​such as freedom, equality, justice, tolerance, pluralism and participation. Good forms and freedom are, therefore, indivisible. The addition of fuck It’s too much and it’s in bad taste.

Joaquín Morales Solá

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