By Jorge Majfud on November 10, 2022
Ron DeSantis, photo: EFE
Our societies are molded in the commercialization of life, which, in the United States, already existed long before, but began to radicalize in its current forms at the beginning of the 20th century. The market and its media pulpit are based on two basic and primitive feelings that made the survival of the species possible: fear and desire. Two strengths that today are weaknesses. For the market, desire is centered on its sexual impulse (without sex neither cars nor songs are sold) and on the promotion of fear.
In hijacked democracies, politics is a market, not only of power but at the service of the financial market. Therefore, fear and desire are also its two fundamental components. Desire (utopia) has been a bastion of the left, just as fear (dystopia) has been a bastion of the right. As we are in a clearly dystopian historical time (we are no longer trying to imagine a just and happy world, but to save it from social and climatic catastrophe) the right sells easier.
This is what is happening almost everywhere in the West and, in particular, in the ideological center of this commercialized world, prone to the irrational narrative of commercial propaganda and religious sermons, detached from all evidence. Hence, for example, the election naysayers are often the right-wing parties. What more naysaying than a religion or consumer culture?
Republican political ads, as in Florida, focused on inoculating fear of immigrants and “gender ideology”. The ten million illegal immigrants, the country’s most selfless workers, have a much lower overall crime rate than the rest of society, but they are the perfect target for the fear industry because not only can they not lobby like the Florida mob, they don’t vote. On the other hand, the “gender ideology” is not a recent evil that is going to destroy Humanity, as these politicians claim, but it is older than the pyramids of Egypt: it is the millenarian machismo, with its need for power and its sexual fears. If they knew that the European aristocracy used to wear wigs, tights and high heels (symbol of masculinity, due to the use in horseback riding given by the Arabs), that boys in the upper class until recently were dressed as girls, as in the case of President F. D. Roosevelt, and that the colors pink and light blue by sex were a recent invention of American stores, they would fall over backwards. Or, more likely, they would deny it.
In another ad, the Republican candidate for governor of Arizona appeared in a 19th century town in the Wild West dueling with his opponent, Old Man Biden and Senator Pelosi, while behind him a cowboy (the historical violator of all laws and borders) shouts, “We’re tired of open borders.” Another, a coachman from his chariot, adds, “we’re tired of the price of fuel…”
Tuesday’s midterm elections were just another chapter in this descent into political pornography. Although they added victories in the lower house and gubernatorial elections, Republicans failed to divide the waters of the Red Sea, signifying frustration with two mobilizing outcomes for the 2024 presidential election.
First, the party’s undisputed nominee, Donald Trump, took an anemic hit, as voters identify him nationally, as with Pennsylvania gubernatorial candidate, pseudo-scientific TV show star, Dr. Oz. Perhaps because Oz is a Muslim Turk, his conservative Trumpist credentials did not give him the edge to defeat a Democratic candidate struggling to string two sentences together, due to a recent cardiovascular accident.
Second, Trump’s favorite disciple, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (God’s chosen one according to himself), swept his state, being re-elected with nearly 60 percent of the vote. If this phenomenon did not happen in the rest of the country and hurt Trump, DeSantis’ strong polling catapults him for the 2024 election. Frustrated voters will run to his arms, despite the fact that as of yesterday, according to polls, he had half as much support as Trump. Indeed, he has already begun giving euphoric speeches, as if he has been elected president and is ready to extend his neo-medieval crusade, taking his bans on mentioning the existence of gays, of reviewing racist history in high schools or suggesting that college students videotape their professors looking for any ideological leanings.
The ideologues of “market freedom” (for the owners of the market), naturally, called for a vote for Republicans. The richest man in the world, Elon Musk, after buying Twitter for 44 billion promising to “fight for freedom” and “keep the social network politically neutral,” not only suspended a comedian’s account for imitating him, but asked his 100 million Twitter followers to vote for Republicans. The same who congratulated the coup leader Jeanine Áñez in Bolivia and, faced with the accusation of having participated in the coup against Evo Morales for the lithium for his Tesla cars, assured at the time that “we will continue to carry out coups whenever we feel like it”.
This style of unpunished outburst is a classic of right-wingers who have special rights. Racism, classism and sexism are allowed by the grace of some god, which was demonstrated in Brazil with Bolsonaro and in many other countries.
It is likely that the frustration of this bitter triumph in the November 8 election will lead Trump to redouble this strategy to compete against DeSantis. A few hours ago he claimed that the leak made by the journalist who reported ahead of time on the recent Supreme Court decision to overturn abortion rights under special circumstances should be punished with jail time so that there she would find a stronger wife to rape her. The conservative audience applauded enthusiastically.
Without strong young candidates, until 2024 the Democrats will throw in what cards they have left, such as the use of President Biden’s veto.
When the waters and social violence reach the doors of mansions in Florida and Texas, perhaps there will be a new political cycle like that of the 1960s or even more. Or the alternative of the gradual catastrophe only consolidating the fanatical denialism of reality.
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamerica