Think wrong and be right

Thinking badly, as a rule of life, would spoil all human relationships by presuming evil intentions everywhere. Mistrust does not help build social capital.

The title sentence is not advice for everyday life. Attributed to Nicholas Machiavelli , founder of modern political science, coincides with his warning to the Medici , from whom he learned his practices to dominate Florence for three centuries. According to Niccolò, to be successful in politics, the ruler must know that “ all men are wicked and are prepared to show their nature, as long as they find the occasion to do so ”.

Machiavelli’s warning implies that when it comes to achieving or staying in power, actors hide their true intentions to confuse the people and deceive the naive prince.

What happened after the STEP is so explicit and clumsy that even a pre-pubescent would notice Cristina Kirchner’s desperation to win in November to obtain impunity

The controversial author of The Prince (1513) would have corrected his work had he known that 500 years later, on a newly discovered continent, a nation would emerge where their advice would be utterly useless. In Argentina in 2021, the ruler, his friends, co-religionists and fellow travelers, are so explicit in showing their perverse nature, that the difficult thing is to think well and not badly of them.

As a consequence of the Front of All lost in the STEP of the 12th of the current month, there was an implosion in that coalition that exposed all the baseness of the politics in its most base and indecorous version. Such a hilarious series of groping, shame and humiliation that this editorial opinion is not enough to list them.

If the deputy Fernanda Vallejos is the “alter ego” of the vice president Cristina Kirchner , just listen to her widespread message to know what is her opinion about the president that she herself elected. There is no room left for the benevolent interpretation. And if the ex-airline unionist Alicia Castro also reflects her thinking on health matters, little is left for credulous and well-intentioned.

The Governor of Tucumán, Juan Manzur , replaced the Chief of Cabinet, Santiago Cafiero , not to give greater hierarchy to the position, but because of his proven experience as a surgeon to operate adverse ballot boxes in close elections. It is not required to read The Prince to warn him.

Veteran Felipe Solá was notified of his removal from the post of Chancellor by the aforementioned Cafiero, himself displaced by Manzur. To add insult to injury, he informed her that his successor in office would be… himself. Solá would have thought like Julius Caesar of Shakespeare : “¿¿ You too Brutus ? ” listening to the young Santiago, son of Juan Pablo Cafiero , his Minister of Justice and Security of the province of Buenos Aires for five years. It is not necessary to think badly to notice the baseness of the son of “Juampi” in order to hold on to a position, even more so when considering his absolute lack of qualifications for the exercise of the Chancellery of the Republic, including the inability to speak English that shared with his predecessor.

Solá himself, in the company of Daniel Arroyo , had publicly associated the figure of Aníbal Fernández , the new Minister of Security, with drug trafficking. And he did not deprive himself of questioning it Julián Domínguez , his now cabinet mate, in the portfolio of Livestock, Agriculture and Fisheries. It is easier to listen to them than to try to think badly.

Aníbal replaces Sabina Frederic , the social anthropologist who, emulating Margaret Mead in Oceania, studied the causes of crime in the suburbs. By contrast, his successor knows the issue from the inside and it is expected that, instead of analyzing the causes, he will repress the consequences that misgovernment will bring for victory.

The President did not accept the resignation of Eduardo “Wado” de Pedro , despite the fact that the young man with good manners was the one who shook the cabinet board with a fiction of resignation ordered by the vice president, to then remove and put. In no way was he going to deprive himself of the Interior Ministry with elections in a few weeks. It is not necessary to think badly to understand what happened. The letter from the chess player regarding her pawns is enough.

The mimicry of the Minister of Economy, Martín Guzmán , with President Fernández is now complete. Both, on their knees, before the owner of power , even at the cost of incinerating their already greatly diminished authority and professional honor. Machiavelli would be speechless if he knew that, in a bankrupt country, with an uncontrolled fiscal deficit, rampant inflation and no credit whatsoever, his minister, instead of hiding it, would excuse himself by swearing that he had spent all he could, without any fiscal adjustment.

It is not necessary to be malicious to discover why the Government has made a 180 degree turn in its health policy, as if the pandemic had ended, and in the face-to-face classes, having ruined the lives of so many families for so long. It’s the votes, stupid! – I would say Bill Clinton to those who did not realize that obviousness.

What happened after the PASO is so explicit and clumsy that even a pre-pubescent would notice the desperation of Cristina Kirchner to win in November to obtain impunity. There are also those who understand that relaxing health protocols could eventually lead to a new pandemic peak that allows them to be suspended.

However, it remains a question of what will happen with inflation, poverty, unemployment and insecurity after the festival of pesos and public debt (fiscal and quasi-fiscal) launched to try to recover lost votes.

To answer it, this time it is worth using the Machiavellian aphorism: “Think badly and you will be right.”