Biden's 'beast' grows inside of me

While Joe Biden was riding around in his Cadillac One, nicknamed

, around Toledo in Madrid, I got into a taxi on Atocha and fastened my seatbelt.

I admit that at first it seemed strange to me that the president of the United States would bring such

to move around Madrid.

His vehicle weighs as much as a Tyrannosaurus Rex and is capable of dealing with attacks with chemical weapons, sticky bombs and even missiles.

The kind of tourism with which you imagine traveling to kyiv rather than parking in the Plaza Mayor.

But you have to understand him, he does not travel in a car but in a story.

He climbs on the back of the story with which the United States tells the world that its presidents will be safe wherever they go, not like Kennedy, you know what I mean.

I will never be assassinated, Biden tells himself, because I have my

.

My life is “under control”.

I understand you very well.

I know perfectly well the kind of lie that gallops because I've been on many similar ones.

In fact, our civilization works exactly like this, convincing us that nothing bad will ever happen to us.

We live in a world that promises us that what is going to happen to us with total certainty will never happen, that is, misfortune.

I'm safe, I tell myself.

We are safe, NATO leaders tell us as they attend an olive oil tasting at the Royal Theater and chat about World War III.

There is nothing to fear, they explain to us.

And I believe them.

Just as I believe that I will not die of covid, that I will not have an accident in the taxi I am traveling in, that they will never attack my country or that I will never be a political refugee.

I wake up every day and work to believe that "I am safe", that I have my life "under control" and,

The process is simple: first you feed your fears as if they were macro-farm pigs and when they are fatter you see them in their cages and tell yourself that they are not real, that you have invented them.

And that, in any case, they are locked up: under control.

In this sense, the NATO summit is another beast in my city and the fantasy of control it offers is as solid as the enormous mass of Kevlar, aluminum and titanium, with which the Biden fantasy is built.

The taxi driver who takes me drives a hybrid Toyota and tells me that although the summit has reduced his billing by 40%, it has been worth it.

“Because now people believe that Madrid is a safe city and that will bring tourism.

Coming to Madrid will be a way to feel safe and everyone wants to feel safe”, he explains to me.

I also want to feel safe, but I think I'm on the wrong track, just like Biden.

Because nothing is more terrifying than living under the yoke of having life "under control".

Formerly, human value was granted to those who were able to withstand adversity, which was taken for granted in all human life.

In classical Greece, for example, mortals trained to endure the misfortunes that were sure to befall them.

So, people believed they were anvils, capable of withstanding the blows of life, as Luis Díez del Corral wrote speaking of classical myths.

Today, on the other hand, we think we are hammers.

We are full of gadgets to convince us that we can avoid adversity, be safe.

And this leads us to a mass psychology based on the control of fear through magical thinking.

We do not adapt to adversity, but we want to control it from a distance.

And science and technology —whose stories are magical rather than pragmatic— promise us new chimeras every day, brand new control devices, cages in which to lock up our “pigs” and all the beasts that inhabit us.

Immortality is a word that comes out of more and more mouths, there are no limits to what is human.

When the only thing that has no limit is our fantasies of control, the same ones that are going to devour us.

Immortality is a word that comes out of more and more mouths, there are no limits to what is human.

When the only thing that has no limit is our fantasies of control, the same ones that are going to devour us.

Immortality is a word that comes out of more and more mouths, there are no limits to what is human.

When the only thing that has no limit are our fantasies of control, the same ones that are going to devour us.

“One thousand four hundred euros is going to cost my daughter her apartment in Conil this year.

More than double that of last year.

The same beach, but this year people imagine it to be safer”, continues the driver who guides me.

"I don't care if she goes with her boyfriend, but I don't get along so well being alone."

“Do you live alone with her daughter?”, I dare to ask.

“Only since she was born, she has been 25 years,” she explains.

“Her mother died two days after giving birth.

Septicemia.

One in a thousand, the doctors said.

But people's lives are always counted in units.

And he touched her.

I couldn't believe it, it was impossible.

You do not know what feeling of unreality.

The doctor told me that I had better sit down.

Luckily I was right in answering: I'd better stay on my feet or I won't be able to get up for the rest of my life."

Life is pure adversity, and in the end you have to bear it all.

That was the optimism of the ancients and this was their way of feeling safe.

They lived among humans while now we live among beasts, haunted by fantasies of control everywhere.

In the end, it is less scary to accept that everything is going to happen to you than to convince yourself every day that nothing will ever happen to you.

Because in a world like this, when what really has to be endured comes, such as a pandemic, we sink.

It leaves us touched, lost (and there are the figures related to the mental consequences of covid) for the simple reason that we were not prepared.

Because the truth is that we are not prepared for life.

Biden is not prepared for life if he needs to get on a tank to visit Carabanchel.

Civilization changed and we broke with the ancient world by placing people in two different places: if in ancient times our mission was to endure adversity, our civilization promises to deliver us from all adversity.

The only bad thing is that it is unbearable to live like this, to live here.

Personally, I can't stand it much longer.

"Nothing bad is going to happen to me in Madrid," says Biden when he gets on his beast.

Nothing bad will happen to the world, promises NATO.

There is nothing to fear.

Except perhaps the enormous effort of carrying the weight of so many crazy illusions.

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