Populism, power and religion

The mistake is to think that people are logical. In the important things in life, like love, it is not. Nor in politics, particularly when it comes to voting, a circumstance in which emotion competes with facts, and emotion wins.

I think of the success of populism. I am thinking of electoral behaviour in countries as varied as Turkey, Mexico, South Africa, Argentina, England, Russia and the United States.

In Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdogan has just obtained the majority needed to extend his presidential term. Thanks to his management, the economy is going badly, with inflation above 40 percent; abuses the judiciary to criminalize the opposition and control the media; An earthquake in February that killed 50,000 people exposed a system of corruption in which cronyism outweighs efficiency in building homes.

Voting for Erdogan meant persisting with a government more dictatorial than democratic, more corrupt than competent. The Turkish people gave their verdict. It was already nine years; Here are five more.

Mexico and South Africa are not so authoritarian, although they are in it, but in terms of corruption they surpass Turkey, while in citizen insecurity they are in another league. Yet there is President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, light years ahead of the opposition in the polls, and there is the African National Congress, eternalized as a governing party long, long after Mandela's dream turned into a nightmare.

Argentina, well, in an article a few days ago in this newspaper Jorge Lanata announced a long list of the economic disasters of Kirchnerism with the phrase "if mathematics still exists in Argentina ..." . Apparently not. Nor is there much interest in corruption or growing crime, apparently, because there are still the faithful of Nestor and Cristina, in power 20 years later, and see if they go and extend their mandate in the elections at the end of the year.

Russia: let's not go into details. Let's leave it in that, as everything indicates, a clear majority of Russians think that Putin is a tipazo.

England: not only do they vote for the collective suicide of Brexit but three years later, on the eve of the economic collapse, they choose by absolute majority the party that promised them paradise if they left the European Union.

And since we're with "mature democracies," how about the United States? Not only is Donald Trump the firm favorite to be elected the Republican Party's presidential nominee for the 2024 election, but there is a growing sense that he could win them. As The Economist said this week, "The possibility that the next US president will be someone who divides the West and delights Vladimir Putin must be taken seriously; that it accepts the results of the elections only if it wins them; who calls the thugs who stormed the Capitol on January 6, 2021 martyrs and wants to pardon them... that he is the subject of multiple investigations for violating criminal law, in addition to having a history of sexual assault ...".

The mind-boggling thing, in the most literal sense of the word, is that Trump's tens of millions of devotees see no reason to question him. The facts show that during his presidency Trump did not fulfill even close to his star electoral promise to build a wall along the border with Mexico and that, on the other hand, the only political idea he managed to realize was a juicy tax cut for 250,000 billionaires, among whom he was counted but very few of his followers. most of them low-income. But it doesn't matter. Faith moves mountains.

So why does faith trump logic? Why do facts count for so little in the political decisions so many people make? Why do so many supposedly thinking beings identify with tyrants, clowns or charlatans?

Because belonging to a team is the important thing, being homo sapiens a social animal. Because they see in the leader a father (or, in the Argentine case, maternal) figure who offers them hope for a better life, who offers them protection against a confused and hostile world, who shares the same enemies and the same hatreds and resentments as they do. Because being part of the team of the great dad or the big mom gives them a sense of belonging, of relevance, of identity that allows them to forget the terrible truth that they are not – we are not – more than a grain of dust in the infinite cosmos.

That is, faith overcomes logic in politics for the same reasons it does in religion. The Catholic Church has been preaching throughout the centuries and centuries that sex outside of marriage is the most direct route to hell, but when the scandal of pedophilia that thousands of its priests (outside of marriage) have practiced during the last 50 years jumps, the Church responds like a political party to accusations that its own practice corruption. They cover it up, deny it, downplay it. And the faithful look the other way.

They continue to cling to faith because the miraculous package of belonging, identity, hope, revenge and refuge offered by Trumpism, or Erdoganism, or Kirchnerism, or AMLO, or the populist that is worth more than lies or hypocrisy, which are like flies in summer, nothing more.

The lesson is clear: the aspiring political leadership who sticks to objective facts, who does not lie, who does not present himself as a redeeming general in the face of Satan, who does not offer heaven on earth, who makes the mistake of recognizing the limits of the possible, competes in elections against the demagogue with the same disadvantage as a runner with a broken ankle in a marathon. Good luck to those who try.