The normality of the unacceptable

I was talking to an acquaintance about that Valencian far-right politician who was convicted twenty years ago for a crime of harassment, and he told me with an air of almost apology: "But it was only psychological violence." There were several of us in the conversation, and a third added, as if providing valuable information: "He is a professor of Constitutional Law." A little earlier it had been mentioned to that former bullfighter who is going to take care of managing the very thriving cultural institutions of the Valencian Community, and there was also an equanimous voice that pointed out: "Eye, he has a degree in Law". Then it has been known that this future hero, apart from extorero and graduate in Law, is also fond of riding, and that he asked his faithful on social networks to vote to help him choose the name of a horse he had just bought, undecided as he was between Duce and Caudillo. Perhaps my interlocutor, who thought it was so positive that this bullfighter and ultra rider had a law degree, would point out as a possible merit or apology that among the possible names of the horse he had not included Führer.

There are people with a great capacity to capture nuances, such as that judge who many years ago did not appreciate the aggravating circumstance of cruelty in a man who had stabbed his ex-wife more than twenty times, taking her life. Having tormented his own with cruel insults and death threats did not hinder the academic career of this professor, and certainly does not seem to be causing any to his political career, in this day and age in which we are seeing how even the most lunatic forms of extremism have become acceptable to apparently judicious people who until not long ago would have rejected them. In a few months, because the inconceivable quickly becomes normal, there will be no one left who is surprised that the president of an institution of a certain stature such as the Balearic Parliament is a subject who considers vaccines harmful, and ridiculous – "an ember" – the scientific evidence on climate change, and who also denounces a sinister international plan to replace white and Catholic Europeans with Muslims and blacks from Africa. It is true that this eminent man has a degree, and not only in Law, like the horse bullfighter of Valencia, but also in Business Administration, and is in possession of a master's degree in legal advice. So many titles will give some peace of mind to those interlocutors of mine who pondered the condition of professor of the ultra leader who was only convicted "for a crime of habitual psychic violence and 21 faults of coercion, insults and humiliations against his ex-partner", to which he dedicated expletives of an expressive vehemence unusual in legal oratory: "Thief, child kidnapper, dungeon owner, whore, I'm going to be fucking you all your life until you die..."

It's not that big of a deal. Who hasn't had a bad divorce. And besides, the man didn't get to put his hand on the mother of his children, not that. And as for the bullfighter, he has been retired for a long time, and surely he treats Caudillo or Duce with more consideration than many animalists. Naderías. Ridiculous hipsters with agricultural whims and no knowledge of the harsh and noble reality of our fields, determined to prohibit irrigation and interfere in the breeding of animals crowded in industrial farms, so beneficial for our economy and for the quality of air, soils and aquifers. The curious thing about the systematic denigrators of the nonsense and the cheesiness of the left, which can undoubtedly be innumerable, is the tolerance they develop, and the contained fervor that they reveal, towards the nonsense and barbarities and the blatant game of interests of a right that in this era, and not only in Spain, it is drifting more and more towards that kind of cynical nihilism mixed with religious fundamentalism of the Republican right in the United States.

I am not talking now about old-fashioned conservatives, nor about privileged people who lean their vote towards whoever can best defend their interests, which in a country like Spain almost always have to do with the privatization of essential services such as health or education. I speak of temperate, even lukewarm people, of veteran progressives who suffer as an access of fury when they speak of this government, and more accurately of its president, towards whom for lack of political adjectives sufficiently resounding pass into the language of psychiatry (or series of murderers) to call him a psychopath. They begin by lamenting the irrationality that is taking over political discourse because of sectarianism and social networks, and a moment later they manifest a rejection that goes beyond any rational argument.

I am as aware as anyone of the many shortcomings and mistakes of this Government; I believe that also of its successes, some of them spoiled or very limited by internal discord and by the obstacles of a public administration depleted and in many cases politicized, and therefore subjected to clientelist pressures that undermine its efficiency. It is a serious problem of this government and it will also be a serious problem of the one that comes later, whatever it may be. With the invaluable help of the European Union, we have been able to overcome several successive crises in which for once there has been a certain degree of protection for those who were most vulnerable.

Any government wears out, and nothing is more lawful than to desire change. But when the rejection takes on the intensity of a phobia, and when usually reasonable people persist above all in a seamless denial, we will have to stop and think about what the reasons and consequences may be. I knew that kind of denial up close last autumn of my life in the United States, during a particularly acrimonious and in many cases half-hearted election campaign in which it looked like Hillary Clinton was going to win. The truth is that sometimes it seemed so, and sometimes not, because even in a city as Democratic as New York, and a neighborhood even more unconditionally Democratic, the Upper West Side, there was a strange lack of enthusiasm among people, even of interest. On the one hand, for someone like Donald Trump to win was implausible. On the other hand, in many potential Democratic voters, young, enlightened, even politically aware, there was a hostility to Hillary Clinton that often reached extremes of shameless misogyny, and was nothing inferior to that which could manifest Republican voters in the Midwest or Florida. Clinton's limitations as a candidate were obvious: her ties to Wall Street, and to her husband's financial and political rinses. But she was a woman very firm in her convictions and her projects, very experienced, eloquent and very articulate and precise in her way of expressing herself. The hatred he aroused among people who deep down resembled him was far superior to the rejection of Trump. The son of a friend, a twenty-something university student, told me one day, quite matter-of-factly, although with spite, that once the candidacy of Bernie Sanders, who was his favorite, had been ruled out, he even thought Trump preferable, that innocuous clown who even boasted of grabbing women "by the pussy".

I don't equate situations. I am saying only that when our arguments lead to an unconditional and visceral denial, and to an almost complacent indulgence in the face of the most obvious signs of danger, perhaps we do not stop to think about what it is that we are affirming without saying it, what by action or omission we are facilitating to happen.

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