Columnistas invitados/Guest columnists

Invertebrate Spain (as in without backbone), and The Revolt of the Masses are two of José Ortega y Gasset’s best-known works. Ortega y Gasset (1883-1955), a Spanish philosopher and essayist, wrote during the first half of the 20th century when Spain wavered between monarchy, republicanism, and dictatorship. For him, the Basque and Catalan separatisms of his day were manifestations of the existential ordinariness of societal values, and of the mediocrity of Spanish institutions. Spain had ceased to be “an active and dynamic reality” and had become a society without ambitions or illusions.

In Invertebrate Spain, Ortega y Gasset defines a nation as “a project suggestive of life in common” and argues that Spain “invertebrates” itself by the intellectual poverty and deficiency of its political class. He emphasizes that the shortcomings of a mediocre, invertebrate ruling class transfer to the institutions they lead. This fosters a radical demoralization of society. He expands on the theme in The Revolt of the Masses noting that “masses” are the aggregation of individuals that have become “de-individualized.” These individuals have stopped being free thinking and have been dissolved into an amalgam that thinks and acts for them. Thus, Ortega y Gasset argues, Spain has ceased being a nation and has become “a series of deadlocked compartments.” These reflections of José Ortega y Gasset came to mind as I read of the latest (July 2018) surreal controls imposed by the Cuban government on its population. The Communist Party of Cuba's 6th Congress introduced some minimal economic reforms in 2011, primarily by allowing self-employment in about 200 trade activities including buying and selling used books (activity #23) and working as a public toilet attendant (activity #29). These self-employed attendants are presumably in charge of maintaining the facilities and charging patrons a fee.

The bizarre list of economic activities permitted in 2011 corresponds to Ortega y Gasset’s depiction of decision-making by a mediocre and invertebrate ruling class. And yet, some observers foolishly portrayed these changes as those of inspired new leadership. The need, of the Cuban military and Communist Party, to control every aspect of life is antithetical to the individual freedoms and empowerment necessary to bring about an economic renaissance.

Introduction

There is a rich literature on what went wrong with liberalism, from the seminal The Light that Failed by Ivan Krastev and Stephen Holmes (2020) to Patrick Deneen’s Why Liberalism Failed (2018) and Edward Luce’s The Retreat of Western Liberalism (2017). In the midst of debates between those who claim we have entered a post-liberal era, those who think liberalism should genuinely reform, and those who assert that liberalism is fine and that its enemies are simply authoritarian populist leaders or covert fascists, the term “illiberal(ism)” has flourished.

In this recent proliferation, illiberalism is used as a fuzzy and inconsistent classification, an intuitive way to describe ideologies and practices that diverge from liberalism —understood in the same loose and innate way— without being entirely identifiable with authoritarianism or dictatorship: illiberalism would be situated somewhere in the middle of a continuum from democracy to non-democracy, describing a move from the former to the latter. Yet beyond this plasticity, illiberalism has demonstrated some ideological leadership in challenging the purported historical inevitability of liberalism and inviting us to decentre our values and policies therefrom (Snyder 2021).

Is Donald Trump the lone character to blame for the attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021? I wouldn’t be too surprised if a fair and transparent Congressional procedure proves that President Trump has made serious mistakes in his frantic attempts to overturn election results in those States where he claimed fraud had occurred.

These errors must be proven through due process in a Congressional Committee comprised of members chosen by both parties independently, and where both the prosecution and defense witnesses were cross-examined in accordance with fair rules for both parties.

In fact, so far in the one-sided proceedings, it appears that the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack hearings have presented powerful and compelling evidence that President Trump failed to act as he should have to curb his supporters and prevent further violence.  Unfortunately, the Select Committee only has accusers among its members. They are all part of the prosecution. Absolutely no one in the defense role. Not even the two Republican Representatives handpicked by Speaker Nancy Pelosi against the wishes of that party, which had previously selected five members to join the Committee but were vetoed by the Speaker. Nor has a single witness appeared to testify in favor of President Trump or to at least point to some mitigating circumstances. Is a fair trial possible in such circumstances?

El gobierno de turno puede intentar tapar con un dedo la luz cegadora de sus graves errores, pero basta que adoptemos un mínimo de imparcialidad para examinar datos y evidencias que nos permitan descubrir y entender los motivos de la actual crisis económica. Por eso, en un artículo publicado el 6 de mayo aclaraba que:

«La inflación que se ha desatado en Estados Unidos desde mediados de 2021 –y que sigue en aumento– se origina en la política que redundó en la notable disminución de la producción de petróleo y gas, incluyendo la suspensión de nuevos permisos de exploración y de nuevos oleoductos, así como en el enorme derroche de los "estímulos" y de los aumentos presupuestarios aprobados para este año 2022 con abundancia de proyectos encubiertos de los legisladores que en inglés se definen como "pork barrel". Todo esto ha causado el colapso que estamos presenciando en el poder adquisitivo del dólar de Estados Unidos que, por tratarse del patrón monetario más importante de las finanzas globales, ha sido determinante para que la inflación se generalice en otras partes del mundo.»

Este artículo daba seguimiento a otro publicado el 24 de enero que pronosticaba la caída de la Bolsa de valores de EEUU, un índice indicador del estado de la economía, el cual había logrado niveles máximos en noviembre de 2021 siguiendo el impulso de los cuatro años anteriores.