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Filtering by Category: El País
Moisés Naím / El País
Recently, US televangelist Jim Bakker interviewed Sherrill Sellman, a “naturopathic doctor,” who explained the extraordinary properties of the “Silver Solution,” a product that Bakker sells on his show’s website.
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This is the equation that captures a big chunk of the forces driving the decline of liberal democracy: populism plus polarization plus post-truth lead to continuism. And what is continuism? It’s one of those words from Spanish that English lacks – but increasingly needs. Continuismo is what happens when leaders manipulate institutions, the law and even the constitution in order to grab and retain power.
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In countries where snow abounds, words abound to describe it. And the same goes for corruption. Where there’s a lot of corruption, it goes by many names.
In the Sami language, spoken in Norway, Sweden and Finland, there are more than 300 words for snow. In Latin America, and in countries such as Italy, Greece, Nigeria and India, there are hundreds of words for corruption. Coima, mordida, moches, ñeme-ñeme, guiso, mermelada and cohecho are some of the words for corruption used in Spanish-speaking countries. But just as interesting as the concepts we have too many words for, are those we have none for.
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Being a superpower is not what it used to be. These days, you can do it on a shoestring.
A superpower is a country able to project its military power over great distances and, if necessary, fight more than one war at a time – and in different continents. That costs a lot of money: military bases, ships, aircraft, tanks, missiles, communications and transportation infrastructure, none of this comes cheap. Also necessary is an expeditionary force of thousands of troops prepared to go to war anywhere on the planet. And, of course, nuclear weapons.
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Each year, about half-a-million people are murdered worldwide. Naturally, these deaths have devastating effects on the victims’ families and loved ones. But there are also killings that reach far beyond friends and family and change the world. These transcendental murders can turn out to be very expensive. The iconic case is the 1914 assassination of the Austrian Archduke Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo. His death set off a chain of events that led to the outbreak of World War I and the deaths of 40 million people.
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In some countries, opposing political groups figure out how to reach agreements, govern, and share power. In others, long-standing hatreds make it impossible for them to move forward. Opponents are not seen as political rivals but as illegitimate enemies with toxic agendas and unforgivable past behaviors. The mere possibility of any deal with people or groups that promote unacceptable platforms – or worse, that have been accused of crimes and abuses – becomes morally and psychologically intolerable.
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Some TV enriches our lives, some TV debases us. Some television opens minds, makes us think, takes us to places we would never get to visit and brings us face to face with life’s great dilemmas. There is also television that deliberately degrades, deceives, and confuses. And of course, there is TV that simply aims to distract us. Frequently, television that seeks to educate us is unbearably boring, while the shows that try to manipulate us end up polarizing and deceiving us. In contrast, TV that only aims to entertain is politically irrelevant. Or so we thought.
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In 2011, Libya cracked into a thousand pieces. With United Nations authorization, a broad coalition attacked Libya, a mob murdered Muammar Gaddafi, his bloodthirsty regime collapsed, and the country fragmented. Eventually, two governments were formed, one based in Tripoli and another in Tobruk. Each has its own leader, armed forces, government bureaucracy and even a Central Bank that prints its own money.
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International security experts often draw up lists of the most dangerous places on earth. These are not places that are just dangerous to their population, but rather places that irradiate conflict and instability to neighboring nations or even to other continents.
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What’s been happening to information is very strange. It is both more cherished and more disdained than ever.
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What do Spain, Italy, Israel, and the United Kingdom have in common? They can’t seem to form stable governments able to rule. And it’s not just these four countries where, after all, the division of powers and limits on executive power still hold. As we know, plenty of other countries are much more dysfunctional.
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What do North Korea and Cuba have in common? The obvious answer is that both are dictatorships. Less obvious is that both recently held elections. On March 12, the North Koreans reported that 99.99% of their citizens had gone to the polls and that 100% of the votes were for the 687 candidates put forward by the regime. There were no others. Weeks earlier, Cubans voted in a referendum in which they were asked if they approved of a new constitution. Ninety-one percent of them said yes.
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"I’m a capitalist, and even I think capitalism is broken,” said Ray Dalio, the founder of Bridgewater, one of the largest private investment funds in the world. According to Forbes, Dalio ranks 60th on the list of richest people on the planet. “I believe that all good things taken to an extreme become self-destructive and that everything must evolve or die,” he said. “This is now true for capitalism.”
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JIran wants peace talks in Venezuela. “Chaos and violence can, by no means, be a solution to political differences,” said Abbas Mousavi, spokesman for the Islamic republic’s Foreign Ministry. The Chinese government has also insisted that “Venezuela’s affairs should be resolved… through peaceful dialogue and political means.” These sentiments have been echoed by Sergei Lavrov, the Russian foreign minister, the UN, and many other countries, agencies and political pundits.
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Most animals do not eat human flesh. But some do. It’s said that once a tiger, a lion or a leopard incorporates homo sapiens into its diet, it becomes a man-eater. Some say that once they develop a taste for it, they can’t stop.
Something similar is happening in politics. Once the political system in some countries learns how to toss out a head of state, it seems to develop a taste for it, and starts doing it again and again. The act becomes a sort of ritual sacrifice that takes place within the courts, the legislature, and the media, as well as in the streets. The proliferation of these “politician-eating” beasts appears to be a worldwide phenomenon. But why?
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In March 1912 the mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki, gave the city of Washington D.C. 3,020 cherry trees. The saplings adapted well to their new surroundings and, over time, spread throughout the capital and its suburbs. So, for 107 years, springtime in Washington has brought the gorgeous spectacle of the cherry blossoms.
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Sometimes elections and referendums change the course of history. For example, in June 2016, Britain decided to leave the European Union in the famous Brexit referendum. Also in 2016, Donald Trump won the US election and found himself in the White House. And in December 1998, Venezuelans elected Hugo Chávez president.
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“Why do they hate us?” That was the question posed on the cover of Newsweek magazine after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. The headline nodded to the fact that all the perpetrators were Muslims with a deep hatred of the US and the West. The attacks provoked a massive military response from the US and its allies, as well as an intense debate about the causes of this hatred and how to confront it. The debate popularized the theory of a "clash of civilizations," suggesting that, in the new century, religion and culture – not ideologies like communism and capitalism – would be the primary sources of international conflict. This attack pitting Islam and the West was seen as evidence of this new world view.
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One interesting modern phenomenon is the collapse in trust. According to the polls, people don’t trust the government, politicians, journalists and scientists, let alone bankers and business executives. Not even the Vatican has escaped this crisis of confidence.
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It’s all Barack Obama’s fault.
In 2014, the then-president of the United States declared – a bit disdainfully – that “Russia is a regional power that is threatening some of its immediate neighbors, not out of strength but out of weakness.”
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