Horribilis gubernátio (a horrible way of governing)

Except honorable exceptions, a horrible way of governing has been imposed on us, one that punishes the vast majority of the population and destroys nature, from which we are just a part.

Economic systems are launched in a unbridled concentration of wealth, that leads to concentrating the power to decide, military power, media that misinform imposing a few kindred voices while many independent others strenuously try to be heard. The consequences are disastrous: a gigantic social and geopolitical inequality that is growing steadily, setback of popular and middle sectors, persistence of poverty and indigence, forced migrations, assault on natural resources, appropriation of good part of the value each one generates with effort. How long will the endless greed persist, the disdain for others, the primacy of rotten people, their accomplices and traitors? How to survive with economic violence, environmental violence, cultural violence and repressive violence?

Why this horrible way of governing?

Among several possible answers we can highlight the following:

  • Many governments just blatantly defend the interests of minority groups they are tributary to, especially capitals dedicated to financial speculation.
  • Some governments feel trapped by the context and consider that it is a lesser evil their submission to the approval of those who represent the hegemonic groups, even though the effects upon their peoples end up being devastating.
  • A good number of those who govern have been colonized by dominant ideologies and believe that concentrating polices will pull their countries out of crises and quagmires. For them, the social costs of putting in order the accounts and sustaining the reproduction of the prevailing order are inevitable (though they are not the ones that carry them). Even within their ideological perspective, a fairer option would be applying on the rich and powerful the cost of the adjustment, but they discard this solution knowing that those are the ones backing them up.
  • Other rulers are simply hypocrites, prone to lie and conceal what is not openly defendable, leaders that impose their personal interests, or those of their class or sector above the general wellbeing; they “go with the wind” and stick with the hegemonic powers.

How do they do it?

In other articles we have explored the genesis of the economic power that prevails in the world imposing a course and a way of functioning that reproduce privileges at the expense of the general wellbeing and the environment. To accomplish that, they take advantage of complicities in critical areas, such as the media and affined sector within politics, the judiciary, and the educational system. With them they shape public opinion, manipulate expectations, and install values and behaviors functional to an order presented as eternal and untouchable.

When they perceive a threat to their interests, the economic power mobilizes resources and uses legal trenches to preserve them. The repressive force they control is used as a dissuasive factor but, if needed, it is openly employed.

We should point out that there are also rulers that look for the general wellbeing defending the interests of vast majorities with dignity and courage; certainly a very different way of governing. Governments that promote transformations are faced with destabilizing operations that compromise their continuity or severely restrict their actions. Frequently they are subject to fiscal and foreign currency traps and, without force or courage to try other exits, are forced to over-indebt their countries. The more compromised the country’s situation, the harder the financial conditions that are imposed on it and more intrusive the conditionality they have to accept on their socioeconomic policies. In a context of perverse subordination and recurrent instability, the extraction of value reaches asphyxiating levels for the besieged country.

Search for options

It is not easy to reverse the course and the way of functioning that has been imposed as in imperfect democracies economic power weighs more than popular will. This is even worse if we consider the huge concentration degree of wealth and power that prevails in the world. In 2010, 388 individuals had as much wealth as other 3.5 billion human beings; today with the acceleration of the concentration those wealthiest individuals are just 62.

Is it necessary to explicit that there is no way to accumulate such fortunes just with one’s own effort? It is their huge market power what lets them appropriate good part of the value others generate. To accomplish this, they use a variety of well-known mechanisms, some of them illegal, others illegitimate.

Economic, environmental, and social equity limits have been crossed, from which it will be very hard to return; however, that is a critical challenge that we need to address during these turbulent times.

A factor that helps to better establish course and enlist popular support is elaborating a new referential utopia. Such construction is neither a theoretical speculation nor a simple wishful thinking; rather it sets a possible North, it is a strategic guide to orientate the own course and to evaluate the public policies that are presented by the different political movements. It is an instrument that can contribute to social clarification, a permanent work that tries to move beyond the apparent while adjusting to the changing circumstances. Its purpose is to understand why those facts and processes happen the way they do and, in each case, disentangling the consequences of the way the country is governed.

Transforming forces tend to be entrapped in divisions and sectarianisms frequently induced by those who see their privileges threaten, what weakens and disorientates the transforming action. It is crucial to stand up over eventual disconnections and work to align the diversity of interests that are usually presented in democratic regimes.

It is also worth noting that no social space (not even the hegemonic ones) is homogeneous, rather a diversity of interests and motivations unravels within them. Thus, it would be a costly mistake to treat all their members as if they were the same; it is better to discern interests and explore ways of realigning some of them in favor of the people’s interests.

They try to make us lose the course

What a tragedy when people are tricked by manipulators to give way to governments that infringes upon their interests! They have the economic power on their side (and many are part of that power); they count on the aforementioned complicities of hegemonic media that vilify their opponents and offer them a media shield to disguise mistakes and intentions; on some ankylosed sectors of the judiciary that obstruct every transforming attempt; on teams of lawyers, image advisors, publicists, cosmetologists to fulfill the imposture; on followers eager for jobs and perks, for figuration and traffic of influences.

What is most painful is the process mounted by concentrated groups to colonize minds and emotions of people of goodwill that are led to act against their own interests. They are not accomplices but workers, middle class sectors, small entrepreneurs, candid people bombarded by lies and tricks smuggled as truths. Political movements and governments that infringe upon popular interests cannot openly defend their actions; they need to conceal their intentions and disguise the consequences of the policies they manage to impose.

It is another turn on the opprobrious concentration of wealth, of increasing inequality, of perpetuating poverty that they say (and who would not?) they want to eliminate. It is also the harassment of local leaderships that try to resist the abandonment, disgrace, loss of rights that have been conquered with hard effort; those that maintain the dignity of raising their voices, expressing the grief and anguish that overwhelms them, showing rejection to the impose course and that another is the desired one for the country and their families.

It is a horrible way of governing and the costs with those policies fall on the most vulnerable people. Or is it that someone has seen power groups leave their luxuries, give away their irritating privileges, and renounce to their ostentatious ways of living?

It is clear that there is no room for giving up, that it is critical to know and remind us that there are other options and ways of governing, that the setbacks are temporal, that they may help to review our own mistakes (that are not a few), that they call on widening the coalitions and enhancing everything that can be enhance as much as possible.

It is impossible to ignore that united we stand, divided we fall and that it would be suicidal to doze off as the processes neither wait nor stop for us. And a necessary reflection to end these lines: they will do whatever they can to make us avert our gaze and energies from the great villainies; they will provoke subsidiary conflicts to use them to conceal the terrible economic measures that will subdue us with rudeness.

It is a horrible way of governing the one that promotes greed instead of solidarity, which needs our alienation to accelerate senselessly, that conceives a society with a minority deciding and the rest forced to follow their lead, that detracts what is meaningful and deifies banality. It is a horrible way of governing the one that lies, cheats, builds falsehoods and tries to make us lose the course.

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