Our World Has Swallowed That Old Poison: Politics Based On Blind Faith

-OpEd-

BUENOS AIRES — When U.S. President Donald Trump created the White House Faith Office in early February, it reminded me of the Happiness Ministry created by Venezuela’s late socialist leader, Hugo Chávez: both are useless, paradoxical and redundant. The idea of a presidential faith adviser is also reminiscent of Chávez’s successor, President Nicolás Maduro, begging Christ’s forgiveness for his government’s sins: equally implausible and cynical.

Are these theatrical or fanatical characters? Are they funny or frightening? They’re certainly trending, as the world is plagued with leaders invoking the greatness of God or Allah, kissing icons or invoking forces from heaven. Is this a good sign?

No, it’s pure irrationality, unilateralism, protectionism; it is simplicity, vulgarity and above all, arrogance. Let me repeat what I have already written: The 2020s are starting to look an awful lot like the 1920s. I know, history isn’t a supermarket. Its products are more varied perhaps, and the ones that look the same are not necessarily identical. I know that, only the similarities today are unnerving.

In the early 20th century, a long period of progress and innovation, migrations and globalization first produced a revolutionary catharsis, then a reactionary reboot. Both were reactionary and totalitarian in nature — and irrational; both the communists and fascists demanded faith and obedience, and promised struggle.

There is no Hitler without Lenin, no Lenin without war, and no war without irrationalism, unilateralism and protectionism. One hundred years ago, the positivist dogmas, which had touted steady material progress, dissolved in the face of the mystical ebb and flow. The excesses of rationality succumbed to a religious rebirth, free trade to tariffs and democracy in to the big boss.

Tech-savvy Goebbels?

Have we returned to those times? The revolutionaries and reactionaries may see themselves as opposites, but they are in fact quite similar. Reason and criticism find themselves bowing to certainty, conformity and convictions. Tribal hatred fuels a culture war; social media imposes “the people’s wisdom” on the presumptions of intellectuals.

Technology is advancing relentlessly but anti-modernism is also spreading unchecked.

These are the modern equivalents of pulpits, megaphones, pamphlets, street rallies and radio proclamations. The shouting silences reflection; social media likes silence opinion.

The Goebbels and Zhdanovs of our time are more tech savvy, but they’re still propagandists, doing the same work: manipulating words, inventing gestures, creating rituals, seeking out scapegoats, founding new faiths, etc. The “inclusive” ones want to impose their language on us, but the “exclusive” ones forbid it. How about we all speak as we please?

Technology is advancing relentlessly but anti-modernism is also spreading unchecked. Is that a paradox? Not at all: It’s a matter of cause and effect, and inherently human. We prefer conservation to innovation, which we instinctively oppose with snobbery, moral disapproval and nostalgia.

Always a conspiracy

Do you think the “people” applauded the invention of the printing press? Many people are still skeptical about Darwin’s theory of evolution. Others lambasted railways and cable cars. And as for space missions today — what about all the problems on Earth?

The more innovative a time, the more its innovation disrupts, technology disgraces, science scandalizes. They destroy jobs and erode social ties, after all! They corrupt the human spirit and conceal shady interests. These are all tools the powerful use against the weak, the elites use against the people.

Collective intelligence will succumb to collective ignorance.

There’s always a conspiracy afoot. If it’s not capitalism, its woke; though both sides seemingly agree, prejudice trumps science, rumors beat research and suspicions have more truth than evidence.

Nothing better expresses the spirit of the times than the reactions to the environmental crisis. Is the planet warming? Is human activity, at least in part, to blame? The evidence is clear. What should we do? Try to combine science and environmentalism, make economics and ecology compatible? No way! It is either a case of believing that the end is nigh and despising all civilization, or seeing a vast plot by progressives, the crooked Left and their mercenary science, so “drill, baby, drill.”

What’s ahead

With Trump’s withdrawing the United States from the World Health Organization, you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. Criticizing it is easy to win, but it gains nothing. Denying its usefulness and necessity is cheap demagogy that targets research, information, experimentation and cooperation. Health, like the environment, is a global problem that, like it or not, can only be addressed globally. If it doesn’t solve anything, the United States, the greatest scientific power on the planet, makes a fool of itself and those who imitate it: Giorgia Meloni’s Italy and Javier Milei’s Argentina.

I don’t know what this irrationalist wave will lead to; I only know what we already see: Public debate is reduced to a confrontation between supporters, each armed with their faith and their conspiracy theories; rational debate has been thrown out the window — along with the scientific method: observation, experimentation, verification, argumentation.

Collective intelligence will succumb to collective ignorance, to the possessed cries of the most cynical and daring, the most adventurous and unscrupulous.

Then the specter of the 20th century will really loom over us. Common sense and sensibility are the weapons of resistance. Religious politics is already on the verge of becoming political religion. And political religion does not admit dissent or heresy, only ironclad orthodoxy. And that’s when freedom dies.