The danger is that politicians are crazy – 03/03/2019

We say "politics" and what is the first word that comes to your mind? "Chorro"? "Liar"? "Opportunistic"? "Inept"? "Imbécil"? Something like that would be normal, or "racist, rogue and misleading," as the former lawyer said this week. Donald Trump who was his master for 12 years.

But it's an injustice to evaluate them that way. There are decent, intelligent and well-meaning men, of course, yes. Even more alarming is the possibility that politicians who appear to be simply diabolical or useless suffer from a much more serious problem: they are insane.

Among the list of candidates who came to me like that without thinking too much would of course be Trump himself, but also Nicolás Maduro, Cristina Kirchner, Daniel Ortega and Theresa May. No special observations are required to point to the first four. The fifth name would not have included it until a week ago. I have been writing for some time and I say that there is something worthy of respect in the perseverance of the British Prime Minister. Voted against Brexit in the June 2016 referendum, Brexit won. Since then, he has pledged to "obey the will of the people" and to pull the United Kingdom out of the European Union on March 29, as promised.

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Monday to Friday morning.

The light went on last Sunday at breakfast. I was thinking about the Oscars and the mediocrity of the best film candidates this year. And then, I thought of director David Lean, who only directed masterpieces, such as Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Zhivago and The Bridge over the Kwai River, especially The Bridge. on the Kwai River, whose protagonist, if I understood correctly, was Theresa May in the version Soldier British prisoner during the Second World War in a Japanese concentration camp.

Those who watched the movie will remember that Colonel Nicholson, played by Alec Guinness, was the first rebel against the order of the prison commander to build a strategic railway bridge for the Japanese army. The colonel then changed his mind and decided that the construction of the bridge would be beneficial to the morale and discipline of the imprisoned soldiers, all under his command, as well as a means of demonstrating to the Japanese the superior creativity in engineering. British. The Japanese commander imposes a deadline to finish the job and Nicholson goes crazy. He is obsessed with completing the task in time, blind to the terrible reality that he is helping the enemy and betraying his country.

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Theresa May has also initially rebelled against Brexit. He then found himself at the head of the government and decided that negotiating an agreement authorizing the British exit from the European Union on the agreed date was his national duty. He managed to negotiate an agreement. The problem is that it has not proved to be the taste nor the brexiteros, let alone those who still dream of being able to go back and continue in the EU. But this was the best result that may have been achieved, and perhaps the best that anyone could have done given the impossible dilemma of reconciling the political desire of the majority to leave Europe with the economic desire to avoid poorer.

At one point, May probably understood, like Colonel Nicholson, that moving his project forward was not a recommended idea.

But the moment has pbaded and he has forgotten. She could have been honest with her compatriots and had a speech in which she confessed that the only possible deal with the EU would mean, in the best of cases, limiting the political and economic damage that Brexit inevitably entails. What May could have done was to resign, pointing out that her conscience did not allow her to drive the train to the precipice.

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But no. And for this reason, history will remain etched in history as a person whose stubbornness hid a sad moral and intellectual narrowness. As the film's colonel, May has entered the tunnel of his obsession and lost not only all perspectives but any notion of what is true or is a lie.

It could be forgiven if there was not so much at stake. We all fell into obsessions of this kind at some point. Pride, love, greed or, simply, despair have sometimes led us down the path of bitterness. Perhaps the best thing to say about May is that she suffers from a temporary disorder, a result of the impossible circumstances to which fate has condemned her. When all this is over, I will be able to regain lucidity and exclaim, like Colonel Nicholson at the end of the bridge over the Kwai River: "What did I do?" and leave the darkness that surrounds them. They believe in it. They believe they are honest and conscientious. They believe that they are ready. They believe that they possess more than anyone the virtues necessary to advance their people. They believe in the existence of fearsome enemies that they are the only ones to be able to defeat. The question is whether they think what they say is true. Because they believe it, it would be the scientific and infallible proof that they are really crazy.

I suspect that, like many leaders throughout history, they are people who live in an invented reality in which 1 plus 1 is three; in which they see themselves as chosen, courageous and brilliant beings, when reality demonstrates every day their abysmal mediocrity; in which numerous police evidence shows that they are crooks, liars and thieves, but that they are still convinced of their nobility and innocence; in which the windmills – or the famished Honduran families, or the proverbial Yankee imperialism – are giants who threaten national security.

After all, the worst is not that politicians are crazy. The worst thing is that the people who believe them and vote them are also crazy.