President Arce’s ad hominem fallacy

Faced with people’s desperation due to the lack of dollars and the irregular distribution of fuel for heavy machinery, the national government is taking on the task of finding the blame for all the ills outside its sphere of power, in others. In the words of a vice-minister: “bad businessmen and industrialists are acting politically to economically suffocate the Government through speculation on the prices of the family basket.” Without a doubt, an easy and weak discursive reaction to evade government responsibility.

Many democratic and non-democratic governments hear (for the photo), but do not listen; in fact, they refute any speech that comes from an enemy or adversary because they consider it mediocre and conspiratorial.

If someone who is not part of their power circle puts forward a hypothesis (based on empirical evidence) about dramatic future scenarios, they do not analyse its content, they only want to acknowledge and shout from the rooftops their political intention: to destabilise the government. This is what is known as the ad hominem fallacy (against the man).

A structural problem of the Arce government is that it does not know how to listen. It applies the aforementioned fallacy perfectly. The president is against the “opinion makers.” In his words (4 months ago), “There are no economic foundations that make one think of an economic crisis, as I have seen from some opinion makers, who are alarming, but have no basis.” He identifies them with two attributes: neoliberals and traitors.

Although the “opinion makers”, especially in the energy and economic areas, have long warned about what we are experiencing today: reduction of gas reserves and consequent shortage of foreign currency, plus the damage caused by excessive public spending on state-owned companies with losses, the government continues to ignore them. Possibly, the two attributes mentioned are sufficient reasons not to take their recommendations into account.

In the context of the internal division of the MAS, the president accuses the former president of being the cause of the disaster, and at the same time, Evo accuses Arce of not having the capacity to govern. Both want to avoid personal responsibility by blaming others. The average citizen probably has a clearer idea of ​​who the real culprits are.

In times of crisis (decision) it is necessary and urgent to listen to the demands of the people and the words of experts in order to act accordingly. It is urgent to get out of this unsustainable status quo because social unrest is what is growing the most. Even more so when the pre-election cycle has accelerated and all scenarios are becoming politicized.

Politicization does not help to clarify the situation, but rather obfuscates it. This is as dangerous as not knowing how to listen and mistakenly believing that “the others” are the bad guys.