Rolando Cordera Campos: The lessons not learned

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a lot of us remains to be understood and learned from the harsh and even cruel experiences suffered since the great recession of 2008 crowned, until now, by the pandemic that broke out in 2020 and forced the world to close its economy to avoid a major disaster.

For now, the apocalypse heralded by many has not arrived and, surprisingly, we have been able to appreciate the existence of technical and political reserves in various societies and States, as well as some social dispositions to cooperate and follow certain collective guidelines that many already considered outdated. in the heat of the neoliberal individualist fever that has prevailed in a good part of the world.

However, as the economist Paul Krugman warns us, it should also be clear that the economy of the 21st century is not as robust as believed and that in its somersaults it can give rise to phenomena that were largely assumed to be contained, such as inflation or the collapse of supply chains that until yesterday were seen as immovable.

Likewise, the storms that have fallen on the world teach us that it is only possible to face them if, and only if, there are common visions and convictions, as well as a wealth to share, so that they can be the basis for a sort of Hobbesian resurrection and rediscoveries of the world. State to avoid falling into the state of nature that the English scholar studied.

Faced with the probability of new avalanches of contagion, with major and minor failures in politics, the economy and the States and with greater evidence of a new global recession, which would reinforce the corrosive tendencies that seem to have taken over the present and the future, it is Unified and legitimate command is crucial, as is support in scientific and technological knowledge. Knowledge and rediscoveries that, however, face the spread of irrational thinking that not only haunts science and its applications, but also denies, and denies, the need for democratic politics and instead ponders the uses of various authoritarian modalities embodied by capitalisms with state partysuch as China, which is now seeking to correct its tremendous policy errors and recover its sore economy, or the empire of dictatorial personalities such as in Hungary or Turkey and which, on our continent, are claimed by both the Trump coup leaders and the Brazilians, as well as the Sinister Nicaraguan couple and the destructive Maduro in Venezuela.

And we? On the one hand, the leadership of the State does not seem to have taken note of these great global disruptive trends that underlie the recessive drives, corrosive of coexistence and enemies of the common good as a unifying objective. Their repeated presumptions about the strength of the economy that they make equivalent to that of the peso, without a secretary who dares to rectify such a mistake, speak to us of a supine misunderstanding of the enormous difficulty involved in managing the economy. Their refusal to discuss and deliberate, pairs them with those denialist and isolationist inclinations typical of authoritarianism, and their attacks on the academic and scientific communities can only reinforce their confinement in themselves.

The new call from Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau about the decisive place that energy has continues to be ignored in the Palace, and the commitment that the government claims to have with the construction of a rule of law when it is declared remains to be seen. sees eroded to the marrow by corruption and the permanent onslaught of crime. Lessons that neither seem to be in the school government curriculum nor would we pass it in a proficiency exam.

Bad hour; It remains for us to prevent it from becoming a bad year and an ominous horizon. And defend democratic politics.