The serious risk of consuming Ignorital

A decade ago, the writers of The Simpsons did it again. They imagined a medicine that induced blind optimism. In the episode I’m mentioning, Lisa has to give a presentation at school about what Springfield will look like in fifty years.

Always responsible begins his investigation and ends by describing a black future for the city. Her presentation is so terrifying that her teachers, terrified, tell her parents to send her to a psychiatrist. The specialist, after seeing her, diagnosed her with “a profound despair of reality” and prescribed Ignorital.

With the help of the drug, Lisa’s perception of the world changes. Freed from her anguish, she transforms into a person with overwhelming optimism. Her clouds appear to him as smiling bears and, in her mind, she keeps playing the song “What a Wonderful World”.

But, so much optimism annoys his parents and faced with his delirium of happiness, they decide to suspend the dose of Ignorital. Marge and Homer realize that it is easier to deal with the pessimistic Lisa, than with the new one, the one with the unbridled optimism.

The idea that a medicine can help us ignore the negative parts of reality and make it possible for us to endure uncertainty is not limited to fiction.

For decades, science has tried to find a way to control the traumatic memories of war veterans or victims of other forms of violence. These studies sometimes indicate that the same drug that allows someone to forget about a traumatic event can be especially helpful for those who have experienced rape or some type of aberrational assault or sexual abuse.

But disturbing questions arise. If it is possible or desirable to erase only selected parts of the memory of victims, what would happen if those who perpetrate crimes or violent abuse access that class of drugs, to erase from their memory the damage caused to their victims and thus prevent identify or charge them.

This seems to be the case of the Government, which under the effects of the Ignorital, embraces the passion for ignorance and insists on denying the threat of a very serious conflict that puts the life and security of all Bolivians at risk, in order to later erase from its memory what they caused deliberately and negligently.

To complicate things even more, and this is not a disclaimer towards the official and opposition operators, both sides do not measure the consequences and, later, when Rome is burning, they will realize the loss and sitting on opposite sides, both sides, they will look at each other with lost eyes and their hands on their heads.

The pathetic thing is that the Government is dissociated and dislocated from reality due to the consumption of Ignorital and, scared to death, fervently embraces the passion for ignorance by causing gasoline shortages, generating blockades, causing hyperinflation due to the shortage of the family basket and a very long etcetera of dangers for the productive apparatus of the country.

The ruling party, happy in a field of flowers, minimizes the strikes and, dancing, calls a summit to legitimize its rigid position in order to later divide and confront. We have the truth. They don’t, they shout. Sure, the “we” take Ignorital; “they”, instead, black coffee.

Finally, doses of Ignorital also cause hallucinations, and government operators believe that launching a coordinated police operation to unblock the roundabouts into the streets will pacify Santa Cruz. Or better yet, they believe that by surrounding it and sending in shock groups they will win in the streets. San Quintín is coming, if you think that’s the way. But, of course, they are overmedicated and live in a parallel reality.