Jordi Juan – Director of La Vanguardia
08/01/2021 00:05 Updated to 08/01/2021 08:51
A voter, about to deposit her ballot in a ballot box – Àlex Garcia
The shameful images of the assault on the Capitol should be a turning point in the abuse by supposedly democratic leaders of all the power and influence they hold to manipulate public opinion. But unfortunately, we can conclude that this is not over and that the future may bring equal or more unpleasant incidents. So far, scenes of mobs breaking into parliaments and forcing legality is something we could get used to seeing in banana republics in South America. But we could hardly imagine that we would see them in Washington. And we must insist on remembering that the toll has been at least five deaths, but the tragedy could have been much greater.
Everything that happens in the United States, for better or for worse, has an immediate impact on the whole planet, and for this reason Wednesday’s explosion of anger caused a deep shock that was reminiscent, to say the least, of the attacks of September 11th. The big question is whether this impact can really change the trend in many countries of the globe of continuing to encourage populisms such as that of Trump or other similar leaders who, let us not forget, have come to power through support at the polls. The answer lies with experts in politics, sociology, or philosophy, but what is really happening leads to very disturbing conclusions. Today we have political leaders of superpowers who have no problem perpetuating themselves in power while poisoning their political rivals or others who send thousands of people to re-educate themselves in concentration camps because they are of different ethnic groups from their own. And nothing happens.
Thousands of citizens are outraged that the expectations of progress they thought they saw have not been met and this collective frustration is translated into a campaign of harassment against the so-called establishment, the lifelong liberal democracy. The only way out they find is through the siren calls of populist leaders like Trump, which lead them to irrationality. Acts like those on Capitol Hill confirm that sanity is absent, and it will take a long time to regain it.
https://www.lavanguardia.com/opinion/20210108/6173031/ausencia-cordura.html
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