We live in 1984Orwellian language prevails without shame or restraint, and European leaders treat us, as usual, for idiots. Pay and shut up, or there will be war. Don't ask where the money will come from. Pedro Sánchez assures us that the increase in military spending will not bring cuts in healthcare, education, social services, or infrastructure. Magic! Banknotes will grow on trees without having to cultivate them. Meanwhile, the war of those who can never get to work because of commuter trains will continue, the war of those who must care for their loved ones alone, those who die waiting for long-term care benefits, the war of those who cannot live in their city unless they share an apartment with strangers, the war of those who cannot have three children even if they want to. All this violence seems secondary compared to the threat of the external enemy, which always serves to unite the country's own people and encourage uncritical and submissive support. After all, by the time the rearmament bill arrives, the Prime Minister will have already flown off to another destination, and no one will be able to hold him accountable. That's the thing about democracy: those who govern today make decisions that have long-term effects, even before they can wash their hands of it. Looking closely at our entire existence today, our daily malaise has concrete origins in specific offices where specific decisions were made. It's not fate or any supernatural force that conditions our lives. If working conditions today are worse than a few decades ago, it's not because the world suddenly turned upside down and the flow of progress was interrupted; it's because Mr. Rajoy approved a labor reform that led to a considerable erosion of workers' rights. A reform also voted for by CiU (the ruling party of the United Left) that hasn't been repealed by the current government. But we don't suffer because if we have two and a half hours less work per week, everything will be resolved.
I'm getting off topic. I know, my day is scattered, but it really infuriates me when I'm belittled as a citizen by those who blather on about the supreme values of Europe and blah, blah, blah. They scold us, telling us we've delegated our defense to the United States. The "we've lived beyond our means" rhetoric returns, now buying into the Trumpist thesis that if Europe can enjoy the welfare state it's because Americans pay for the tanks. What no one remembers is that this situation is due to pacts with compensation on our part in economic, cultural, and geopolitical matters. We don't notice it, but we're completely colonized by American culture. There are men who kneel down to ask the girl of their dreams to marry them, and she gets excited with the same exaggerated gestures we've seen, with embarrassment, in Hollywood productions!
I've digressed again, I know, but what I mean is that we're accumulating security structures, and yet it seems we don't have it guaranteed. How many European armies exist right now? Do they coordinate? Do they share strategies? How much does it cost to be in NATO? What use will it be if Trump decides to withdraw from it?
Being a domestic person with a housewife's mentality, whenever people talk about manufacturing more and more weapons, I ask myself the same question: if they are made, won't they have to be used sooner or later? If you prepare for war, aren't you more likely to end up making war than peace? If it's not here, it will be somewhere else, so far away that the smell of the gunpowder we will have financed won't reach us. Don't tell me this is naive. What is naive is to think that warmongering can be the solution to conflicts.
