A miserable overacting

The Spanish government has prepared to welcome a ship with people infected with hantavirus to the Canary Islands, and the baser passions of the right-wing parties have been unleashed. Without any contribution or information about a case that is in the hands of the health authorities, they have focused on the crude speculation with the memory of the incomparable and painful episode of covid. Anything goes to take advantage of the situation. But one thing is to play politics and another is to play politics by seeking to instill fear in citizens without any justification, only to weaken the adversary. A formula that demonstrates the poor awareness of politics and the scant consideration for people. A move that could backfire on them.

Feeding panic as a political strategy is an exercise in irresponsibility. If, moreover, it is done without any evidence, it is an exhibition of ignorance that only generates confusion and does not necessarily benefit those who revel in the noise. Opportunism has always been an expression of impotence and pettiness. It is the Feijóo style, although in this case it is Abascal who has broken a record for stupidity: "Sánchez is capable of creating a pandemic so that corruption is not discussed."

The human economy of desire is complex and largely determines our condition. We will always be different from AI because it will hardly have the intensity that passions and illusions grant to humans. One of the territories where the desire-frustration dynamic is often visible is politics. The objective is power, and between having it and not having it, people often lose their composure. Power structures society: no two people are equal, in any relationship there is a potential difference, a latent inequality present in any experience. From couples to work, from school to parties, from factories to politics, everywhere power, in its different manifestations, is a structural factor.

In politics, the democratic principle of access to power is the majority of votes, which tends to simplify the game by translating it into a black and white dynamic (the good guys –ours– and the bad guys –the others–). It is a logic that in democracy requires responsibility and care from adversaries, which the possessive dynamic of power makes difficult to maintain, for reasons including the interests represented by each of the actors. In a word, feeding panic in a case like the one we are dealing with is a miserable overreaction.