The unbearable lightness of star politicians

At home, I was taught a value that seems out of this world: if you do a good deed selflessly, bragging about it takes away all its value. If you give alms, or do a gift, or perform a favor, bragging about your generosity automatically turned it into what we would call today. self-promotionThat is, in personal promotion, investment in one's own reputation. That is, in publicity and, in the case of power, in pure and simple propaganda. That's why even the bloodthirsty Hassan II occasionally granted a handful of pardons and presented himself to his subjects as clement and merciful (which are the two most repeated attributes when referring to God in Islam). In the age of social media and virality, the ethic of altruism instilled in me by the women in my family seems completely obsolete. In politics, social movements, and activism, we see sincerely committed people who dedicate their time, energy, and efforts to transforming the world they live in out of deep conviction. You'll recognize them because their vocational involvement probably doesn't pay off, and they'll surely often wonder if the daily confrontation with much more powerful forces is worth it. But the thought quickly dissipates because there's so much work to be done, and doubts are left for private conversation. I think of so many feminist organizations working from the grassroots, so many organizations dedicated to child poverty, all those doctors who go to remote areas to practice their profession, but also of the teachers, social workers, and nurses who care for forgotten people in forgotten neighborhoods that no one cares about. Of course, it's their job, but it's not the same thing for a family doctor to answer "I don't know what you're talking about" than for her to listen to you with her full attention, even if it's only for five minutes. I have placed all my hopes for humanity in these tremendously useful people who never appear on television or make a living. tiktoks showing his heroism in the office, in the classroom or wherever he is.

At the other extreme, we have public figures who claim to champion the causes they champion, but we don't see exactly what their commitment translates into. I think of Gabriel Rufián, who promised he would leave Congress in 18 months when Catalonia achieved independence and now he's going to solve our housing problems, or Ada Colau, who didn't solve the housing issue in Barcelona but stopped a genocide with her Mediterranean cruise and now parades around every mayor's office because the Comuneros (Commons) have decided to change the ethical code that prevented it. I can be accused, and I recognize that I am, of being excessively harsh with this generation of politicians, but they are the last to deceive us, and they have done it very well. We no longer expected anything from the two-party system. They had disappointed us and, depending on the circumstances, betrayed the interests of those citizens whose rights they claimed to defend. Like idiots, we fell into the arms of an empty and simplistic populism sustained by star individuals whom we ourselves had turned into idols. We foolishly thought this was the tip of the iceberg. That the slogans, the constant display, the addiction to the spotlight and the media were the visible part of a solid program that would transform our lives. But the new politics was nothing more than that: publicity for its starlets that reverts to themselves and only them, and a mere product of the culture of spectacle in which we live and have been raised.