“He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.”
– George Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four
The above is almost always true. Unless, of course, one is an incompetent clown.
Normally, when a government, even within the structures of a democracy, has complete control of the presidency and both houses of congress, one expects that the country will move vigorously to get large projects done, projects that need true political unity, and take huge forward strides. This would be especially true in a case such as Argentina under the Kirchners, where the single-party domination has lasted for more than a decade.
Unless, of course, one is an incompetent clown – or a circus full of incompetent clowns, as in this case.
OnJuly 30th, 2014, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s populist government has taken its reign to a new low mark by driving the country into an unnecessary, shortsighted default of the national debt. It may be a disaster for the country, but it is a fitting exclamation point to Argentina’s lost decade. There is no question: this, more than any of the other errors, are what will be remembered about the Kirchner era.
Now how did we get here?
Well, if you ask the government today, they’ll probably shout something about having inherited the mess from the previous administrations… but ten years on, is anyone with a minimum of sense going to believe them?
I don’t think so, and therein lies a clue to the explanation. You see, Kirchner’s government – mostly Cristina’s but her late husband, ex-president Néstor Kirchner was also guilty of this at times – has decided that, when reality doesn’t coincide with the party line, then reality is wrong.
The largest obvious indicator of this is the way the government has systematically lied about the real inflation that was measured in the country. While various extremely trustworthy metrics exist, the “official” inflation was always about 10% of the independent metrics. The reason this was so clownish was that anyone with a notebook and a calculator could go out into the street and measure the real price changes. Of course, if you did that, the government would call you delusional.
So, if it was so obvious, why did they insist?
Well, it has to do with what this government sees as success. The model we all want to follow is Venezuela.
Now, I don’t know about you, but when I’m shown an oil-rich country in which there isn’t enough toilet paper to go around because of the mismanagement of the economy, my first thought is: “look, more clowns!” But that is the circus which Cristina is molding her fantasy clown world government on…
Well, the delusion has come around and bit them. Sadly, it will also bite 40 million Argentines as well. The people who voted for this populist government – generally, poorer folks, less able to actually analyze issues and make intelligent decisions – are going to be the hardest hit. They aren’t educated enough to really deserve it, however. They trusted a government to guide them, and that government defrauded that trust while trying to live in a utopia that died with the fall of the Berlin wall. Their delusions are going to mean real hardships for people who mistakenly trusted them.
So, not just incompetent clowns. Evil incompetent clowns. Clowns who are so incompetent that, despite the billions of (ever-less-valuable) taxpayer pesos they’ve spent trying to make their citizens believe that reality is what it isn’t they can’t change the past… or the future. If you listen to them, it’s clear they don’t even know what’s going on in the present.
Well, the only good thing about them is they haven’t started a war, unlike other clownish governments the world over. Probably don’t have fuel for the tanks.
Classically Educated 