Joel Bowman with today’s Note From the End of the World:
“You foreigners are always surprised by corruption scandals,” our taxi driver wore a knowing smile. “We Argentines, we are only surprised that you are surprised at all.”
We’re traveling today, dear reader, en route back to Buenos Aires after a delightful sojourn down in Patagonia with visiting family. What would draw us away from such peaceful settings, you ask? The pristine natural surroundings? The birdsong of an evening and light dusting of snow on the balcony each morning? The rush of clean, mountain air into the lungs?
Why, the all-too-human world of politics, of course!
We are, as Aristotle reminds us, “social animals” after all. Man exists not as a discrete, independent entity, separated from his fellow man, but to live amongst his kind, to trade and cooperate… else to war and plunder. In the end, there is no “getting away” from it.
“Just because you do not take an interest in politics,” warned the Greek statesman, Pericles, “doesn’t mean politics won't take an interest in you.”
And so, this weekend, the world-weary Argentines will drag themselves to the voting booths to engage in that grand old experiment known as democracy… what their greatest writer, Borges, called “an abuse of statistics.” They will cheer and they will rally… they will protest and parade… they will gather around the Plaza del Congreso, downtown, to “make their voices heard.”
The Demos
The provincial election is being cast as a critical litmus test for libertarian leader, Javier Milei, whose administration was recently rocked by a bribery scandal that allegedly implicates the president’s sister and closest ally, Karina Milei. The opposing Peronists, establishment politicians who maintain control in the populous Buenos Aires province, are hoping to deliver a huge blow to the administration’s momentum ahead of the upcoming midterm elections, due in late October.
Milei’s supporters, meanwhile, see the allegations as par for the course… textbook ‘campaña sucia’ or ‘dirty campaign’ from a party that never met a moral bar so low they couldn’t slither and limbo beneath it. Milei is derailing the governmental gravy train, and in doing so has made himself powerful enemies, both within the political establishment, the lapdog media, the corrupt unions, captured academies, and among corporate donors and backdoor beneficiaries from the Andes to the Atlantic.
These groups have good reason to be fearful. Milei’s free market approach represents an existential threat to la casta and the parasites that comprise it... here and abroad. For if such an ideology were to take firm root down at this End of the World… and to deliver Argentina from the poorhouse to the penthouse along the way… citizens in other countries might take notice, too.
They might even begin to question their own statist quo. And then, they might toss their own so-called leaders out on their culos, too.
And wouldn’t that be a pleasant surprise?
We’ll have more from the frontlines next week. Watch this space…
And now for your Notes From the End of the Week…
Final Notes…
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As always, stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…
Cheers,
Joel Bowman
