The Fall of President Woke

From Boric to Milei: The mountainous divide between freedom and progressivism in South America...

(The myopia of the woke left: Getty Images)

Joel Bowman, with today’s Note From the End of the World: Santiago de Chile...

“We’ll skip Friday this week,” we explained to dear daughter ahead of our flight west over the vast Pacific Ocean, “but we’ll pick it up again on the Hanoi-to-Houston return in a few months.”

One of the convenient realities of living on a sphere is that, no matter where you stand, you are always at the End of the World. Whether you’re in São Paulo or San Francisco, Cape Town or Copenhagen, Brisbane or Baltimore, there is just as much of the planet’s circumference stretched out before you as behind you. That in mind, we’ve decided to take these Notes (and our intrepid readers) along with us on this year’s walkabout. Welcome aboard! 

Your editor and his peripatetic “away schooling” family arrived in Chile’s bustling capital city a couple of days ago, with the idea of resting up before the onward odyssey. Santiago is the last stop this side of the world’s largest body of water. From here, it’s a 15hr direct flight – across the magical international date line – to Melbourne, Australia. 

Home to some 7 million souls (about 40% of the country’s total population), Santiago de Chile is a sprawling metropolis, full of vibrant art museums, impressive cathedrals, glass skyscrapers and fine seafood restaurants. Set against the spectacular Andes Mountains, it is sometimes called “the City of the Island Hills.” 

(The Andes Mountains, seen from the terrace of Bar Singular in Santiago de Chile and the plane flight inbound. Photos: Dear wifey)

The Left-Wrong Divide

That great, mountainous divide between Chile and neighboring Argentina is not only geological....it’s ideological, too. It’s the kind of fundamental difference that expresses itself politically, economically, and culturally. While the Chileans have a reputation for being a steady, hardworking, sensible bunch, for example, their latino cousins over the range are known for their flair, their dramatics and, consequently, their wildly oscillating fortunes. 

There is the usual, (mostly) friendly rivalry between the two nations, rooted in epic football matchups and historic land disputes, particularly in the sparsely populated southern regions, where the adjacent nations divide the very tip of the continent. The Argentines, whose side of the point is called Tierra del Fuego (Land of Fire), even have a saying about their neighbors. When calling someone out for a mistruth, they’ll craftily declare “you lie like a Chilean cartographer!” No doubt the Chileans have similar jibes.  

The politics, too, both historically and at present, are wildly divergent from one side of the Andes to the other. While Argentina is right now enjoying a spectacular resurgence of liberty, thanks to the rise and rise of Señor Javier Milei, Chile’s “student socialist leader,” Gabriel Boric, has had a tough time realizing his utopian, post-capitalist fantasies. 

Sr. Boric was elected president back in 2022, much to the weak-kneed cheerleading of progressives in the western press, who dubbed him the world’s first “woke president.” Boric was, according to the obsequious tools at The Washington Post, “a voice for those who had long been mostly left out of this South American nation’s politics: Women, the Indigenous, the LGBT community.”

President Woke

Barely had President Boric (he/him) time to pick out the rainbow drapes in the presidential palace when fawning establishment bullhorns were lining up to pen crayon fluff pieces on the “millennial powerhouse.” 

Along with his transpacific co-darling of the left, Jacinda “Your Single Source of Truth” Ardern, Boric was the toast of enlightened, establishment blowhards and climate catastrophists around the globe both during his campaign and well into the honeymoon phase of his presidency.

Reporting on Boric’s election (against a “far-right” candidate, naturally), The Economist dutifully applauded their sensitive hombre nuevo. 

“Chile’s new president promises to bury neoliberalism” fawned the saccharine headline, before the author daring to wonder (#Brave): “Will Gabriel Boric, a millennial socialist, be as good as his word?” 

(Spoiler alert: No.) 

Boric’s vision for the future of Chile might easily have been plagiarized from a Critical Race Theory 101 class. (And so what if it was? The president has publicly confessed he struggles with obsessive–compulsive disorder, so... you know...don’t be a fascist!) 

Accordingly, in September of 2022, Boric’s administration proposed a “woke constitution” that, according to the aforementioned WaPo article, “would enshrine many of the priorities of the social movements led by the younger generations: Gender equality, environmental protections, Indigenous [sic] rights, and guaranteed access to education.”

The constitution was “also one of the first in the world to be drafted in the context of a climate crisis, and to be written by a convention with gender parity. It recognizes the sentience of animals, and their ‘right to live a life free from abuse.’”

Your carnivorous editor said a quiet prayer over dinner last night, giving thanks that Boric’s nonsensical gibberish did not make it past the public’s goalkeeper: common sense. Then we proceeded to ignore the “sentience” of a plate of sea scallops and the “right to life” of a delicious rockfish. A dozen oysters were also “abused” during the course of the meal. 

As cruel fate would have it, Boric’s “woke constitution” was being voted down in a historic referendum right about the same moment a rather untimely cover article in TIME Magazine was hitting shelves around the world. 

Reliably Wrong

Titled “The New Guard,” the profile photo featured a steely-eyed Boric with his sleeves ceremonially rolled up in that universally accepted pose assumed by politicians everywhere when they want actual workers to know they’re ready to “get things done.”  (Bonus millennial points for the tattoos.)

Another photo showcased Boric in a more familiar millennial position... that is, blindly wandering the halls of the palace with his head in his phone, no doubt posting a ritualistic land acknowledgment, given that the presidential office is inconveniently located in La Moneda, the old colonial mint, which produced the nation’s coinage from 1814-1929...

As is their wont, TIME Magazine raised the fan flag at the exact top of Boric’s political bull run. President Woke has since suffered not one, but two constitutional reform failures, witnessed scandal after scandal among his closest political allies, and seen the rise of violent crime, a key area of concern for voters. Last year, the reliably robust economy managed an anemic 0.2% GDP growth. (It had averaged 3.7% annual growth in the decade 2010-2020.)

It is little wonder, then, that today Boric governs with one of the lowest approval ratings on the continent. According to a Cadem poll published last week, roughly two-thirds of Chilean voters reject Boric’s management. Another survey, released by Pulso Cuidadano, put his disapproval at 62.2%.

Meanwhile, back across that great dividing range, the Morning Consult Global Leader Approval Tracker has Javier Milei at 66% approval rating among voters.

Whether in business of politics, on one side of the Andes or the other, the reality remains the same: Go Woke, Go Broke.

Stay tuned for more Notes From the End of the World…

Cheers,

Joel Bowman

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