Mes: noviembre 2020

Do extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence?

DO EXTRAORDINARY CLAIMS REQUIRE EXTRAORDINARY EVIDENCE?

No, absolutely not.

First, there’s a definitional issue. What’s an “extraordinary claim” and what’s “extraordinary evidence?” Those terms are almost never defined by the proponents of the slogan, which means they’re free to adjust the meaning at anytime and push the burden of proof higher and higher.

Second, if the slogan were true, we could hardly ever have confidence in a whole bevy of extraordinarily improbable events, like Neil Armstrong walking on the moon.

Or consider a person winning the lottery, who we’ll call “Don.” Let’s say Don tells you he won the mega million lottery. Is that an extraordinary claim? Yes, certainly from a probability standpoint it’s very unlikely Don won the million dollar lottery. But does that mean you need “extraordinary evidence” to believe that it is likely that Don is telling the truth? No, of course not. Regular evidence, like Don’s winning lottery ticket, would suffice.

Third, the fatal flaw is that although the slogan is catchy, it fails to appreciate all of the factors needed to asses the probability that an event occurred. One factor forgotten by the slogan is the likelihood that if the extraordinary event had not occurred, what’s the probability that we’d have the evidence that we currently do suggesting the unlikely event’s occurrence?

So, let’s go back to the lottery for a moment. Consider a pick in the Mega Ball Million, for which the odds are 300 million to one. If the slogan were absolutely true, the evidence presented by the nightly news claiming to have the winning number would be swamped by the improbability that the reported pick was in fact the winning number.

But in assessing the likelihood that the news reported the winning number correctly, one question to ask is, what’s the likelihood that the news would’ve announced that particular number if it were not in fact the winning ticket? If that probability is sufficiently low, it can counterbalance any intrinsic improbability in the reported number itself.

So the evidence that it takes to counteract the low probability of a reported winning lottery number needn’t be enormous or unusual at all, which is why you’ve probably never questioned the reported lottery pick. Rational thinking tells you it just needs to be more probable given the truth of the hypothesis than its falsehood.

So, let’s apply this to the election. One question to ask in assessing the claims of a stolen election is what’s the likelihood that in all contested states, there would be dozens of eyewitnesses attesting to fraud and numerous statistical irregularities strongly indicative of fraud, if election fraud (extraordinary event) did not occur?

Like with the lottery, if the probability is sufficiently low that we would not have dozens of witnesses swearing to fraud and numerous statistical indicators of fraud unless fraud had in fact occurred — then normal evidence of fraud is sufficient to counteract the intrinsic improbability of a stolen presidential election.

Recap: the phrase “extraordinary claims requires extraordinary evidence” is pithy, but logically problematic. In my experience, it’s often used to deceive people during a debate by allowing the proponent to shift the burden of evidence higher and higher without ever fully considering all probabilities involved in assessing the truth of the claim based on the known evidence.

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Although the slogan is catchy, it fails to appreciate all of the factors needed to asses the probability that an event occurred. Most importantly, the likelihood that if the extraordinary event had not occurred, what’s the probability that we’d have the evidence that we do?
For example, consider a pick in the lottery, for which the odds are a 300 million to one. If the slogan were true, the evidence presented by the lottery commission announcing the winning pick would be swamped by the improbability that reported pick was in fact the winning number.

But the evidence that it takes to counterbalance the low probability of a person’s winning lottery pick needn’t be enormous or unusual at all. It’s just needs to be more probable given the truth of the hypothesis than its falsehood.

In the lottery context, what’s the likelihood that the lottery commission would’ve announced a particular number if it weren’t the winning pick?

If that probability is sufficiently low, it can counterbalance any intrinsic improbability in the number itself.
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In the election context, we ask what’s the likelihood that in all contested states, we’d have dozens of eyewitnesses attesting fraud and numerous statistical regularities strongly indicative of fraud, if election fraud (extraordinary event) did not occur?

If the probability is sufficiently low that we would not have dozens of witnesses to fraud and numerous statistical indicators of fraud unless fraud had occurred, then evidence of fraud can counterbalance the intrinsic improbability of a stolen election.

Why Democrats keep losing

A Commentary By Ted Rall

Why, Democrats have been asking, do so many poor white people vote for a Republican Party that doesn’t care about or do anything for them? The most common reply is: Democrats are snobby coastal elites who talk down to them. Classic example courtesy of former President Barack Obama, who said of voters in the Rust Belt: «They get bitter. They cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them, or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment, as a way to explain their frustrations.»

Democrats know their arrogance pisses off the working-class whites they need to win national elections. Yet they persist.

Every day sees some op-ed Ivy-educated columnist opining that voting for Donald Trump means you’re a Klansman and another Democratic National Committee-fed talking head pontificating about the masklessness at the president’s rallies with the bloated tone of a Roman tribune announcing stunning news that no one had ever heard before.

Humility is in order. But it’s not on the menu.

«You chose hope and unity, decency, science and, yes, truth … you ushered in a new day for America,» Vice President-elect Kamala Harris told attendees at her victory party. And the 73 million Americans who voted for Trump? By inference, they must have voted for hopelessness and division, indecency, superstition and, yes, lies.

Biden had a similar message in his last pre-election closer. «This is our opportunity to leave the dark, angry politics of the last four years behind us,» Biden said. «To choose hope over fear, unity over division, science over fiction. I believe it’s time to unite the country, to come together as a nation.» Biden won. But 73 million people voted for those «dark, angry politics of the last four years.» Those voters thought Trump offered them more hope than Biden. They didn’t want to unify under the Democrats.

We all have to live together in one country until there’s a second Civil War. We don’t have to think the same or look the same. But in order to function as a society, we do have to understand one another. Liberals do not get Republicans or understand where they’re coming from. They don’t even care. Until that attitude changes, Democrats will keep losing elections they ought to have won and will find it impossible to achieve tolerance from half the populace, much less consensus.

I’m a leftist. But I called the 2016 election for Trump early that year, not because I’m smart but because I’m from Dayton, Ohio. I watched my hometown devolve from an industrial powerhouse into a Rust Belt hellscape that eventually became ground zero for hopelessness and urban decay in the national opioid epidemic. International competition was inevitable. But deindustrialization powered by job-killing free-trade agreements like NAFTA and the World Trade Organization was federal policy dreamed up by Republicans and enacted into legislation by Democrats like former President Bill Clinton — and that’s how American politicians killed places like Dayton in the industrial Midwest and across the country.

My blood boiled when Democrats admitted that NAFTA would kill American jobs but, hey, new jobs in Mexico would open new markets for American goods. Such an idiotic argument. After the factories closed in America, who would sell stuff to Mexico? China. But my rage paled next to those of men and women who lost six-figure salaries and wound up working as Walmart greeters — all because Democrats like Clinton were funded by contributions from corporations that wanted to sell to American consumers without hiring American workers in order to fatten their profits.

Years passed. More factories shut down. The long-term unemployed went on disability. Those who could find jobs worked for tiny fractions of their previous pay. Tax revenues shrunk. Infrastructure crumbled. Cities entered their death spirals.

No one cared except the people who lived there.

Deindustrialization never became a political issue. Republicans and Democrats agreed that free trade was a good thing. The New York-based press ignored the rot and the misery in the country’s heartland. Only two politicians on the national scene acknowledged it: Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump. After the Democrats kneecapped Sanders, that left Trump as the only candidate who understood that the part of America that let working people send their kids to college had been pretty great but no longer was. He didn’t offer a credible reindustrialization policy. As president, he didn’t do much beyond provoke a trade war with China to address the issue. But he acknowledged the Rust Belt, and for the people who lived there so long, ignored and dismissed and derided, that was enough.

Democrats still don’t get it.

Ted Rall (Twitter: @tedrall), political cartoonist, columnist and graphic novelist, is the author of the biography «Bernie.» You can support Ted’s hard-hitting political cartoons and columns by sponsoring his work on Patreon. To find out more about Ted Rall and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2020 CREATORS.COM

El resentimiento

Tomado de aquí

Su modelo educativo ideal busca que las clases medias no puedan escapar de su ansia adoctrinadora, su ética de gulag y su estética cutre

Miguel Ángel Heredia | EFE

La nueva ley socialista de educación se basa en una de las pasiones venenosas: el resentimiento.  Decía Unamuno que «entre los pecados capitales no figura el resentimiento y es el más grave de todos; más que la ira, más que la soberbia». Puede haber una ira justificada ante la injusticia y la soberbia es un delito contra uno mismo.  Sin embargo, el resentimiento emponzoña las relaciones sociales propagando el odio y creando violencia.  El resentimiento era la pasión tóxica tras los personajes más siniestros de Shakespeare, Yago en Otelo y Edmundo en el Rey Lear.

El resentimiento se esconde tras la caza de brujas contra los centros concertados.  Un senador socialista, Miguel Ángel Heredia, ha insultado a millones de españoles que eligen estudiar en el sistema público concertado. «Ni hay que educar a pijos con dinero público. Ni hay que mantener los privilegios educativos de unos pocos con el dinero de todos».

Podría parecer paradójico que un político socialista llame «pijas privilegiadas» a la ministra Isabel Celaá y a sus hijas dado que eligieron un colegio no sólo concertado sino, además, católico.  Pero lo que de verdad subleva a un socialista típico como Heredia no es que una millonaria como Celaá haga lo que quiera sino que lo haga alguien de la clase trabajadora, ya que consideran a los obreros como ganado y al Estado como su cortijo. Por ello, en su modelo educativo ideal únicamente quedarían un sistema público estatal y un sistema totalmente privado de modo que las clases medias no podrían escapar de su ansia adoctrinadora, su ética de gulag y su estética cutre (el senador debe de ser un cani dado el odio de clase que manifiesta a los pijos pero en Twitter viste un jersey de Tommy Hilfiger, suponemos que falso).

La exclusión del español que les han regalado los socialistas a los nacionalistas para «sus» sistemas educativos también obedece al resentimiento. Instalados en el odio hacia lo español, debido a su complejo de inferioridad de tribu perdedora,  la única forma que conciben de ayudar a las lenguas particulares de sus comunidades es tratar de destruir a aquellos que eligen libremente usar el español, su otra lengua propia, como herramienta de expresión tanto en los medios como en la educación. Cuando recuerdan a Felipe V e, incluso, la Pragmática Sanción de 1567 para justificar sus actuales leyes liberticidas no están sino proyectando hacia el pasado sus actuales pulsiones de poder a través de la imposición de una hegemonía cultural y el control del lenguaje. Sobre ello advirtió Aldoux Huxley cuando profetizó que en las democracias liberales se obtendría el consentimiento de los esclavizados felices mediante drogas pero, sobre todo, por medio de la propaganda, minusvalorando la parte racional y apelando a los sentimientos más primitivos, los instintos tribales y las emociones más profundas -en suma, destruyendo la razón y privilegiando el inconsciente-  justo como hace el nacionalismo en su alianza con el populismo.

De ahí también la constante apelación a la sesgada “memoria histórica” y a la ideologizada “educación para la ciudadanía”, un lastre de manipulación y venganza en la que chapotea el socialista habitual porque, explicaba Gregorio Marañón en su análisis del resentimiento: «El resentido tiene una memoria contumaz, inaccesible al tiempo». Terminaba el pensador madrileño: «El resentido es, en suma, allá en el plano de las causas hondas, un ser mal dotado para el amor; y, por lo tanto, un ser de mediocre calidad moral».

Por ello el resentido no puede sino parir medianías de acuerdo a su bajeza intelectual y moral.  Por ejemplo, la ley Celaá.

Going underground (the school of NICE)

Taken from here
 BY 

I see it was two years ago tomorrow that I posted a notice of Handel’s very long and trenchant review of Rod Dreher’s book, The Benedict Option.  Well, Dreher has written a new book, Handel has written a new review, and I have written this new notice.

Dreher’s new book is called Live Not by Lies and, like The Benedict Option, it aims to prepare Christians for persecution and life underground.  Handel’s new review (not so long but no less trenchant than the first) once again says, to quote Aragorn speaking to Frodo at the Prancing Pony:

“Are you frightened.”
“Yes.”
“Not near frightened enough. I know what hunts you.”

It seems that a large part of Dreher’s new book is devoted to description of underground Christians who survived Communist persecution behind the Iron Curtain, most especially in eastern Europe.  While this is certainly a story worth telling, Handel demurs against Dreher’s telling of it on three counts.  The first count is that those who have survived hard totalitarianism have little to teach those who now face soft totalitarianism.  The second is that Dreher has a sentimental soft spot for the alleged aims of the Left.  The third is that he provides precious little in the way of practical advice to persons facing life underground.

* * * * *

You must read Handel to learn everything he has to say about soft totalitarianism, although some of it is relevant to Kristor’s recent post on the prophetic power of Lewis’s That Hideous Strength.  In my view, the heart of that prophesy is that NICE will appear nice.  Unless, of course, you cross it, in which case it will turn very nasty indeed.

As I explained in a recent post, soft totalitarianism wears a “humanitarian mask.”  I took the phrase from the Louisiana writer Charles Gayarré, who used it in 1877 to discredit the moral pretensions of the triumphant northern states.  We find the same insight in the Southern writer Donald Davidson, who warned against,

“the subtlest and most dangerous foe of humanity—the tyranny that wears the mask of humanitarianism and benevolence”*

The tyranny of soft totalitarianism will appear to be nice.  NICE will appear nice, unless you cross it, and thereby reveal yourself as an enemy of all that is nice (and NICE).  In which case NICE will give you what you had coming.

Handle explains that when NICE persecutes you for not being nice, you should not expect the consolations of a martyr who suffers the wrath of hard totalitarianism.  Indeed, a solution to the martyr problem is one of the great evolutionary adaptions of soft totalitarianism.  A dissident becomes a martyr when his punishment entails what we nowadays call the “bad optics” of apparent brutality.  Tank columns, prison camps, helicopter rides, show trials.  These instruments of hard totalitarianism crush dissidents, but they also create martyrs, and by creating martyrs they sow the dragon’s teeth that sprout into more dissidents.

But as Handel explains,

‘Soft’ is totally different.  People will still have choices, but if they choose ‘wrong’ in the eyes of the elites, then they will just be seen as weirdo losers and low-status pariahs, not martyrs.

Our own Bonald (whom Handle cites favorably) has often complained that the boundaries of forbidden speech are nowhere defined, but Handel explains that spurious freedom of speech is a tool of soft totalitarianism.  Under soft totalitarianism, freedom of speech is simply an invitation for mugs to publicly declare themselves “low status pariahs.”  Free speech is, in effect, the signup sheet for those who declare themselves deserving of “social consequences.”

It is bad optics when a court of law sends a dissident author to the salt mines for writing that which is explicitly forbidden by law.  It is good optics for “society” to deplatform and unemploy a dissident author who writes that which hurts and excludes some vulnerable and protected class of weepies.

In other words, NICE is nice to everyone who is nice.  And everyone who denies that NICE is nice gets what they have coming.

* * * * * *

Handle also demurs against Dreher’s sentimental soft spot for the alleged aims of the Left, not excluding the Bolsheviks and anarchists who took possession of the Russian state.  Dreher is therefore at least partly taken in by the “humanitarian mask” of the Left.  Thus he is alarmed and disgusted by the tyrannical abuses of Bolshevism, but nevertheless believes that Bolshevism began as a humanitarian response to the even more tyrannical abuses of Czarism.

This is an example of the view, so common among conservatives, that Progressives have been right about everything, and conservatives have been wrong, until Progressives went too far just the week before last.  As I recently wrote

We should despise those “conservatives” who spinelessly admit that Progressives were essentially right about everything, from the regicide of Charles I, right down to whatever picayune thing got up their nose and made them “conservative” the week before last.

* * * * *

The subtitle of Dreher’s book is “A Manual for Christian Dissidents,” but Handle tells us that this verges on false advertising because Live Not by Lies contains very little practical advice.  Indeed, he tells us that the book does not even embody the apparently practical advice of its title, since Dreher prudently omits to name the lies by which a Christian should not live.

I daresay that this is because the lies by which we should not live are pretty lies, nice lies, lies it is gauche, boorish and unsociable to point out.

But the bottom line for both Dreher and Handle is that Christians must prepare to live underground.  Handle different from Dreher in believing that it may be too late for us to learn how to burrow, and that the surveillance system of our soft totalitarian state requires an altogether new sort of burrowing.

 

*) Donald Davidson, The Attack on Leviathan: Regionalism and Nationalism in the United States (Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 1938), p. 12.

 

29 thoughts on “Going Underground”

  1. I think “Going underground” presupposes a hard totalitarianism. Soft Totalitarianism utilizes social pressure, and going underground accomplishes what the soft totalitarians want, which is to not be bothered by you anymore.

    I think soft totalitarianism requires more of a “coming out” if you’ll pardon the phrase. As you say, an open declaration of being a social pariah. A kind of “I am spartacus” whereby Christians declare both their intent to remain unapologetically christian and their lack of caring in what the soft totalitarians think. Far too many Christians are allowed to be “Christian in name only” because they are not required to name themselves. Going underground promotes this hiddenness, and in my opinion puts us closer to the rot which we acknowledge has infected certain elements of the Church, and definitely christendom. Remaining firm and declaring ones allegiance, to me, is the contrary action to soft totalitarianism because it forces the Christian to find his reasons for believing and then to hold to them publicly. This doesn’t even have to be a romantic, dramatic sacrifice. Simply abstaining from meat on Friday is a radically foreign concept to most people.

    You point out that only in hard totalitarianism does this create martyrs, and in soft totalitarianism will only create pariahs. Deplatforming can and in some cases does have the “barbara streisand” effect of amplifying a message they want extinguished. Going underground pre-emptively steals us away from open witness. Persistent low-status pariahs in sufficient numbers dares hard totalitarianism, which is the inevitable end of soft totalitarianism. A deplatformed individual can still talk to people, and if their thoughts are still thoughtcrimes then there’s no reason not to deplatform them from reality.

    My point in all this is that Martyrs aren’t possible to an underground-people. Martyrdom has it’s place, you point out that it tends to multiply the number of dissidents. We shouldn’t prefer martyrdom, but we shouldn’t flee from it either. Survival will either require a new kind of burrowing, where Christians adapt themselves to being invisible in the modern age; or it will require a new kind of Faith, which is unapologetic and stares evil in the face.

    Reply

    • Let’s say you were fired because you made coworkers uncomfortable with a frank affirmation of St. Paul’s view of sex roles. What kind of support would you expect from the Church? Legal counsel? A couch to sleep on? Thoughts and prayers?

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      • Does the Church offer those things now? Of course there would be hardship–that’s kind of my point. We shouldn’t seek out that kind of hardship, of course, but neither should we fear it; it helps knit a community closer together to take care of their own. Far from isolating individuals, I think it would drive like-minded Christians and Catholics together in a stronger community than we have now. There’s an astonishing video on youtube of parishoners in France, some years ago, creating a battering ram to get inside a church whose doors had been boarded up. Targeting and isolating a community can strengthen that community’s resolve.

      • Churches need to be prepared to offer financial help to people who lose their jobs under certain circumstances. What else did God provide them with money for anyway? : )

  2. Aye, there’s the rub. How to “burrow” in this new manner? Concrete tools and tactics. Retreat to small, rural communities of Benedicters might have been a viable option for progressively alienated transgressors of NICE before the regimen of COVID measures became ubiquitous, of obscure duration and apparently selective enforcement. But the kind of face-to-face-in-meatspace interaction necessary to foster trust and civic cooperation is now immeasurably more difficult to engender and sustain. Some may have the heroic fortitude to embrace solitude like modern day Desert Fathers; but many of us coping with isolation through the thin gruel of internet-mediated social relations have learned an abject lesson on the necessity of community and the pain of its loss. The ostracism of soft totalinarianism may not threaten us with the spilt blood of martyrdom, but it’s as fearful a prospect as the cruelties of hard totalinarianism nonetheless.

    Reply

    • Handle describes the way that martyrdom under the Soviets was made easier for the martyr because his suffering was admired by his community. If he was able to return to that community, it was as a hero. As you say, suffering in solitude is hard. Ostracism will break most men quicker than the lash.

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  3. It is a strategic error to commit ourselves to any specific strategy. We need to protect ourselves; sometimes this requires fighting and other times it requires hiding. Sometimes becoming obvious and sometimes blending in. (Probably more of the latter.)

    The one imperative is protecting our people.

    I say this mainly because sometimes people become attached to one strategy or the other. We must be flexible.

    Reply
  4. Pingback: Going Underground | Reaction Times

    • Persecution means to harry and chase. So I guess persecution is survivable. But, sooner or later, they catch you . . .

      Reply

      • @JMSmith

        It is divine providence that the persecutions in the Roman Empire isn’t exterminationist in nature.

        And the Gospel is preserved in the European Context.

  6. I gave up on Dreher about a year ago after one-too-many virtue-signaling melt-downs over some Trump tweet. Also, Handel is more than right about his “sentimental soft spot” for the aims of the left. Dreher stated that he voted for the Democratic governor of Louisiana, which hardly makes sense under any circumstance, especially considering Louisiana’s two Republican Senators, who, like anyone, are merely mortal.

    Dreher’s “solutions” of going underground, or Benedict Option type communities are no solutions at all, unless you’re willing to consign the rest of your life to second-class citizen status.

    I’m more convinced than ever that the only solution to NICE is Separation. A big undertaking no doubt, but one that offers more promise than acknowledging that the Dark Side cannot be overcome.

    Reply

    • Dreher’s old Crunchy Con blog was one of the first things I read on the internet. Like Dreher, I am a man of conservative opinions but SWPL tastes, and I thought he could teach me how to balance these things. I came to the conclusion that he is a man of conservative tastes and SWPL opinions, although I know this isn’t entirely fair. I don’t think NICE will let anyone secede, and will justify violence against secession with humanitarian arguments. They will claim to be protecting the human rights of the women and children the secessionists propose to take with them. This is the argument liberalism uses to capture anyone who runs away from the plantation (fundamentalist Mormons, for instance).

      Reply

      • The phrase ‘Christian Diaspora’ has been floating in my head for a few months now. It sure would be a turn of the wheel if the Church became an ethnicity.

        I just wish I knew how to advertise to the kindred spirits I pass on the sidewalk, or meet in the store, or chat with at the gym – when, as noted here, so much of speech has turned into mere gesture; and moreover, that the meaning of my words has been appropriated by the Beast. I am trying to set a good example to follow, but I crave an explicit community and I just cannot seem to find or formulate it.

      • I think there are many who share your sense of isolation. The internet is great, so far as it goes, but it is no substitute for genuine community.

    • Dreher did an article sometime in the last two years where he described an altercation he had with a male peer at some point during his adolescence. It was basically a scuffle that young Rod wasn’t looking for and in the article he goes on about how adults in the room didn’t jump in to stop the bullying on his behalf. We’ve all had similar playground fights where you make the internal decision to either unleash the flashpoint and shove back or cower and look for a hero. Rod looked to the rails for a savior instead of making his stand. He’s not a fighter. Probably a decent man. Maybe even a good one but not someone I’d count on to lead me into battle.

      Reply

      • Most writers are not fighters. They became bookworms and wordsmiths because they couldn’t compete in bare-knuckels arena. There is some truth to the taunt that most writing is revenge for a wedgie received in the third grade.

    • It will teach him that you’ve got to eat everything they set out if you want to eat at the Progressive table. Good manners aren’t enough. They don’t accept picky eaters.

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  8. Thanks for linking Handel’s review. I agree that it is very good, probably more valuable than the book.

    Since I’ve been an adult, I’ve been attending churches that warned me that being a Catholic will often mean not going along with mainstream culture and being disliked for it. However, these same priests were usually very reluctant to say exactly what popular beliefs or practices we are meant to defy. When an example seemed to be demanded, they would mention general selfishness and consumerism, or the like. There’s something to be said for speaking generally. Probably when priests preach this, they’re thinking of people being tempted to participate in petty dishonesty, gossip, or drug abuse among a group of friends or coworkers, and in the past refusing to go along most often occurred in such contexts of small-group peer pressure. However, I think among the professional classes, such general entreaties do more harm than good. We’re all encouraged to think of ourselves as vaguely non-conformist, with the media-academic establishment telling us in exactly what way we are to non-conform so as to win the esteem of our peers and to rebuke low-status people whom we’ll probably never have to meet.

    From Dreher’s blog, it’s clear he knows what sort of attacks Christians are actually likely to face. (For example, he knows perfectly well that we’re not likely to suffer for our brave stand against “neoliberalism”.) I won’t accuse him of not mentioning specifics out of fear. I do wonder what sort of self-defense manual one can put together without discussing the enemy’s specific lines of attack.

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  9. Live Not by Lies is a good book, with many words of warning and encouragement to stand from Soviet-era dissidents who see the dangers of our own time and place. I’m hoping pastors (among others) will read it and have bought copies for the pastors of a district in our area, one of them having decided that the book will be the topic of a pastors’ monthly meeting that he will be hosting.

    Reply

    • I may read it. I was accosted on my evening walk a month or so ago, by a man who said he is some sort of a minister. He said he thought he recognized me, although I think it was probably a case of mistaken identity. Whether he though I was me or someone else, he knew I was a professor, and he was eager to talk about cultural Marxism. He had apparently been reading things on the internet, and was in a rather agitated state of mind. I’m not the guy to talk to if you want your mind to be put at ease on this question, so I agitated him a little more. The clergy need to adjust themselves and their flocks to the reality of post-Christian America. Not railing against it from the pulpit, but dispensing practical advice how to survive in it.

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      • The clergy’s dilemma is that more than half of the congregation is already on the other side. The people in the pews is already too big a group to start with.

        Here’s a plan.

        Step 1: Decide what it would mean for a person to be “on our side”. This is presumably some combination of beliefs and gut identification. It does not require personal courage or morality. A coward or porn addict on your side is still on your side.

        Step 2: Try to get a group of people on your side in one room. This is where the real step 1 can begin. One now has some community, however tiny, in which being on your side is high status. From there, the group can start thinking about ways to protect or expand itself.

        Probably, at a regular-size Catholic parish, one could find half a dozen or more people fully on the Catholic side (however this is defined), but currently there is no parish activity in which any such Catholic can know that he’s surrounded by allies.

      • Humans find it very hard to fake enthusiasm for people and ideas they dislike. They may feel compelled to clap and smile, but a spark of self-respect requires that they do this in a tired or ironical way. So to find people who are on our side, you should look for the people who are the first to stop clapping for some Progressive piety. Chances are that they do not have much in the way of positive doctrine, only a vague dislike for platitudes they are given. When you get them in that room, you give them the positive doctrine that explains why they dislike those platitudes. Radicalism grows by recruiting people with the potential to be radicalized. Reaction must work in the same way, with what today’s slang calls “red-pilling.”

  10. Ironically, Mr. Dreher was one of the first to jump on the persecution bandwagon against a Christian minister in Louisiana who had the audacity to open his church doors in spite of the lockdowns. Rod is a card-carrying member of the republic of NICE. Rod–like a broken clock–is also occasionally right.

    At core, Rod lacks courage. Vox Day (despite his flaws) is very perceptive and wrote an insghtful piece about him as a “cuckservative” here: http://voxday.blogspot.com/2019/07/the-gamma-never-grows-up.html

    Reply

    • Remember his initial response to the smirking white boys at the march for life? He recanted pretty quickly, but his gut reaction was that the boys were a disgrace the Christian community. A victim of misleading hot takes, but of course, but it does reveal an inordinate thirst for strange new respect.

      Reply

      • Men of the right are far too eager to seek atonement by denunciation of other men of the right. They feel an entirely unreciprocated obligation to police their own ranks for the benefit of the Left. Quisling is the name for such rats.

Datos de la labor social de la Iglesia Católica en España

Datos anuales de la labor social de la Iglesia Católica en España (en 2019).

En el campo de la salud: 70 hospitales para 783.648 personas. 20.288 voluntarios al servicio de los enfermos para apoyarles en hospitales o en sus casas que han acompañado a 176.276 personas.
En el campo educativo: 2.586 centros. 1.521.196 alumnos. 130.448 trabajadores. 106.005 maestros y profesores. (95.9% de ellos son seglares, y solo el 4.1% religiosos) Esto supone 3.531 millones de € de ahorro al Estado.
Educación especial: 429 centros de educación especial. 11.710 alumnos que requieren educación especial. Universidades católicas: 15 universidades. 115.050 alumnos.
En el campo penitenciario: 916 programas de ayuda (744 dentro de prisiones y 172 fuera). 2775 voluntarios. 240.000€ en ayudas que han servido para atender a 9.530 personas. 10.448 paquetes de ropa entregados para atender 7.166 personas. 75 casas de acogida para 3.394 personas.
Misioneros españoles: 3.881 en Europa. 5.575 en América. 945 en África. 511 en Asia. 27 en Oceanía. Han construido 21.092 instituciones sociales y 72.295 instituciones educativas en los últimos 25 años.
Ayuda a ancianos: 852 casas para ancianos, enfermos crónicos y personas con discapacidad, 74.670 beneficiarios. 51 ambulatorios/dispensarios para 432.701 personas.
Centros socio-asistenciales 6.369 centros para mitigar la pobreza, 2.127.487 beneficiarios. 421 centros de menores y jóvenes y otros centros para tutela de la infancia, 64.490 beneficiarios. 369 centros para promover el trabajo, 141.316 beneficiarios.
252 consultorios familiares y otros centros para defensa de la vida y la familia, 70.880 beneficiarios. 131 centros asistencia a emigrantes, refugiados y prófugos, 134.406 beneficiarios. 186 guarderías infantiles, 11.168 beneficiarios.
163 centros culturales, artísticos y educación a la paz, 165.275 beneficiarios. 105 centros para la promoción de la mujer (de verdad) y víctimas de la violencia (de verdad), 23.279 beneficiarios.
99 centros de rehabilitación para drogodependientes, 50.297 beneficiarios. 51 centros de asesoría jurídica, 15.729 beneficiarios.
Cualquier persona sin prejuicios y con un mínimo de cabeza, por muy atea que sea, ve tras estos datos las millones de personas que son beneficiadas directamente por la Iglesia Católica y es capaz de entender el bien que supone para todos que esto sea así. #YoApoyoAlClero

Sobre la decadència de salaris en USA, la concentració de l’ingrés i un munt de gràfics útils

Evolució de la felicitat en els Estats Units, dividit entre els que tenen un títol universitari (més amunt) i els que no en tenen (més avall)

 

(Fixeu-se que l’escala no comença en 0, així que la tendència es veu més gran que el que és, encara que és significativa)

Felicitat segons si l’ingrés (el que guanyen) està per damunt de la mediana o per baix de la mediana (Dic mediana, no mitjana. En castellà: mediana, no media. En anglés: median, not average)


Xiquets vivint amb pares biològics quan la mare té 40 anys. Diferència entre classe alta i classe popular.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Hi ha vàries causes al meu parer:
1) Els salaris de classe treballadora han anat decaient per una sèrie de factors: incorporació de la dona i els immigrants al treball, polítiques neoliberals que concentren els diners, etc.
2) Hi ha menys treballs per a la classe treballadora: les empreses es van a paisos de mà d’obra barata, s’importen productes i persones d’uns altres paisos amb les fronteres obertes.
3) Decadència de la religió, que és especialment important per a la classe treballadora perquè 1) és la que pitjor ho passa i la religió li permet sobreviure els problemes 2) és la que té menys control sobre els impulsos, així que la religió li prohibeix comportaments auto-destructius, com divorci, drogues, promiscuitat.

Un munt de gràfics en https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

The cost of Black America

Taken from here

If you are a white American, over the course of your lifetime the federal government will, on average and on your behalf, transfer $384,109 of your wealth and income to a single black individual.

According to the data derived from the 2014 federal budget, the average annual net tax/benefit broke down as follows:

  • White: -$2,795
  • Black: +$10,016

Over the course of an average 79-year lifespan, a white individual contributes a net $220,805 to the system, whereas over the course of an average 75-year lifespan, a black individual receives a net $751,200. However, since there are 4.6 times more whites than blacks in the USA, the black share has to be divided among the various contributors to sort out a one-to-one comparison.

So, the net cost to the average White American of the average Black American is $384,109. Married? That’s $768,218. Got 2 kids? That’s $1,536,436. 4 kids? Now we’re talking $2,304,654 lifetime.

Diversity is expensive. Now you understand why you won’t have much of an inheritance to leave to your children. Do you really think it’s worth it? And then, those natural conservatives to the south, the Hispanics, will surely improve the situation, right? After all, immigration helps the economy! Well, not so much.

  • Hispanic: +7,298

In fact, because there are more Hispanics in the USA than Blacks, Hispanics are already a bigger cumulative net drain on the economy, $411,950,000,000 to $389,710,000,000. Needless to say, the ongoing demographic change from a predominantly white society to a less productive, less white one can be expected to have even more serious negative effects on the long-term economic prospects of the United States that it already has.

To quote the original author: «The negative fiscal impact of blacks and hispanics is significant. All of this discussion of a “national debt” and “deficit” is primarily of function of blacks and hispanics. Without them, we would be running budget surpluses today, even when keeping the military the same size.»

Descripción del sistema democrático americano

Vicente Miró. Tomado de aquí

Explicar el funcionamiento del sistema de elección presidencial americano es complicado, no porque sea una materia especialmente difícil en sí misma (sé positivamente que una parte de la audiencia de este blog –catedráticos, ingenieros, científicos, etc.– han manejado y manejan ideas muchísimo más complejas a diario). No es esa la cuestión.

El problema es que los esquemas cognitivos que se activan en la mente de un europeo no sirven para comprender el sistema americano porque el europeo está inconscientemente buscando la legitimidad del sistema a través del voto popular en primer lugar y, en segundo lugar, cuando hay conflicto, en los tribunales de justicia. Sin embargo, en las presidenciales americanas ni el voto popular ni el Tribunal Supremo tienen la última palabra en la designación del Presidente de los EEUU.

Esto es así porque lo que se toma por un mismo sistema político unificado  (al que convencionalmente se le denomina “democracia occidental”) en realidad no lo es. En Europa continental todos los sistemas políticos son del siglo XX con raíces en la última parte del XIX y están enfocados a la sociedad de masas y el sufragio universal.

En EEUU, por el contrario, el sistema es del XVIII y está pensado por y para caballeros –gentlemen farmers– o sea, hacendados con ínfulas de grandeza cuya fantasía era verse a sí mismos como romanos de la antigüedad. Esto no es una metáfora; es rigurosamente así; es una fantasía heredada de los ingleses2 que les dio por jugar a hacerse pasar por romanos ante sí mismos y ante los franceses (que son su audiencia favorita) a partir de 1720 más o menos cuando sacan la cabeza del hoyo y salen a lucir palmito después de casi doscientos años de estar en el pozo de desolación y miseria en que quedaron sumidos tras el golpe cismático de Enrique VIII.

Pues bien, ese es el verdadero contexto de la fundación de EEUU. Un contexto que nada tiene que ver con la democracia, sensu stricto, sino con la emulación de la república aristocrática que fue la antigua Roma. Por lo tanto no había previsión de elecciones ni campañas ni partidos ni nada de lo que habitualmente identificamos como sistema democrático. La elección del presidente era por aclamación de un candidato que no se dignaba ni a presentarse (eso habría sido demasiado “vulgar”, es como andar buscando notoriedad y halago). Al verdadero caballero le escogen sus iguales espontáneamente por las cualidades que meramente exuda el primus ínter pares. Ese era el concepto de democracia de los founding fathers3.

La deriva hacia la democracia como un desbordamiento de compuertas

Esta Arcadia de caballeros de alto plumero y primus inter pares duró muy poco y enseguida vinieron las zancadillas, los empellones y los pucherazos hasta el día de hoy. El que sufrió Andrew Jackson es especialmente interesante porque es el primero que abre las puertas a una sociología más popular que es con la que Tocqueville se encuentra cuando llega a América en las primeras décadas del XIX y escribe su famoso “Democracia en America”.

El exordio anterior puede parecer tal vez demasiado largo pero es ciertamente necesario para comprender que

la democracia americana se ha construido por el desbordamiento popular de una forma republicana original de orientación aristocrática

Con cada desbordamiento de las estructuras republicanas originales se han ido construyendo en paralelo dos tipos de estructuras diferenciadas aunque ambas coincidentes en ser estructuras de protección: unas contra el pueblo y otras contra las élites4.

Ahora, repárese en que estas dos estructuras protectivas han corrido suertes contrapuestas: unas se han venido celebrando a bombo y platillo (las que protegen al pueblo de las élites, contenidas en las enmiendas o ammendments)  y otras se han escondido vergonzantemente hasta no querer saber ni que existen (que son las que las élites han construido contra el pueblo y que están desarrolladas sobre todo en forma de leyes electorales).

Todo lo anterior nos permite llegar a un resultado ciertamente valioso para el propósito de esta entrada y es que

aunque EEUU ha construido y proyectado una mitología nacional de populismo, democracia y desenfadada apertura, en paralelo no ha dejado de cultivar, aunque en secreto, un corazón de bestia rabiosamente elitista y aristocratizante

Quién tiene la última palabra a la hora de elegir al Presidente

Ahora, por fin, (después de 1.300 palabras) creo que están ustedes de disposición de entenderme cuando les diga:

ni el recuento de los votos de la gente, ni la justicia, ni el Tribunal Supremo tienen la última palabra en la elección del Presidente; la tienen determinadas pequeñas camarillas de selectos grupos escogidos (llamados “legislature representatives” y “electoral college members”)

Mecánica electoral de las Presidenciales 

Para esta explicación tengan ustedes muy presente la entrada que he escrito como Guía de Pucherazos Made in USA Parte 1. Allí se explican las circunstancias de arranque de lo que ha terminado siendo una extraña forma de gobierno, a mitad de camino entre la confederación y la federación.

La elección del presidente de EEUU no es una elección directa del pueblo al candidato. Lo que realmente hace el votante popular no es elegir sino sugerir; esto es “dar una indicación con su papeleta” a su legislature (a la cámara de su estado) para que este cuerpo movilice los auténticos votos electorales que le corresponden a ese estado según una asignación poblacional (que opera como un corrector de compensación territorial parecido a la ley D’Hondt que se aplica en España) y los destine a la designación de tantos electores como votos de elección presidencial disponga ese estado.

Una vez esos electores son designados por las cámaras de cada estado se constituyen en colegio electoral (Electoral College) de 538 personas y emiten su voto, en principio comprometido a favor del candidato favorecido por el voto popular. Lo más chocante es que esto no siempre sucede y el hecho es que en cada elección hay siempre algún voto desviado a otro candidato distinto del que se les había confiado el voto. En algunos estados hay restricciones y penalizaciones a estos faithless electors, que así se llaman, pero desde luego su compromiso para con los votantes populares no responde a la forma de “mandato imperativo”.

Si un candidato recibe la mitad más uno de los 538 votos del Colegio Electoral, es decir si llega a 270, entonces es proclamado presidente.

  1. La ruta 66 es suficientemente conocida (es la carretera que va de Chicago a Los Angeles) pero “la senda de los Apalaches” o Appalachian Trail (cuyo nombre oficial es “The Appalachian National Scenic Trail”) es una senda de montaña que va desde Springer Mountain en Georgia a Mount Katahdin en Maine, en total 3.200 km de caminata de punta a punta de la costa este norteamericana. ↵
  2. Pero, claro, con la ingenuidad propia del provinciano lo cual es evidente, por ejemplo, en Monticello que es la casa que Thomas Jefferson se construyó siguiendo ese modelo paladiano imitación de la antigüedad que tanto les fascinaba. Digo que es evidente porque esa casa está llena de cachivaches y tonterías como pipas de indio colgadas por las paredes y piezas de arte de segunda, por supuesto, bustos de romanos. Es decir, una casa llena con los objetos favoritos de una mentalidad culturalmente inmadura, como un adolescente que cuelga en su cuarto el póster de un Ferrari porque cree que eso es el zenith del mundo. Deben saber ustedes que me llevé la gran sorpresa al comprobar que de todos aquellos objetos, el mejor, el más bonito, el más finamente trabado y el que además poseía un mayor valor científico era… jamás lo adivinarían; un mapa coloreado de unos tres metros de largo de toda America realizado y formado por la Real Sociedad Matritense de Amigos del País. Si no me creen vayan y vean. ↵
  3. Se podría argumentar que esa descripción responde más al sur que al norte; argumentar debidamente que el norte, aunque no era latifundista, participaba de un filo-aristocratismo equivalente me llevaría mucho. Pero baste recordar lo que Benjamin Franklin le dijo a una señora que, curiosa de que en la primera convención estuvieran en pleno verano con las ventanas tapiadas (véase la entrada en la que hago un repaso de los golpes y pucherazos aquí) y entonces le  preguntó que qué hacían ahí metidos a lo que Franklin respondió: “Una república, señora, eso es lo que hacemos, una república, si es que ustedes no la echan a perder” (A Republic, madam, if you can keep it) lo cual tiene el sentido de que se eche a perder porque accedan a ella los que no la merecen ni la entienden, o sea, el pueblo el populacho, el hoi polloi (expresión que viene del griego y se usa en inglés en el sentido de “chusma”; es justamente el tipo de palabra que sí habría usado un founding father tan obsesionados como estaban de emular la antigüedad grecolatina.) ↵
  4. Así EEUU se ha ido desarrollando como una sociedad profundamente dicotómica, unida en la desunión y de sistemas enfrentados (adversarial) que no tiene nada que ver con la nuestra –verdadera sociedad mediterránea hija de griegos y romanos– y cuya tradición política no es la del enfrentamiento sino la tradición política aristotélica donde la primera virtud cívica no es sino la amistad civil, la concordia entre gobernados, gobernantes y entre conciudadanos entre sí. Una tradición que, posteriormente se verá reforzada por el cristianismo. ↵

 

Islam in Europe: Lessons from Medieval Spanish

Why all of Macron’s measures against “extremism” are doomed to failure.

. Raymond Ibrahim

[Taken from here]

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

A critical question arises in light of the recent spate of fatal terror attacks in France and other European nations: How do you once and for all eradicate “extremism” from Muslim communities living in the West?

Western leaders usually respond by citing anything and everything from new “initiatives” meant to foster closer relations between Muslim communities and their host nations, to surveillance measures of hot spots and mosques.

Lamentably, history has already proven that even much more draconian measures against Islam—of the sort that modern Western man cannot even conceive let along implement—are doomed to failure.

Consider the historical experiences of France’s neighbor, Spain.  In the eighth century, Muslims from Africa invaded and brutally conquered the Iberian Peninsula.  Christians were massacred and subjugated; churches were destroyed and/or converted to mosques.  By the late fifteenth century, however—after centuries of wars to liberate Spain from Islam (AKA, the Reconquista)—Christian rule finally extended to every corner of the peninsula.

Muslims, however, remained, mostly centered in Granada.  Originally, they were given lenient terms: Muslims could continue practicing their religion, enforce sharia in their own communities, and even travel freely.

Even so, whenever the opportunity arose, Muslims rebelled and launched many hard-to-quell uprisings, some “involving the stoning, dismembering, beheading, impaling, and burning alive of Christians.”  Muslims also regularly colluded with foreign Muslim powers (e.g., North Africans, Ottoman Turks) in an effort to subvert Spain back to Islam.

Fed up with this “enemy within,” the Spanish crown finally decreed in 1501 that all Muslims had two choices: convert to Christianity or leave Spain. The motivation was less religious and more political; it was less about making Muslims “good Christians” and more about making them “good citizens.” So long as they remained Muslim—thereby operating under the highly divisive doctrine of “loyalty and enmity”—they would remain hostile and disloyal to Christian Spain; and because secularism, atheism, multiculturalism, or just general “wokeness,” were not options then, the only practical way Muslims could slough off their tribalism and be loyal to a Christian kingdom was by embracing its faith.

Spain’s entire Muslim population—hundreds of thousands of Muslims—responded by openly embracing Christianity while remaining crypto-Muslims, in keeping with the Muslim doctrine of taqiyya.  It teaches that, whenever Muslims find themselves under infidel authority, they may say and do almost anything—denounce Muhammad, receive baptism and communion, venerate the cross—as long as their hearts remain true to Islam.  So, in public, these newly converted “Christians” went to church and baptized their children; at home, they recited the Koran, preached undying hate for the infidel, and plotted how to destroy Christian Spain.

That these “Moriscos”—that is, self-professed Muslim converts to Christianity who were still “Moorish,” or Islamic, as they came to be known—went to great lengths to foist their deception cannot be doubted, as explained by one historian:

For a Morisco to pass as a good Christian took more than a simple statement to that effect. It required a sustained performance involving hundreds of individual statements and actions of different types, many of which might have little to do with expressions of belief or ritual per se. Dissimulation [taqiyya] was an institutionalized practice in Morisco communities that involved regular patterns of behaviour passed on from one generation to the next.

Despite this elaborate masquerade, Christians increasingly caught on: “With the permission and license that their accursed sect accorded them,” a frustrated Spaniard remarked, “they could feign any religion outwardly and without sinning, as long as they kept their hearts nevertheless devoted to their false impostor of a prophet. We saw so many of them who died while worshipping the Cross and speaking well of our Catholic Religion yet who were inwardly excellent Muslims.”

Christians initially tried to reason with the Moriscos; they reminded them how they became Muslim in the first place: “Your ancestor was a Christian, although he made himself a Muslim” to avoid persecution or elevate his social status; so now “you also must become a Christian.” When that failed, Korans were confiscated and burned; then Arabic, the language of Islam, was banned. When that too failed, more extreme measures were taken; it reached the point that a Morisco could “not even possess a pocketknife for eating with that did not have a rounded point, lest he savage a Christian with it.”

A Muslim chronicler summarizes these times: “Such of the Muslims as still remained in Andalus, although Christians in appearance, were not so in their hearts; for they worshipped Allah in secret. . . . The Christians watched over them with the greatest vigilance, and many were discovered and burnt.”

Such are the origins of the Spanish Inquisition (which, contrary to popular belief, targeted more Muslims than Jews). For no matter how much the Moriscos “might present the appearance of a most peaceful submission,” a nineteenth century historian wrote, “they remained nevertheless fundamental Musulmans, watching for a favourable opportunity and patiently awaiting the hour of revenge, promised by their prophecies.”

Thus, when a rumor arose in 1568 that the Ottoman Turks had finally arrived, Spain’s crypto-Muslim fifth column, “believing that the days under Christian rule were over, went berserk. Priests all over the countryside were attacked, mutilated, or murdered; some were burned alive; one was sewed inside a pig and barbequed; the pretty Christian girls were assiduously raped, some sent off to join the harems of Moroccan and Algerian potentates.”

In the end, if Muslims could never be loyal to infidel authority—constantly colluding and subverting, including with foreign Muslims—and if conversion to Christianity was no solution, then only one solution remained: between 1609 and 1614, all Moriscos were expelled from the Peninsula to Africa, whence Islam had first invaded Spain nearly a millennium earlier.

This decision was not taken lightly.  Many Christians in Spain—and the pope in Rome—deemed it too harsh; some suggested the castration of all Morisco males as an alternative.  Yet, in the end, the monarchy concluded that there was no other guarantee against the constant subversions and sporadic bouts of terrorism than the complete elimination of Islam from Spain.

The point here is that Spain did everything humanly possible to get its Muslim population to assimilate and forsake their hate for Christian “infidels”—including by forcing them to convert to, and their children to be born in, Christianity, and monitoring their commitment—and even that was not enough, thanks to the dispensation of taqiyya, which still informs much of Europe’s Muslim population.

As such, surely any and all “anti-extremist” measures France and other Western nations take—none of which will ever be anywhere near as extreme as premodern Spain’s, and most of which currently revolve around silly platitudes such as “They will not divide us,” to quote Macron after a beheading—are doomed to failure.

Note: Quotes in the above narrative were excerpted from and documented in the author’s Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.  Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center, a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, and a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute.

[Note about the Inquisition:

 

In its 353-year history, the Spanish Inquisition was responsible for a grand total of 3,230 deaths, which on an annual basis is less than the number of French citizens who have been murdered by Muslims in 2020 alone. Source:  The actual historical records. Look up the 783-page report published in 2004 by Agostino Borromeo of Sapienza University.

Another source is historian Henry Kamen.

We can in all probability accept the estimate, made on the basis of available documentation, that a maximum of three thousand persons may have suffered death during the entire history of the tribunal.

]

Por qué Sánchez puede durar muchos años: sus apoyos y la visión del Ibex

La aprobación de los Presupuestos parece haber abierto un escenario diferente, con el paso de la mayoría de la investidura a la mayoría de gobierno. La presencia de Bildu parece romper algunas líneas rojas, hay tensión respecto de la deriva en las posiciones de Sánchez, preocupación por el peso de Podemos en el Gobierno y demás aspectos convenientemente resaltados estos días en los análisis. Pero quizá tengamos que intentar comprender el momento desde una perspectiva diferente y más amplia.

Mucha gente que se identifica con posiciones de derechas celebró la derrota de Trump como un paso adelante en el deterioro de los populismos, pero quizá no hayan valorado lo que supone la llegada de Biden al poder, el programa que pretende desarrollar y el modo en que esa visión encaja con la que Sánchez difunde en nuestro país. Y en España, donde las influencias exteriores tienen un gran peso, ese factor es muy relevante.

Next Generation Spain

La primera de esas influencias, obviamente, es la de la Unión Europea, que determina muchas de nuestras políticas, en especial las económicas. Si no ocurre nada extraño y Biden gobierna y desarrolla su plan, los vínculos con la Unión serán mayores, alejándose de la tensión continua a que Trump sometió su relación con Alemania y con la UE, y eso supondrá la implementación de los planes que el demócrata defiende, ligados a la digitalización, las infraestructuras ecológicas y el peso de las finanzas. La UE está en completa sintonía con esa perspectiva, y lo hemos visto de manera explícita con el Next Generation EU y su idea de la recuperación. En este escenario, una Casa Blanca demócrata supone un espaldarazo a las políticas que ya está intentando desarrollar Bruselas, lo que empujará España hacia ese camino de una manera más intensa.

El discurso que Sánchez pronunció este año en el Foro de Davos fue explícito respecto de los propósitos que tiene para España

Pero ese es también el plan de Sánchez. El discurso que el presidente español pronunció en la última edición del Foro de Davos fue explícito en ese sentido: transformación digital, transición ecológica, igualdad real entre hombres y mujeres y justicia social son los objetivos marcados, enumerados en orden de importancia. Su discurso fue relevante no porque nos descubriera algo nuevo, sino porque exponía ante un foro totalmente alineado con esas ideas (y en el que participan muchas de las empresas y de los fondos más importantes del mundo, no lo olvidemos) lo que ya había venido contando en casa: que tenía una idea para España, que estaba ligada al ‘great reset’ que el foro promueve y que él es el único capaz de realizarla en estos momentos.

El Ibex

De modo que se juntan varias grandes líneas que apuntan en la misma dirección: las intenciones de Biden, los planes de la UE, la orientación de las grandes firmas y los grandes fondos y el futuro de España que Sánchez tiene en mente.

No podemos desdeñar esta confluencia, porque supone un respaldo importante a las políticas de Sánchez, en muchos sentidos, también de cara a las empresas españolas. Hace pocos días, BlackRock, el principal accionista del Ibex 35, convocó a una reunión a los principales gestores de las firmas cotizadas, en la que Larry Fink, el CEO de la empresa de gestión de activos más grande del mundo, dibujó las líneas de acción que esperaba para el futuro. En el evento, estuvieron presentes directivos como José María Álvarez-Pallete, presidente de Telefónica; Pablo Isla, presidente de Inditex; Ignacio Sánchez Galán, primer ejecutivo de Iberdrola; Francisco Reynés, presidente de Naturgy; José Bogas, consejero delegado de Endesa; José Antonio Álvarez, consejero delegado de Banco Santander; Onur Genç, con el mismo cargo en BBVA; Gonzalo Gortázar, primer directivo de CaixaBank; Ismael Clemente, máximo responsable de Merlin Properties; Josu Jon Imaz, consejero delegado de Repsol; José Manuel Entrecanales, primer accionista de Acciona; Rafael del Pino, presidente de Ferrovial, y Fernando Abril-Martorell, ejecutivo principal de Indra.

No sé qué piensan los directivos del Ibex sobre Sánchez, ni si son favorables a su gestión, pero sí lo que piensa su accionista más importante

Es una muestra del poder que los accionistas atesoran respecto de las grandes firmas españolas. Y el deseo de BlackRock, como quedó patente en una conversación de Larry Fink con Ana Botín celebrada pocos días después, consiste en realizar la transición verde e impulsar la digitalización, así como en generar un tipo distinto de gestión de las compañías, más favorable a la diversidad, todo ello plasmado en los criterios ASG. No sé qué piensan los principales directivos del Ibex sobre el presidente del Gobierno, ni si son favorables a su gestión o no, pero lo que piensa su principal accionista, y por tanto quien ostenta mucho poder sobre ellos, sí está alineado con el plan de Sánchez para España. Y ya se sabe la gran influencia que tienen los grandes accionistas sobre las empresas; incluso si muchos CEO pensaran que Sánchez no es el hombre, se encontrarían con un límite que les resultaría muy difícil sobrepasar.

El nuevo sentido común de la época

En realidad, está conformándose un nuevo dibujo internacional y un nuevo sentido común en el que los principales actores, el Gobierno de EEUU, la UE y los accionistas más importantes, están alineados. Ese nuevo contexto empuja España en la dirección de su readaptación, de lo que podríamos llamar reorganización productiva, y Sánchez es quien más ha abogado por tomar esa dirección (junto con el ala menos derechista de Ciudadanos) y quien está en mejor disposición para llevarla a cabo.

El obstáculo que este plan de reorganización general de Occidente ha encontrado es interno. La visión de Biden tiene a Trump y a su gran cantidad de votantes como freno, la UE al populismo de derechas, Macron a Le Pen, y así sucesivamente. En España, esa tensión interna está viviéndose de manera muy evidente, con las disputas políticas elevando enormemente un tono que ya era demasiado crispado. Pero la aprobación de los Presupuestos con una mayoría más amplia que el estado de alarma indica también que Sánchez está ganando en esa pelea, y que quizás esté reconfigurando las alianzas, aunque sea de un modo táctico, de forma que sea complicado discutirle el poder durante mucho tiempo.

Veremos si Sánchez se convierte en el artífice de la reconfiguración de España y si impulsa nuevas élites, pero la intención está ahí

El otro obstáculo, también interno, tiene que ver con cómo se desarrolle la pandemia, el tiempo de duración, los efectos que cause y la situación económica a que nos aboque, que puede generar el descontento suficiente como para que el balance de fuerzas oscile. No olvidemos que, a pesar de todo, sigue siendo un Gobierno obligado a hacer equilibrios, ya que su poder parlamentario no es suficiente, y su apoyo social tampoco está suficientemente asentado, lo que le puede restar también apoyos internacionales. Los anuncios de vacunas efectivas podrían venir también a respaldar las intenciones del Gobierno español.

En este instante, y sumando todos estos factores, queda preguntarse si Sánchez va a ser un presidente más o se va a convertir en un Felipe González, esto es, en el artífice de la reconfiguración de España a las exigencias de los tiempos, el que reestructuró el país, impulsó nuevas élites (esas que le faltan ahora a Sánchez, porque las internacionales le apoyan, pero las nacionales mucho menos) y llevó España hacia otro lugar. Veremos qué ocurre, pero la intención está ahí, y los vientos internacionales soplan a su favor.