Democracy is
the most captivating illusion of our time. Among other things, because it
manages the monopoly of the remaining illusions—consumption, happiness,
culture, sports, dialogue, freedom, identity, gender (not as a grammatical
category, but as a euphemism for sex)…—orchestrating, tuning, and harmonizing
them under its own polyphony and unique baton.
But the
Achilles' heel of any democracy is an absolutely unconfessed belief: democracy
cannot solve all problems. The friends of commerce already take care—aloud—to
spread this secret. However, we have been precisely educated in the opposite
idea, the undisputed and unchallenged notion that democracy dissolves and
resolves all problems. But since the beginning of the 21st century, the score
has changed diametrically.
Not by chance,
democracies are based on the denial and falsification of this imperative, this
inevitable truth. The current postmodern democracy has presented itself as the
most perfect political system possible. It has presented itself, even, as the
very end of the history of politics and its forms of governance.
But this idea is, as I say, absolutely false, because, in fact and in law, democracy cannot solve all problems. Its fundamental strategy is always the same: politically negotiate with those problems that cannot be legally resolved. Thus, democracies make deals with all kinds of ...
