Beating them at their own game

Local elections gone, I turn back to the press to get my share of awakening events in the morning. I mean, it feels fine to read newspapers again, without the guilty feeling that I should be talking to somebody thatis about to vote for me, or giving some flyers away. Now, I almost forgot that such an strategy is two edged. In between today and yesterday, the press keeps me between the revulsion and the amusement, actually. Welcome back, Inti.

I mean, why do I have to stomach early in the morning Hirsi Ali hyping herself as the coming Voltaire that the muslim world needs? Now, not that I love Voltaire, with his gardens-for-retired-people ideology. But there are limits. As a matter of fact, that image is just balanced out by Condi , trying to get a grip in the guitar that Evo just gave her, conveniently made out of coca leaves. Or, I suppose, the roles of revulsive and montypitonish can be reversed. As a matter of fact it is just wonderful to portrait the shouting Hirsi Ali, a politician that has no qualms to puke on half of the world, as Candide. Or even better, to be writing Candide. How absurd can we get? And actually, the bloody nerve of Condi, present in the Michelle Bachelet assumption as president, when not only her government, but her ideas, put Pinochet in power, and also send the father of the new chilean president to torture and death. Doesn't these people has any shame left?

Well, actually they don't. And that is probably why I remain trying to figure out what to do. Shall I puke? Shall I laugh? puke-laugh, laugh-puke. In between the shout and the style, as usual.

The sad part of this ongoing comedy is that these two brilliant women, actually, are the forerunners of one of the oldest strategies in the world: Go out, and beat them at their own game. Not terrible ethic kind of game, but who cares?

Let's start with Hirsi. For many of my foreigner-huging friends of the netherlands, she is the archetypical well integrated allochtoon. The mythology runs like that: political refugee arrives to the country, teach herself the beauty of dutch, goes into university, raises due to her intellectual calliber, takes up the cause of those opressed muslim women, and ends up as star parliamentair. Of course, the world, and most of all, those scary evil muslims, take it up against her. What I believe of the intellectual calliber of Hirsi, actually, is that is best proven
in her adaptability. Lets pass over the details that do not work well in the narrative, such as the fact that she is no political refugee, but she run out on a marriage, or that she is no newcomer to politics, but is the scion of a family with a long tradition of politics in her own country. Her insight shines on when you realize that she has been doing for years what the traditionally tolerant dutchies love best: shout louder than they.

And there we have Condi. As distinguished member of a government that has just shown how much it cares for the dispossesed back in New Orleans, she does market herself as the incarnation of the compassionate-conservative-american-dream. Brilliant academic, gifted musician, able political operator. And coming from a humble origin.Lets, again, pay no attention whatsoever to the irritant details. Lets don't worry about that oil tanker that goes around the world with her name, recognition of her history as leader of the big oil companies, another blatant proof of the (not really compassionate) interwining power lines in between politics and big money. All this is food for the rabid left wing press. What actually matter is that Condi is irresistible. Just look at her looks in the UN, short of matrix-inspired dominatrix, leather clad and briskly walking. I mean, what marketting image is better than the accomplished piano player of Bush family meetings gripping the charango from Evo, a coca-charango, for god sake! The ultimate music instrument of every single southamerican lefty that wanted to reconnect with her roots, with the millenia of south american indian traditions, and the centuries of opression in the hand of white colonizers.

In any case. The cliche that women are smarter than men is totally true here. In a shouting society, why should you botter with trying to be nuanced? What's the need of going for the soft sides of multiculturalism? none. You'll get yourself a better and faster ticket to fame if, foreigner yourself, go on beating the foreigner bashers at their own game. Shout higher! beat the crap out of muslims! Invoque Voltaire, because anyway, nobody read his work today.

There is catch, though. Supppose that you actually suceed. Suppose that you are actually the foreigner that comes along, and win at the race of beating the others that like you years ago, are trying to get away from arranged marriages. Or warfare, or murderous regimes supported with the oil that the USA needs so much. If you suceed in the game of beating the beaters, you are a beater yourself. And that success-history-to-be, that child of war or that clitoris-less woman, will be refused at the doors of your new country. No more place in The Netherlands for refugees, or no more affirmative action in the states. But who cares? not you,
surely. You are safe now, in the limelight of the media, or learning to play the charango.

Football and multiculturalism

The spanish newspaper El Pais brings today an interesting insight in what multiculturalism means for non-politicians. Even though I do not frequently read the sports pages, the headline of an interview to the dutch trainer of a spanish team called my attention: the Dutch likes to order, the Spanish likes to obey. Indeed, half way in the interview, philosophizing on the relation between players and trainers, the dutch trainer claims that he likes to play with teams down south and without stars, because then he will receive the attention that a trainer deserves. I presume that his perception of the spanish culture also make him happy at living in Spain, being Dutch. Which make me think in new reasons why so many retired old people from the north of europe like so much to move and live in the sunny towns of the south of Spain. Ageing in a society in which every young will boss you around is not such a beautiful perspective. Why to stay in rainy and bossy netherlands, if we can go to subservient and sunny spain?

Far too many parallels have been drawn by better writers than me in between football and politics, so I will not bother you with possible ramifications of this wonderful statement from that dutch trainer. But let's agree that the idea of southern, or latin countries being prone to authoritarism is one that runs deep both in (liberal and emancipated) north europe and in (corrupt and underdeveloped) southamerica. I will neither fall to the temptation of noting that every single prime minister of the netherlands in the last twenty years has profiled himself as a pater familias. More interesting, perhaps, is to think in the profiling that prominent politicians from the south have used. Can we really talk of subservient societies?

Lets start with the political landscape of few twenty years ago. There and then the picture was certainly appalling. Most of the countries of southamerica were under the boot of dictators. Even worse, dictators that successfully mixed the ideology of right wing with the values of the catholic orthodoxy, such as family, order and respect. We could say that precisely this dark chapter of history illustrate the view of our football trainer turned sociologist. How can not be subservient a society that bear decades of authoritarianism? But again, enlarging the time scale does bad for the analysis. What over the time before the dictators? Was southamerica not the beau of the european left wing? Don't we remember how the whole elite of north europe turned revolutionary admirers of the libertarian figures of Allende, for example? Was not, in the same decade, the revolution in Nicaragua a new breath in the libertarian cause? Or even today, when figures like Bachelet in Chile or Morales in Bolivia seems to rekindle the cause for the oppressed, the excluded and the tortured as viable leaders of a society, or when the iconic sub-comandante marcos still make the intellectuality of europe go gaga? So what are actually those societies in the supposedly subservient south? Libertarian people taking the future in their hands, or sheep following the first messianic leader that make it to the public arena?

I must conclude, once more, that society analysis is less prone to simplification than football. What is more spanish, one might ask, the boot of Franco or the individualism of Picasso and Dali? Or in the netherlands today, who is more representative, our stiff, young (and actually elected) prime minister, tireless champion of the mantra of law and order, or the still strong anarchic movement of squatters, emancipated prostitutes and vocal feminists?

I rather claim that our societies, in both sides of the Atlantic and the Ecuador keep their pendulous oscillation in between authority and emancipation. It might sound as a foregone conclusion now, but lets agree that describe spaniards as subservients and dutchies as bossy is as stupid as frame muslim as fanatics and danish as champions of the press freedom. Multiculturalism, that needed recognition of the existence of others, have blunted our capacity of analysis, and too frequently we fall prey of the easy cliché and the irresponsible analysis. The day that we will recognize the multiple layers coexisting in the idea that each individual has of his own culture we will be closer to a better functioning society. I keep on thinking that such a day is not that far away, but again, that might be falling in the cliché of wishful thinking. A sin that after all, belongs to my latin, and always positive, culture.