When I first read Edmund Burke’s takedown of the French revolutionaries more than twenty years ago, I was beside myself with enthusiasm. I still pull out that book (Burke’s Reflections on the Revolution in France) from time to time and enjoy its brilliant formulations. It’s just that as one gets older and learns more things, one learns to put everything into a larger context. Alongside Burke’s riveting sentences, he also sees the ten-year-old miners who worked twelve-hour shifts in the mines so that gentlemen like Edmund Burke could sit in posh clubs, smoke cigars, make speeches and fret over the scandal of the revolution. When Burke writes that “we English do not care for any change”, who knows if the child miners would have agreed. And later I included French industrialists in the picture, who supported the revolution mainly to abolish a desperately disadvantageous free trade treaty with England that was devastating to French business.
In short, the world is more complex than it appears at first sight.
I realised this when I listened to Argentine President Milei’s speech at the UN. A pathetic speech with a lot of strong wording that demolished yet another idiotic UN project. Milei made it clear that no global structure can tell people how to live, what to believe and who to associate with. He laughed at climate madness and dismissed transgender. Great! Almost like Edmund Burke. Listeners from the Czech Republic may perhaps be a little warned by the mention that although Milei is the President of Argentina, he is supposedly not a politician. We had a President Havel who also said he wasn’t a politician, and his “non-political policies” turned out to be an unmitigated disaster. And a well-read person will notice that Milei has reworded the American Declaration of Independence so that rights apply only to the rich (not in the original text).
But there’s a broader context here. The context of Milei’s actual governance. His reform brought about a dramatic redistribution of wealth and income, so that millions of people began to starve and foreign investors made profits like never before. Worse, under Milei, everything related to Argentine independence is being liquidated. All in the interests of the partners, which are a few US corporations. Dissolving business relations with anyone who might compete with those corporations. Even Argentina’s monetary policy is to be taken over by American banks. Yes, he’s disbanded a few useless agencies, that’s admirable. But has it reduced paperwork and bureaucratic duties for the common man? Has the practice of leaving the poor at the mercy of corrupt officials, who have no choice but to make a living in a plundered country, come to an end?
And the warlike rhetoric to boot! Aggressive attacks against any country that won’t let US corporations make a profit. The Argentinians can be happy that they are not neighbours with Venezuela. Maybe they’d be at war by now.
In short, the speech sounds very different when we realize there is a scorched earth behind it. And that there’s no room for climate and gender madness in Argentina now? Don’t worry, those corporations that Miley is handing power over her country to will introduce that later.