Versión Español
Spanish – It is in the smallest details that you discover what nests inside a person. They are more revealing than the grand gestures. These “failed acts” reveal the thoughts and ways of being that the subject conceals from others. Consequently, if we want to know what a person is really like and what their intentions are, let us pay attention to these signs.
From that perspective, the behavior of Argentina’s new vice president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, is worrisome.
In the media show she staged in the Plaza de Mayo, in that mise-en-scene, she affirmed before her loyal audience that “love is what has always moved us, at least us, in this square. Love for the people, love for the homeland, love for those who suffer.” She stressed the value of humility, “humility that each and every one of us must have.” She theatrically proclaimed, “I am not a hypocrite; I will never be.”
Her speech is worthy of being studied in universities as a paradigm of incoherence. She affirms and denies the same thing in a single sentence. A mockery of the principle of noncontradiction. It is rhetoric whose purpose is that emotion replaces logical reasoning. It is a favorable terrain for the masses to support the more significant barbaric acts.
For example, she says she is moved by “love” while implicitly sowing hatred for “others.” She divides society between the “good” (her supporters) and the “soulless” (those who do not adequately assess how much she is worth). She speaks of humility, while her speech was a self-aggrandizing eulogy.
This incompatibility between what she says and what she does has manifested itself crudely in these days. In a certain way, we feel sorry for those people who applauded her and had placed their hope in her because her rhetoric betrays that she would be preparing the ground to “eat raw” the “people” that she says she loves so much. Why? Because by proclaiming that the individual is “nothing,” that all that matters is that abstraction called “the collective” (which she will define), she implicitly confesses her intention to nullify individual rights. And we already know that this is the road that leads to hell.
Her way of behaving in these last days shows that she is someone sick with hatred, arrogance, and vanity. Likewise, that what she adores with unconditional love is absolute power. Moreover, she has no intention of accepting President Alberto Fernandez’s appeal to “bridge the divide” and respect those who think differently.
On the contrary, she is signaling that her purpose is to go in a diametrically opposite direction. Many of these signs are broadcast in front of the cameras so that there is no doubt regarding her position.
We will mention some of the facts that support our opinion.
One of the most eloquent was her unjustified absence from the mass “for unity and peace” celebrated by the Catholic Church. The invitation was made by the president of the Episcopate, Oscar Ojea, and took place in the basilica of Lujan (an emblematic place for Argentines). The convocation stated that the purpose was to contribute to closing the “rift.”
Consequently, the purpose went beyond strictly religious. The aim was that the highest spheres of the country should give a signal to society to leave behind hatred and misunderstandings between fellow citizens. As President Fernandez put it lucidly, it is not a matter of “thinking the same” but of “respecting” each other.
Former President Mauricio Macri and current president Alberto Fernandez responded to the call and participated in the mass. During the ceremony in which the priest invited the parishioners to “give themselves peace,” Macri and Fernandez embraced each other, sending a strong message of reconciliation, a gesture that was replicated by the leading members of both sides.
Cristina also sent a powerful message with her absence: no to peace, no to reconciliation, no to unity. May the rift continue to widen because she wants to “divide and rule.”
Another example of how she erases with her elbow what she writes with her hand was when in her speech, seemingly innocently, she used the following expression: “well-born” Argentines. They would come to be part of the “people.” And the “badly born” would only deserve repudiation, which is a veiled way of encouraging violence.
This is a position that seeks to displace the voices that, like those of the Archbishop of Lujan-Mercedes in the mass mentioned above, warn, “No person or group in solitude or isolation is the homeland. The homeland is all of us. The communion between us is not a strategic question; it makes the essence of what we are in origin and what we can be in a common destiny.”
But it is clear that Cristina intends to continue promoting the rift.
Another example: The media focused on her unpleasant grimace when she greeted Macri, an image that traveled the world. We don’t think that this bothered Cristina very much or that it was a spontaneous gesture. On the contrary, we are inclined to believe that it was a long meditated “pose,” and she could have even rehearsed it in front of a mirror. In other words, she probably projected the image she consciously intended to convey: hate and contempt.
Another fact highlighted by the press was that when she signed the inauguration of her position, she did not want to do it with the same pen as “Macri.” The “detail” is that moments before Alberto Fernandez had used it. It is a symbol that she did not want to touch it and asked one of her assistants for her “gold” pen. A wise person understands that she puts herself over the president himself.
There is another aspect that has emerged here, and it casts doubts on the honesty of Cristina as well as the new president. The second point of the newly-issued directive approves the president “to be absent from the country during the year 2020 if reasons of government require so.” Is there a plan for Cristina to assume the presidency? A vile deception of voters?
This reminds us of the wise words of Alexis de Tocqueville: “It is a lie that tyrants do not love freedom. On the contrary, they love it so much that they want it only for themselves.”
Finally, let’s not forget to mention another “detail” that reveals Cristina’s true feelings, in this case, towards those who suffer. Something that allows us to measure how much truth there is in what she expressed in her speech in the Plaza de Mayo: “We cared what happened to the one next to us, even though we were fine.”
Well, there was an opportunity to see first-hand the sincerity of her words. Alberto Fernandez, in a noble gesture, pushed the wheelchair of former vice-president Gabriela Michetti on the way to the Chamber of Deputies. In those circumstances, Michetti reached out to Cristina, and the latter did not respond to that gesture. A failure?
Alberto sabe que es el momento de los gestos, Cris no entendió nada…#10D pic.twitter.com/oBbj84ApA7
— monica peña (@moka_sin) December 10, 2019
A disabled person awakens empathy in anyone who has a minimum of humanity. If this is how Cristina reacts to someone who is in front of her, with name and surname, is it credible that she feels “love” for anonymous people, with no faces or individualized identities?
The conjunction of the “details” form a worrying picture for the future of Argentines, even for those ordinary citizens who cheered Cristina the other day.
