Denes Martos

REALISTIC FICTIONS

According to a very old definition, at the sight of a glass half full of water the optimist will say that the glass is half full, the pessimist that it is half empty and the realist will say that the capacity of the glass is occupied up to a 50% with water. As in all this sort of metaphors, there is something to it. Although, of course, nobody pretends that a metaphor has to be scientifically accurate.

However, there is another kind of person who, while not being a realist, would like to appear as being one. It is the individual who would say that the glass is not full but it would be if it were half the size. Starting from there, sooner or later he would end up proposing as something revolutionary the downsizing of the glass because even if we do not increase the amount of its content, we still have the chance to redistribute it in a container more in accordance with its volume. That individual would be wielding one of the typical arguments of realistic fiction, which consists in proposing a plausible possibility simply not consistent with the objective reality of the problem at hand.

But additionally, there is still another kind of person. It is the one that asks: who cares about the glass? What matters is the water. How much water is there anyway? That person would be an expert focused on the essentials: we die of thirst for lack of water but no one lives by consuming glass. Or plastic. Or whatever the container is made of. The relationship between the water and its container is irrelevant as long as it holds what it has to hold. The only true thing that matters is how much water we have.

Strangely enough, these attitudes are also relevant in politics. To carry out any political project it is vital to apply practical realism in order to establish what is actually viable. At the same time, it is also imperative never to lose sight of the essentials that involve knowledge about the laws and rules governing the activity you intend to carry out. If any of these two factors – practical realism and view of the essential – is absent or misrepresented, your political activity will inevitably end up in a dead end. Because either it will pursue unattainable daydreams, or the method proposed to achieve the goals will turn out to be unfeasible. Or both.

The worst consequence of this is that, once caught in that sort of deadlock, a political organization based on false realities and a misperception of the essentials quickly becomes self-referential and justifies itself and its failures with more deception and even more mistakes. The main result of it is that the political organism ends up expelling from its midst those who insist on seeing things objectively as they are, as well as those who refuse to engage in experiments based on unfeasible methods. The practical man who cannot be fooled with unrealistic utopias and the expert who has learned to focus on what really matters, have no place in a construction based on falsehoods and delusions. The true realists and the true experts, either flee from an environment like that, or are suppressed and persecuted because they are perceived as dangerous enemies that threaten the stability of the system. Curiously enough, in doing so the party or the system is right. Because those people really are dangerous to any institution that pursues unrealistic goals with unworkable methods.

Political vacuums are always very short-lived. The vacuum left by the withdrawal of the honest realists and the true experts is then quickly filled by the opportunists of all stripes for whom the spoils of the activity, or the thrill of adventure, or the chances of notoriety that come with a possible circumstantial success, are reason enough to accept any position whatsoever and therefore they are willing to accept as an unavoidable reality all the construction built on false premises. These are precisely the people who will retro-feed the system reinforcing its building with more arguments and more defenses, either to protect their personal privileges, either by simple stubbornness, either because of their horror at the perspective of a return to anonymity, either because of a reluctance to give up an illusion which ultimately they may even got to like.

The end result of this process is that the leadership of the political organism falls into the hands of the opportunists who replace the existing reality with the "discourse" or the "narrative" of a realistic fiction that revolves around its own self in a closed circuit, forever justifying itself and presenting its arguments as the only possible reality in the name of an ideal future that, strictly speaking, is not only impossible to achieve with the proposed methods but remains impossible to build at all.

On the other hand, the true realists and experts leave the scene. They abandon politics and go about their own businesses; they turn away from the fake construction and all the artificial machinery designed to hold it in place. In a best case scenario, they seek refuge in smaller and more selective circles where, virtually isolated, they practice some sort of passive resistance, or engage in a limited protest, or persistently proclaim a negative prophecy which, of course, no one wants to hear because nobody likes to listen to the prophets of failure. Especially when they're right.

This is one of the many reasons why current politics have ended in the hands of irresponsible, corrupt and ambitious amateurs while honest and capable people refuse to participate.

Anyone might ask why, then, true realists and real experts do not unite and remove from power these corrupt opportunists? The answer is not simple and perhaps the best way to express it is by the way of a not precisely academic but more easily understandable expression. It is because the "good guys" do not come in gangs. It is the "bad guys" who operate in gangs and scratch each other’s backs. It is the mobsters who always cover each other up. Sometimes reluctantly, sometimes betraying each other, sometimes even killing each other, but ultimately, the Mafia – even the political Mafia – is always a great family, a big Cosa Nostra, which secures its members. Because in it everyone knows that, if one man falls, all the rest are in danger. They do not stick together because they love each other, but at least the fear and the horror of being discovered and held accountable unites them effectively.

The bottom line is that "good guys" do not make useful gangsters or effective mobsters. Even in some rare cases when they try to organize in a somewhat similar way, they end up imitating the "bad guys" and, at least in general, they only manage to get ridiculous. For the given reasons, the "good guys" tend to be isolated. Given a violent oppression – as, for example, facing a particularly cruel and tyrannical government – they may try to organize some form of resistance. However, given the comparatively huge and diverse resources of the State they will always be at a disadvantage. The State, even the one usurped by a corrupt and deceitful Mafia, always has more resources, more alternatives, more political machinery, more money, more police, more spies, more concrete power. Against all this the honest "lone rangers" have virtually no chance at all. And they know it. They know it precisely because the practical realists understand the usurped State’s power and therefore they do not allow to be dragged into some crazy scheme, and the real experts know very well the essence of political power and have no intention of committing suicide or lose their time in adventures with no realistic chance of success.

To all this we must add a fact that is rarely taken into account. It is often said that there can be no really far-reaching politics without a great leader. However, in the real world it is very unusual to find that, in one and the same person, the ability for objective analysis is paired with the ability to discover the essential. Only few, very few true leaders had both talents. As a rule, while the practical realists are very well connected with reality, the intellectuals who perceive the essential need to be at some distance away from it in order to have the proper perspective. The practical realist is focused on "the thing itself", in its arrangement, in its assembly, in its components. The good intellectual is more interested in the "thing in general", in what "things" have in common, in finding out how they work and how they interrelate, in knowing why and how they work at all. Hardly a single politician may have the ability to consider the relevant issues from both perspectives. Generally, the required abilities belong to different individuals with different personalities. It's like in medicine: surgeons are not very good for diagnosis and good diagnosticians very rarely make good surgeons. The powerful leader, all by himself, is simply not enough.

Is there, then, no way to clean-up politics? Is there no way to recover a State occupied by opportunists, demagogues, corrupt and greedy plutocrats? There is. Of course there is. It just happens that it is never easy.

 One of the best chances for the recovery of State and politics is given by a major catastrophe. The moment the political body collapses – either by the ineptitude of its leadership, or due to lack of interest in the "res publica" of leaders mainly oriented towards immediate self-benefit, whether economic or electoral – there opens a window of opportunity for a power take-over by someone from outside the "establishment". Obviously, for this to happen, the collapse must be serious, undeniable and pervasive. Not just a financial meltdown or some circumstantial natural and local catastrophe. And there is also something else to know: in these cases, the window of opportunity remains open only for a short time – probably just a few days, a few weeks at the most – so if the people who seek to take over political power are not properly alert, prepared and organized to act speedily, most likely the opportunity will pass without being successfully taken advantage of. Nobody gives up power gratuitously and, confronted with the risk of loosing it, those who exert it usually have very quick reflexes. At least they quickly manage to offer deceptive changes and to invent and create false expectations. Thereby they gain the time they need to rebuild and strengthen the structure weakened by the crisis.

The other possibility is given by deterioration. A State badly led and badly managed declines. The process, as History shows, can be quite long but the ineptitude, ineffectiveness and inefficiency are evils that sooner or later are paid back with the loss of confidence, the loss of credibility and therefore the loss of consensus. However, political consensus is a magnitude very hard to estimate, let alone to measure. It not necessarily has much to do with "popularity", "approval" or "positive image", the issues surveys and polls usually measure. Political consensus is essentially the acceptance of a leadership, the abiding by an authority; the obedience to a government. And only someone who is respected can generate this disposition. Respect – and the consensus that goes with it – is precisely what a politician, or an entire political stratum, loses if it proves to be incapable of governing in an acceptable way.

The chance generated by decadence is the opportunity to provide an alternative. However, for that alternative to be valid, it must come from respected persons and must be presented in such a way that it commands respect. And to that end, the first condition to be met by the people involved is to have the necessary moral, intellectual and political prestige, without which respect is unimaginable. Vis-a-vi a worn out political system, the alternative of a coherent proposal, presented and supported by people of established reputation, is undoubtedly a tool for an access to power. This first condition is not, however, the only one. But undoubtedly, it is a compulsory condition no one can ignore.

The other condition is that the people who embody this alternative are not eternal dialectic rivals, with no other bonds than a superficial agreement on some aspects of the proposal. For an alternative to the current widespread decline to be valid, it must meet three fundamentals:

• It must be based on a set of specific and clearly expressed values, real and honestly shared not only by those who designed the proposal but also by those to whom it is addressed.

• At the theoretical level, it must not only be a valid alternative but an already discussed and debated alternative. The debate about the goals, the means and the methods must be closed. Rather than a mere set of opinions, the proposal has to be the expression of an integral worldview.

• At the practical level, it must be articulated in a solid project. In a strategic plan with clear objectives, clear targets, well-defined waypoints and explicitly formulated costs and efforts.

In short, the only valid alternative to the present decline of our societies – and of the whole West for that matter – is a thorough, coherent and consistent political project, behind which those who have the necessary prestige and professional skills to run it successfully can be aligned.

It is time to abandon realistic fictions about what could possibly be done to prevent the West of disintegrating in a perversion of all its traditional values. It is high time to concentrate on what needs to be done bearing in mind that without people with the proper moral reputation and professional standing no alternative is credible. Without a viable, consistent and explicit project, no person and no group are credible. And without that credibility no political proposal will achieve the consensus needed to win and succeed.

November 22, 2010