Chainsaws are great when it comes to chopping down trees and cutting through thick planks of wood, but as well as making an infernal racket which annoys people who happen to be living nearby, they can maim or even kill users who are too weak or too clumsy to handle them properly.
The same can be said about Mr Chainsaw himself. Javier Milei has achieved much since moving into the Pink House over a year ago. By hacking away at government departments that served no useful purpose, refusing to increase the money supply, squeezing expensive entitlements and taking measures to encourage investment in the natural resources Argentina has in abundance, he has slowed inflation and put the country on the threshold of what could turn out to be a prolonged economic boom.
While such results are undeniably good, Milei has also done much to make Argentine public life even more like a circus than it already was before he arrived. He seems unable to engage in reasonable arguments with those who criticise him, no matter how mildly. Instead, he covers them with crude insults that have pornographic connotations which tell us more about the kind of person he is than about the supposed shortcomings of those he berates. What is more, Milei’s favourite targets – and those of the digital warriors he has enrolled – are not political enemies who would dearly like to see his government break apart even if that meant many millions getting hurt by the falling debris, but journalists and economists who, on the whole, approve of his overall strategy, followed by members of the parties that provide his government with the parliamentary support it often needs.
In 2023, the electorate chose Milei over Sergio Massa and Patricia Bullrich because it had become horribly clear that, unless something really drastic was done double quick, Argentina would soon be devastated by a hyperinflationary tornado and could easily end up much like Venezuela, with at least 90 percent of the population that failed to emigrate reduced to living on scraps. Would democracy have survived the ensuing turmoil? Few would bet on it.
Unlike his rivals, who in their different ways represented the old order, Milei struck people as being a man who would be capable of doing whatever it would take to save Argentina from the unhappy fate that was fast closing in on her. This was why most of them overlooked his nuttiness and his other off-putting characteristics that in less troubled times would have debarred him from high office. Those who voted for him appreciated his single-mindedness when it came to dealing with an economy that seemed programmed to self-destruct and understood that they would have to accept whatever else came in the packet he offered them.
To judge by what has happened since then, the electorate chose well. If Massa had come first in the run-off – and it is worth remembering that he got a far bigger proportion of the votes than did Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour Party when it won its “landslide” victory in the United Kingdom – the inflationary bomb he had busily primed while campaigning would already have exploded and corruption would in all likelihood have become institutionalised even if, for straightforward political reasons, he had done his best to ensure that Cristina Fernández de Kirchner got sent to jail.
As for Bullrich, she would probably have felt obliged to take a rather more cautious approach to the challenges facing the country in order to retain the support of PRO wets and their Radical allies. It was only after Milei got down to work without sparking a massive rebellion that she and former president Mauricio Macri realised that, given the alternative, about half the country was prepared to put up with a fierce austerity programme, while the other half proved reluctant to join in the theatrical protests that, as expected, started to be staged by union bosses and political activists who did not believe in the slogans they kept repeating. They are still at it.
Milei wants the movement he has spawned to last for several generations. He seems to assume that, thanks to his own wisdom – and the help he says he is getting from a heavenly host and his canine advisors –if he sticks to his guns, the Argentine economy will become the world’s richest. However, though it is entirely possible that, thanks in large measure to what he is doing, the country does enjoy a lengthy period of rapid growth, this would not necessarily mean that his peculiar brand of libertarianism and the politicians associated with it would continue to hold power for very long. Instead, like chainsaws when all the trees have been toppled, they would probably be put back in storage; by then, the country would have little need of politicians who specialise in overcoming the obstacles to growth that were put up by previous administrations but have few ideas about what to do next.
Repairing the damage done by three-quarters of a century of Peronism and the decades of Radical and military rule that preceded it will be anything but easy. Those in charge of the country will not be able to just sit back and let the market work its magic. In addition to removing the restrictions that for so long have prevented entrepreneurs big and small from making full use of their talents, much will have to be done to improve the educational level of the general populace which, if recent reports about what is happening in the country’s schools are anything to go by, risks sinking into a semiliterate stupor. Needless to say, the extreme vulgarity patented by Milei – apparently because he believes it helps him win the fervent backing of adolescents whose parents are Peronists – cannot contribute anything positive to a coordinated effort to raise intellectual standards. It would certainly not have met with the approval of those stern Austrian sages whose teachings he says he reveres.
Milei and his top advisors, among them his sister Karina, have their eyes on the Peronist electorate and are making headway in parts of the country, such as Greater Buenos Aires and the “feudal” inland provinces, which until barely a year-and-a-half ago were assumed to be Peronist strongholds. If they succeed, the country could end up split between libertarian populists who, like the early Marxists, wanted the State to “wither away,” and moderate liberals of a conservative bent who think parts of it are worth preserving. Given the disappointing results of the traditional split between the collectivist left and the individualistic right, replacing it with one which has libertarians on one side and liberals on the other would be an interesting innovation.
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