Fernando Dámaso, Translator: Unstated
Autocrats throughout history have always liked to use, in trying to
express their ideas, big words, lofty, bulky, heavyweight. So common
ones have been: irreversible, unchangeable, untouchable, forever,
eternal, unshakable, indestructible, solid, impenetrable, unyielding,
and so on. They don't look for them in dictionaries, but they fall like
rain, part of their vision of society. So they use them without any
sense of proportion and sometimes to the point of ridicule.
In times not so long ago, the Hitler's Third Reich claimed a life of a
thousand years and socialism, not to be outdone, declared itself
irreversible, saying it would liquidate capitalism and establish
communism forever. One as much an outrage as the other, the mentioned
words were the common denominator of propaganda campaigns, slogans and
even the core interventions of its leaders and followers, each one
trying to be stronger, to leave no doubts about the only possible
reality, backed by the illustrious history and intelligence of its thinkers.
As words, unless accompanied by events that validate them, do no work,
but the larger, bulkier and heavier they are, the framework collapses
under them and they shatter, denying what for years they have tried to
implant with a chisel in the minds of citizens, into order to disarm
them with hopes of change.
Today, reality is otherwise. To try to use them again demonstrates,
first, an absolute lack of originality and, what's more, does not take
into account that technological development has arrived, in one way or
another, to the majority of humans, and that information, a direct
result of the same, is impossible to lock up in tight ideologies,
despite all the efforts and resources to devote to it. An informed
citizen is very difficult to manipulate and deceive.
It would be healthier for those who cling to these obsolete formulas to
try to keep their flock docile, to put their feet on the ground and
captured its vibrations, which are manifested today in almost everyone.
To hear and feel them is wise; to be deaf is not intelligent.
July 16 2011
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