The job of floating

There are two types of men at sea: the captain, who reads the navigation charts to navigate a port, and the surfer, who merely reads the wave to avoid drowning. Our politicians, as we know, are no longer captains; they are surfers. Their compass is not conviction, but algorithm; their job is not to chart a course, but to calculate whether the looming wall of water from the latest poll requires a swift cutback for their electoral base or a mere communication trim . This submission to the incessant swell of public opinion is not a strategy; it is the terminal illness that has drowned courage and condemned the ship of state to be dragged, rudderless and directionless, by the invisible currents that no poll can fathom.

The surfer in power, especially if his board belongs to a precarious majority, doesn't have the luxury of considering the route; all his energy is consumed in the daily effort to avoid drowning. And the opposition, which should be waiting at the shipyard to build a more robust ship, is on the same beach, with its own board, not charting a new course, but praying for a treacherous wave to knock its rival down. On land, the circus is self-sustaining: a media outlet that, having traded nautical chart analysis for sports commentary, now spends its days discussing in slow motion the elegance of a maneuver or the brand of board, ignoring the rising tide that is already wetting their feet; and, on the sand, a crowd of passengers who, having given up on reaching any port, have become mere spectators of a water sport, applauding the most flashy pirouette and booing the captain who, hoarse from shouting, still tries to point out the icebergs on the horizon.

The real drama, however, doesn't play out on the sunny surface, where people compete for the foam of the waves. It plays out in the dark, forgotten hold of the ship of state, where the constant dripping of reality can already be heard in the bilges. These aren't static leaks; they are living forces corroding the hull: demographics, which, like a slow and relentless infiltration, is submerging the foundations of Social Security and Health; productivity, that rotten ballast that drags the keel of the economy down into the mud; and justice, that rust that, day after day, eats away at the rudder gears, making the ship unmanageable. Repairs require the dirty work of a naval engineer. And so, while the day's pirouette is celebrated on the surface, the ship, already visibly listing under its own weight, begins its final, silent descent into the abyss.