The drums of war are sounding on the planet, but we Europeans still hear the bombs in the distance without fully believing that they could fall on us at home. Iran and Israel, meanwhile, open another front like that of Ukraine and expand that of Gaza throughout the Middle East.
And all European statesmen, like Pat Cox here in the Contra last week, have launched themselves to ask that we arm ourselves more and better at the expense, alas, of our budget allocations dedicated to Education, Health or Pensions.
They believe it is their duty, and perhaps it is, but the question is who will vote for them after they have fulfilled their duty; because proclamations that are not yet pro-war, but already pre-war, are one thing; and another, sending our young people - like the Danes now called to military service - to train as combatants.
Who will vote for the politicians who call for the restoration of Compulsory Military Service in Spain, like the one that is already strictly followed in six EU countries? How many young Spaniards are willing to go ARRRRRR to the military?
Robert Brooks, who was one of the hawks of conservative Republican politics as president of the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), was at “the Contra” on Friday defending, in a dizzying vital and ideological turn, the complete opposite: Love your enemies, love your enemies.
But he wrote that book with the best title at the worst moment for his ideological leadership, when Trump was winning votes by distressing thousands of white middle-class Americans: “Now they are coming for you!”, which is the same thing he shouts today in the newspapers. rallies that are giving him an advantage over President Biden in the polls.
Brooks is a man of three lives and those that remain, because he was a musician for ten years until he became the principal trombonist of the City of Barcelona Orchestra, where he met his wife; At the age of 31, he decided to pursue a doctorate in Politics, and in a brilliant career, he presided over the AEI for another ten years to end up teaching leadership at Harvard, a university where he has been a professor for five years...And thirty years after Harvard rejected his application as a student. .
The former hawk of the US empire tells us that now with his Harvard team he often visits the Dalai Lama and that he has just presented another book, Build the life you want with media star Ophra Winfrey as co-author.
And it describes how nationalist identity politics is leading us to war and social division across half the planet. Our reptilian brain, inherited from our ancestors in evolution, pays attention to messages that cause fear - The lion is coming! Or The missile is coming! - and with them the populists capture their attention, which is the first step to winning the vote.
And that the History of the progress of humanity, of its nations and borders, is to stop with knowledge the symmetrical attribution of motives that Brooks denounces: “If those of your tribe believe in a God, that does not mean that we must assume that Those from other tribes believe in the devil, but we can all share beliefs and live together in diversity.” Meanwhile, European statesmen, in case Putin, warn us that we must reach out to the enemy; but let him see that in the other we have a very big stick. Or a few nuclear warheads.
Also in nutrition we are experiencing the health war against ultra-processed foods, added sugars and the ubiquitous supply at all hours of ultra-caloric food that is as unhealthy as it is generating huge profits for the multinationals that manufacture it. Dr. Walter Willett, founding father of the modern science of Nutrition and also a professor at Harvard, explained it in Alimentaria de Barcelona and in “La Contra”, using the Japanese and their education in calorie restriction as an example and as a bad example. to his compatriots. We Spaniards ate very healthy, but according to their statistics, we are becoming infected with bad globalizing habits.
The week counted
Eduard Andreu Pérez described to us how he sees and lives life from his autism, while the actress Lola Herrera explained it from the stage and the novelist Alicia Giménez-Barlett told us about her books, her dogs and her garden with all the substance and talent of a “scribe” like her. Happy week!
