The devotion to politicians in Colombia

The devotion to politicians in Colombia is very common, adoring them as semi-gods and superior beings, following them almost with religious fervor – let's remove the adverb 'almost,' which generally is unnecessary: with religious fervor, blindly and abjectly – is one of the essential attributes of politics and power, whose representatives are often invested with a kind of supernatural force, a charisma before which their followers kneel, blissful, in ecstasy.

Uribe and Petro have blinded this country, which becomes filled with distractions precisely through them. They flee from their problems, placing their hope in a politician to lift them out of poverty. That's why politics in Colombia is so important. It's a way to escape the guilt of being poor.

There are cases where politics is a rational and bureaucratic transaction, a vile business in which its operators and beneficiaries are so clear about it that they don't need more legitimacy factors than profit, compromise, the certainty of mutual gain. There's also the virtuous aspiration of politics as a philosophy and utopia: grand projects, visionary ideas, building the future, and so on.

But the religious and sacred dimension of power, that of caudillismo and sectarianism, fanaticism and gregarious passion, undoubtedly has a weight in political and social life in many places, even in the modern world, who would have thought. It's what Spinoza, thinking of Alexander the Great and all the times when oracles confirmed his divinity, associated with superstition as one of the most effective forms of mass domination.

With superstition brought into politics, politics as an act of faith, there's a process of collective alienation in which nothing matters except following the leader, defending and vindicating his ideas and name at all costs, marching (in a military sense) in his shadow. What a great English poet called "the suspension of disbelief": letting ourselves be seduced and enchanted by fiction, except that in this case, fiction is power and those who wield it.

That's why many of the discussions that take place today around politics make no sense – none at all – because arguments and facts circulate in them, evidence and realities that are not a matter of whether they're valid or not or whether they have a basis and foundation, but they simply don't matter at all because those who defend a cause, a reason, do so under the religious influence of faith and superstition. They believe because they want to believe, like Tertullian, beyond reason.

And that's okay, or rather: it's inevitable that it happens, it's an ancient and common phenomenon (Spinoza also said so). Although it would be much healthier for this to be said and known once and for all, and that we're not surprised by the incoherence and shamelessness, the cynicism, the moral somersaults of all the sycophants and supporters who change their principles and logic according to the flag they have in front of them.

It's not that facts are not important to many of those who are involved in them or live off analyzing, interpreting, commenting on, disseminating, criticizing them. No. It's just that there comes a point where those facts don't matter anymore because the faith of those who believe in a political project and its transcendental cause prevails above all else. That's where the evidence, doubts, nuances, ethical reservations dissolve: in that religion, only assent fits.

It can be from the left or the right, it doesn't matter; the extremes often get confused. In those sects and chapels, everything is subject to the messianic power of the leader, to his message of redemption and change that justifies anything, even the perpetuation of what was supposed to be changed. It's better to say it like this and not invent sophisms or expiatory reasons: nothing else matters as long as the leader is who he is, period.

"Thief or not, we want Perón," they say the Argentines used to say. Perhaps that's preferable (less unworthy, especially for the eternal indignant of the day before) than denying reality.

That's the sad reality of Colombian politics. This country can be whatever it wants, but it will never let go of its fanaticism for politics, and that somehow condemns us to poverty.

In the United States, politics is relevant as entertainment. The debates are interesting, and people seek to be entertained. In Colombia, unfortunately, politics is a religion with the worst aspects of religion. Only agony and suffering and no salvation.

This Colombian culture of politics is something one should work on. Politics can only be overcome if we talk about business and ways to make money.