Move Fast, Break Things, (Build Them Back Up)

 We are in Buenos Aires, which is both hot and cool. The temperature is hot, the city is cool. New York, Paris and Milan mushed into one.

Anyways, we hooked up with an old college teammate of mine who lives here and we started talking about their new president. What was interesting was that - while I couldn't tell if my friend supported Milei in particular - he was clearly impressed with the impulses that led to his election. In his poorly paraphrased words, everything in Argentina is so broken, that they need someone to break it more.

You see this thinking a lot. Now, Argentina is a great example of modern day "broken". It's a reasonably wealthy country, but chronic misgovernment, especially with regards to monetary policy, has left it poorer than it should be. Uruguay and Chile are both wealthier countries, per capita, because they have not been trapped in the vicious cycle of currency malfunctions that have been such a burden for Argentina.

However....

The "things are terrible and the wheel must be broken" thinking is typical of almost all populist thinking (and my friend had the utmost contempt for the previous populist governments). The problem is that "breaking things" is easy. Building things is hard. The reason why Nelson Mandela is a secular saint is because he managed to break apartheid but build a (more or less) functioning state. Milei might be able to break some of the worst aspects of Argentine policy, but I'll be surprised if he can build a better, more efficient state. Can he really tackle the epic problem of corruption? I'm skeptical.

Naturally, all of this leads back to Trump. 

Trump's basic appeal among a substantial number of his followers is that things are broken and they need to smash the system (Deep State) to bring about some imagined utopia. Of course, utopias are bullshit. What's more, the idea that America is deeply broken is a flawed one, I believe. There are incredible problems - beginning with the Trumpenproletariat. Our political system is not ideal for the 21st century. Presidentialism is a flawed form of government compared to parliamentarism, but it's important to note that those flaws are not fatal and compare better to ANY authoritarian or semi-authoritarian regime. 

So there are real problems in America. Off the top of my head: opioids, climate change, wealth inequality, an aging population and hollowed out cities and rural areas. Those are real problems. Trumpist freak outs over immigration is both not a top-tier problem (it is a problem, but not the way the bigots and MAGAts say it is) will do nothing to solve the other problems.

Breaking shit is easy. A toddler is quite adept at it; Trump is a toddler, so that tracks.

Populism can break shit. It has never - to my knowledge - built things back.