There’s something off-putting about the Argentine intelligentsia’s response to Javier Milei’s surprise victory in the PASO primaries. With the ultra-libertarian economist dominating the scene, the initial paralysis caused by the shock result appears to have been followed by a sense of inevitability and impending doom, in some cases widespread and in others just cultural, expecting the economic situation to potentially improve. The country’s major decision-makers, known as the “círculo rojo,” are still scratching their heads, trying to figure out what went wrong with their favored candidate, Buenos Aires City Mayor Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, or the anticipated underdog Patricia Bullrich, a former security minister with close ties to former president Mauricio Macri. Few had thrown some chips at Economy Minister Sergio Massa, who with a “face of steel” (pardon the Spanglish, in Argentine slang it’s “cara dura”) continues to campaign as the nation’s savior, despite rampant inflation and the constant threat of a default at the hands of the International Monetary Fund and the “three plagues” (the pandemic, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the drought). Weirdly enough, he’s still in the game. As is Patricia.
The fear that Milei and his weird entourage of cosplayers, social media influencers, extreme-right “dictatorship deniers” and C-class corrupt political leeches generates has to do with a breakdown in the conditions of governability in a country that is in a fragile macroeconomic situation coupled with a decades-long decadence in democratic institutionalism. Their panic and trepidation are not ill-founded. First and foremost, it isn’t clear that the ultra-liberal economist with the crazy hair is fit to undergo the pressures of the presidency. As explained previously, one of Milei’s own fears is that his medical history is leaked to the press, which could confirm a preconceived notion that he is clinically insane. Furthermore, he has a father-son relationship with his dogs, which are clones of his beloved Conan, all of which he can directly communicate with (allegedly) and considers to be his advisors in matters of macroeconomics, politics and foreign policy. He’s been able to speak directly to God (apparently), who has given him the mission of becoming Argentina’s president, along with some of the leading (long dead) economists that ascribe to theories close to the Austrian school. Those who have dealt with him have spoken about his explosive temper, and until very recently he lived a very lonely and traumatic life. All of these circumstances are explained in detail in Noticias journalist Juan Luis González’s unauthorized biography El loco (“The Crazy One”), which is currently the only published in-depth investigation into Milei and his exponential rise to the top of the political food chain.
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