Usefulness and gratitude are two qualities that one expects from the person to whom one has given a gift of heaven, and to whom you have given him a triumphant professional career and a position that is the envy of others. When others envy you, … The best in the world. Imagine that the president of the government of an important European country has appointed you as the state attorney general. It’s not just something. Choosing a partner is an act based on the utmost trust. Your person reaches the highest altar of a professional career, to which he decided to devote his life from the most tender and innocent youth. I’m talking about political psychology, something no one talks about on TV talk shows. You see, they talk about stupid things and forget about something basic – greed. How not to rush to help when your benefactor needs a little help. So will everyone. The most human thing in the world is to think that you were put where you were because you deserved it. It’s much better to be someone who thinks they’re worthless. They end up being more careful and less likely to make mistakes. In Spain, who doesn’t like their boss if they need a little help? The person who appoints you as minister, the person who appoints you as prosecutor, or whatever they can appoint you, expects something from you. Do you want your valiant efforts to be the optimal outcome for Spain’s overall interests? That no longer exists and that is why the crisis of Spanish democracy is a black hole. The German-speaking Jewish writer Franz Kafka had already warned against the use of state power to socially murder individuals, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in examining Spanish political life from the psychology of victory and failure.
Spain has no ideology, just different strategies to gain power. In this 21st century, it is as if a bitter struggle between the two great philosophers of modern times, Freud and Marx, ended with an undisputed winner: Sigmund Freud. We are experiencing the disappearance of Marxism, but that disappearance has never been verbalized. And we are celebrating the victory of Dr. Freud’s paper in political psychology. Power is the fentanyl of the elite. Unfortunately, I will be left without trying fentanyl, which is not covered by Social Security.
The boss’s love is very necessary to strengthen your spirit when you wake up in the morning, when your butt sits on the luxurious leather of the official car, when that leather caresses your butt, always bought from wealthy Germany, and that leather that caresses your butt reminds you of who put your butt there. You can’t understand what was going on in the state attorney general’s head without thinking about him. Democracy in Spain is a debate about donkeys. When I wake up in the morning, I thank chance, God, or whoever, for my good fortune not to be liked by Spanish politicians.
My butt always ends up in the same place: on a worn-out plastic chair on Madrid’s public transport system. Celebrate having an ass there. How can we not be useful and grateful if, thanks to the will of our superiors, our butts sit in a noble, dignified and solemn place? There is a permanent psychological francism, and this is called gratitude. There were people I was grateful to for 40 years. Gratitude returns, but is masked as responsibility. He was not responsible for what the state attorney general did or did not do. It was something greater, special, and indestructible. I was grateful for that. It doesn’t matter if he is innocent or guilty. What we do know is that, like many others, he was always grateful.
I wake up in the morning and say to myself: “Imagine you were appointed a minister and you would have to thank the person who saved you from a life of banality without public pomp.” We cannot stand being nobody. Judges can’t stand it. Writers can’t stand it. Journalists can’t stand it. Soccer players can’t stand that. Artists can’t stand it. The bishops can’t stand it. No one can stand it. That is why Freud made himself the master of this world. It’s hard to believe that the man wearing round glasses and his light, weak gaze could have committed a crime. It wasn’t a crime. That’s what we all would have done. What is loyalty in politics? That’s a good question. You owe loyalty to those who chose you, not to a competitor’s strict and greedy submission to your work. Exceptionalism at work is fading, it is a fading light. What shines in Spain is something very old, medieval, and for me morally underdeveloped: gratitude. It’s about bowing down and being there. It is very well expressed cinematically in the movie The Godfather, in the memorable scene in which Marlon Brando makes a request to the funeral parlor owner, and Don Vito Corleone tells the funeral parlor owner, “I don’t need money, I want a soul, I want gratitude, I want friendship.”
I say that I remember with gratitude the first time I saw it. I saw it in the 80’s at the Spanish University where I was studying. There I saw it in all its splendor, in all its splendor. And it still exists in 21st century universities and will never go away. In fact, I was kicked out of college simply for being ungrateful. Life is a comedy of grateful and ungrateful people. I was fascinated by the quality that I didn’t have. It was a way of greeting and a way of being present at the moment your boss needed you. How do you find those moments? You have to have extraordinary talent. Why didn’t I have it? I don’t know, I didn’t know. You either have the talent or you don’t. So my butt stopped resting on the couch in my college office and started resting wherever God had me figure it out. But that was one of the great things about my personal life. I am seduced by revolutionary slogans. Spanish men and women, forget about your butts sitting wherever freedom leads. Either the return of the ungrateful or this country will become extremely boring and fatally mediocre. There is nothing more mundane than political gratitude. Because it goes against the greatness of life. Thanks to literature, the great home of the ungrateful, I was able to free myself from it.
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