1,000 subscribers: stories vs. reality

The events of life interact with its players just like in a good story.

Hershey G. asks in the comments about right vs. left, and who is more “right” with a the amnesty issue, and how that should be described, but to my mind this is more a question about stories or ideas or rhetoric vs. reality…

Thank you for your great work.

It seems like the vast majority of words and effort is spent detailing and criticizing the reaction by the right. Very little is spent on the actions of the left.

Is Sanchez's deal with Junts really unconstitutional? What does PSOE and Sumar stand for besides not being right of center? Is the right just angry because they lost or do they have any legitimate criticisms?

For someone who doesn't live in Spain it is hard to get legitimate, unemotional, unbiased analysis. Thanks again

First of all, over time, as we can all see in the media if we pay even a little bit of attention, one new story somewhere often connects to another and then they reveal themselves as part of what we label a trend and one trend will predominate for a few weeks or months or even years, perhaps even combining with others to form some higher-level mega-trend.

This happens with sudden new stories (the Canary Islands volcano, or the Covid pandemic, Israel-Gaza) that take over the news agenda and it happens more slowly over time with politics, economics, social or legal issues that bubble up (the rise of Podemos or Vox, Catalan separatism, unemployment).

As each unfolds, whether it is the quicker or the slower version over some period of time, as events start to happen, they cause thoughts and emotions and reactions in participants and readers alike, and everybody starts analysing it and asking what happens next or what it might mean.

All of the participants on the public stage are usually selling a story, a version of events that favours their business, political, legal or personal interests.

Then there are legal or logisitical or physical constraints of many varied types that affect the structure of what they can all choose to do about it, from their own particular perspective, with those interests.

When we get to groups or political parties or movements or whole chunks of society against whole other chunks, it all gets very complicated very quickly.

But there are always core drivers at work somewhere, key people and ideas or crucial limitations to action or opportune moments for advancement.

It was clear, for example, from an analytical perspective, about three years before the Catalan separatist crisis came to a head in October 2017, that it was all going to come down to rhetoric vs. reality. Beyond all of the waffling and grand statements, despite what the law said, or the economic consequences investors warned against, would Mas, or later Puigdemont, actuallly do it? Would they go as far as actually declaring independence from Spain, against the whole apparatus of state designed to stop that?

(In the end, Puigdemont did, for a few hours, then ran off to Belgium, and here we are six years later; he has seen his moment of opportunity to come home.)

What people end up doing with their opportunities or challenges in life is more relevant than what they should have done at some other point, what the law says they should, or what knowledge says is right from a theoretical perspective. Then of course there is the right that everyone likes to boast about after-the-fact, when events have shown that their particular view proved to be so. But no one knows that beforehand, otherwise there wouldn’t be any tension an uncertainty or opportunity in any of it, narrative or real-life.

All of this is analogous to trading and stocks too: fundamental analysis (stories, ideas, arguments) vs. price going up and down now (actual action).

So over the years, to get back to Hershey’s question about the left-right aspects of the current situation, I have found myself much more driven by sticking to how the events and reactions themselves unfold, more than the stories or the ideology or who might be right, which are interesting to a point, but it doesn’t matter if such-and-such a politician or participant keeps arguing about something, however right they believe themselves to be, if the other players have already done something that resolves the situation.

Which is why I write now about the right having the bigger problem, from their own perspective, because however much they protest that they won the general election on votes in July, or that they are more right according to the Constitution or European law or global ideology, it doesn’t matter because in a democracy, it’s how the votes are added up in to a majority that counts, and, whether each reader likes it more or less, the socialists, the far- or further- or alt-left and the regionalists and separatists have won, both for control of Congress (178-172) and to reappoint a Prime Minister (179-171).

Unless they change ideas and frames and arguments to sell to votes next time round (political doing), they are not going to get the majority they need to govern and try to implement their policies. By 2027, they will have been out of power for almost 10 years.

The lawyers and judges will now undoubtedly spend months arguing about the constitutionality of the amnesty bill bit (another example of arguing as doing), opposition parties will try to delay it in the Senate (doing), and at some point in the future, the Constitutional Court will send out its learned judgement, and everybody will react to that and argue some more.

Maybe Puigdemont doesn’t get to come home. Right now, nobody knows.

But the part of the deal that is Sánchez becoming PM again is now done and dusted. Barring a colllpase of the coaliton or the right somehow coming up with a majority of votes it has just proven it doesn’t have (more doing), Sánchez will be in government until 2027, whether the right and each reader likes it or not. The alt-right led streets protests over the past couple of weeks have also been an interesting form of doing, beyond the usual arguing, and it has been interesting to see the evolution of that part too, and what it means to participants. We don’t know where that part will lead yet, either.

There will also be time to analyse the new government, its policies, decisions, actions and reactions, and to see how all of that fits with their philosophies.

Ideas and narratives and ideologies and arguments are always interesting but events, actions and reactions, in the context of other events and limitations, always drive the story in an enormous complex, changing system. I believe this is true in narrative theory and good storytelling also.

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