We find ourselves
immersed in the debate that will conclude with the election of the next
president of the United States of America. The contest is between the
candidates of the nation’s largest and most traditional political parties: the
candidate for the Republican party, Donald Trump, and that of the Democrats,
Hillary Clinton.
The Republican party,
traditionally conservative and allied with the powerful interests that have
sustained the capitalist system and promoted the material and economic success
of this great nation, faces today, with their candidate Trump — among others — two
serious problems. On the one hand, he promotes discrimination and intolerance;
on the other, this candidate does not belong to the traditional political
structure of the Republican party.
The discourse of Trump
gathers and exploits the worst sentiments of those who, like himself, forget
the condition of immigrants while claiming to be natives and owners of a land
that does not belong to them; they forget that this nation has always been a
land of immigrants. It has been this so-called melting pot, precisely, that has
enabled America to become a powerful nation before the rest of the world. It is
for this reason that this discourse becomes populist, demagogic, hurtful and
dangerous for the political and social stability of the United States and the world.
The party of the
Democrats, on the other hand, traditionally liberal and allied with the cause
of the working class, those who have fewer opportunities to access the social
benefits provided by this nation, has embraced — indiscriminately and finally —
a series of causes and laws of a postmodernist type such as abortion or marriage
between people of the same sex, that discount the traditions and fundamental
human values upon which this nation was founded, like the right to life and the
family; issues that, although novel, protect a few minorities and satisfy
postmodern tendencies according to which each one — seeking their personal
pleasure and satisfaction — build their own life as they please, distort and
hide the truth in the midst of a thousand half-truths and take us dangerously
close to the border of disaster with a moral relativism where it is no longer
possible to discern — for the good of individuals as well as for society — what
is fundamental from what is accessory, what is essential from what is
accidental, what is permanent from what is transitory and ephemeral.
Given these political
circumstances, succinctly described, today it is more difficult to decide for
whom to vote, what person or political group to elect to guide the destiny of
this nation. Today, the great majority of voters feel confused, uncertain and
discouraged when it is time to choose between the political alternatives just
described. Political alternatives — Democrats or Republicans — with extreme positions,
both populist and equally dangerous — as we have said — for the near future of
families, society, this nation and the world.
Moreover, and to
worsen the political electoral atmosphere in which we find ourselves immersed,
other social institutions that would have the role and the moral responsibility
to orient Americans for the best political choice possible, find themselves
today — as never before — discredited and, for that reason, without authority to
guide us in this historical crossroad that is political, social, cultural and
electoral.
We face a political choice
will not be between two good proposals for the nation, or between a good
proposal and a bad one; rather we find ourselves obliged to choose between them
or, as they say in philosophy, to choose between the lesser of two evils.
