What Is, Isn't?

JD Vance comes to Europe

Poor Chicken Little, after everyone ignored the little guy for so long, saying he was exaggerating, that what the fascists were saying was only electioneering, peanuts for the gallery, not to be take seriously...
And then came Vance to Europe to let everyone know that they are playing for keeps. Not only are they dismantling the little saftey net built over the decades in the United States, but that they want the same for Europe too. In this week's Camino a Ítaca a Japanese kitsune fable. When will the enchanted be able to see the foxes for what they are? Will it be too late? Click over to read the originally published version in Spanish the HOY or read the English translation below. (PDF en castellano abajo)

The landscape unfurled like an ancient scroll painting, revealing a world cloaked in the pristine silence of winter as a farmer named Tadahiro, one of those sturdy tillers of the soil who formed the backbone of feudal Japan, was walking home. The snow in Hokkaido is unlike anywhere on earth— it falls in a blanket so thick that it seems to muffle the very air, as if the gods themselves had hushed the world.

Then to his wonderment, through the settling snow came the most magnificent parade he had ever witnessed. The lantern-bearers came first, their paper lights casting pools of golden radiance across the whiteness. Behind them processioned ranks of samurai in silk hakama, their sword hilts gleaming. Musicians followed, their flutes sending haunting notes into the winter air. The gifts came next - lacquered boxes bound with silk, their contents worth more than a farmer would see in a thousand lifetimes. And there, at the heart of this splendor, moved the bride herself, her wedding kimono so fine it seemed to float above the snow.

As Tadahiro let this assembly pass, his old friend Taro happened upon the scene. What followed was one of those moments when reality itself seems to split along its seams. For where Tadahiro saw nobility and splendor, Taro saw only a troupe of foxes, padding through the snow with twigs in their mouths.

"Have you lost your senses?" Taro demanded and then mumbled something, watching his friend bow deeply to what appeared to be nothing more than common forest creatures. "They're only foxes!"

Taro’s harsh words acted like a spell-breaking charm. In an instant, the magnificent procession dissolved like melting snow, leaving only a line of foxes trotting through the snow, carrying nothing but sticks that Tadahiro's enchanted mind had transformed into all the trappings of a noble wedding.

Japanese kitsune legends remind us that sometimes the veil between worlds is as thin as a snowflake, and reality itself might depend entirely on who is doing the looking.

These mischievous foxes still have the power to enchant. Just recently, the branches in their mouths spelt out in enormous letters a headline in the Economist, “Spain shows Europe how to keep up with America’s economy.” It then ranked it the best performing economy of the OECD based on performance in the last year. 

Yet even though the Economist isn’t precisely known as radically left-leaning, enchanted right-wing commenters steadfastly believed the pablum spooned to them by the Spanish conservative press. They assured that the country had banned private property and was two small steps away from becoming a bankrupt Maoist dictatorship.

Their confirmation bias simply wouldn’t allow them to see the foxes for what they were. They weren’t seeing a cadre of billionaires and their evil minions openly moving to gut the Welfare State. Instead of seeing things like Milei’s chainsaw for what it is, a tool designed to take away their pensions, socialized medicine and education and do away with limits on working hours and minimum wages, they saw a magic wand that was going to make them too wealthy and upwardly mobile. Just like hardworking Abascal and his patriot friends.

Just what did Taro mumble that broke the spell?