Espacio Republicano

The mainstream man is everywhere. He is the kind of person embraced in circles where hypocrisy passes for courtesy, where education is mistaken for schooling, and where pompous manners are confused with genuine civility.

The mainstream man is one in whom arrogance flows effortlessly. It seeps from his pores, his words, and his way of life.

Nothing about the mainstream man is truly his own, because his life is, by definition, mainstream. He follows the current, but not just any current. He follows the current of what one is supposed to say and what one is supposed to think. Not necessarily the current that demands consistency between words and actions. For it is precisely in the contradiction between what they preach and how they live that they find their distinction. After all, they believe they “deserve it.”

The mainstream man builds his education on TEDx talks (the shorter, the better), on catchy headlines (the kind that will be readily accepted in any conversation where what ought to be thought, and how one ought to think about any given issue, is already taken for granted), and on podcasts that quickly reinforce whatever the headline has already told him. The mainstream man is not a deep reader. However much he reads, he learns very little, because what he reads is mainstream as well. Any depth he pursues serves only one purpose: to remain within the boundaries of the mainstream. For the mainstream man is, above all, comfortable.

Comfort (or rather, laziness) is his defining trait. More precisely, intellectual laziness. Yet he is blind to it. On the contrary, he sees himself as occupying the very summit of intellectual life.

The mainstream man applauds others of his own kind. They validate one another, place themselves in positions of influence, and gather to applaud each other in return.

Europe is, perhaps, the highest expression of the mainstream man.

Above all, the mainstream man delights in mocking Americans and looking down on Latin Americans. The latter with an air of condescension; the former without restraint. That is how they cast themselves as superior, as those who have discovered the proper way to live. A smug, self-satisfied laugh invariably accompanies any mention of the American way of life: its tastes, its values, its system of government, and its culture. Everything that constitutes a meaningful part of American culture becomes an object of arrogant ridicule for the European or Europeanized mainstream man.

What they fail to understand is that, in the United States, science is open to debate. The mainstream man rejects any discussion of what he considers “science.” If science has spoken, then the matter is settled. There is nothing left to discuss. In doing so, the mainstream man ends up denying the very spirit of scientific inquiry while presenting himself as its greatest champion.

He is equally contradictory when it comes to technology. To the mainstream man, a cashless society is the hallmark of progress, because he mistakes anything with totalitarian overtones for civilization. He speaks of “technology” as though it were the exclusive achievement of his own era, a badge of honor for his supposedly enlightened generation.

Yet the moment technology is associated with a society in which civilization expresses itself in a logical, ethical, and consistent way, the mainstream man draws a line in the sand. Anything that uses energy to make life more comfortable irritates him. Why? Because that is what the headlines tell him (and those headlines are later reinforced by TED talks and podcasts).

Anything associated with technology and the creation of wealth also unsettles him. Food production, energy production, and the comfort they make possible all strike him as somehow uncivilized. Especially when they come from that supposedly uncivilized place: the United States.

And so the mainstream man, who prides himself on being progressive, ultimately becomes a clear embodiment of decline.

His ideas are not his own. Coated in an air of superiority, they leave him defenseless before reality, before logic itself.

They mistook -and continue to mistake- a totalitarian such as Xi Jinping for the pinnacle of civilization simply because his hair is neatly combed and his gestures appear “refined.”

They eagerly embraced and endlessly repeated the word multiculturalism, because it was the fashionable thing to say. In much the same way, one was expected to proclaim Angela Merkel as enlightened and forward-thinking. And in their relentless quest to display their intellectual sophistication, they have branded as barbarians those unwilling to excuse cultures in which the rape of young girls, the stoning of women, or strapping explosive vests onto children to send them to their deaths are defended as tradition.

They surrendered with near-religious zeal to the supposed moral superiority of climate shamanism, eager to be recognized as defenders of what is deemed “scientific” -that is, of what, in their view, must never be questioned-. Yet they never stop flying. They board airplanes with quiet satisfaction, pleased that their boarding pass precisely calculates the amount of carbon dioxide their journey will emit. Everything is measured, quantified, and accounted for.

And then, one day, the FIFA World Cup arrives.

Where?

In the United States.

It is one of those rare occasions when the mainstream man indulges in his habitual smugness, confidently predicting that everything will be a disaster. After all, what could Americans possibly know about football when they insist on calling it soccer? Needless to say, he will not spend a single second finding out why they call it that. Curiosity is not mainstream. Besides, stepping outside the matrix is always socially inconvenient.

But then he has to travel to watch the matches. Not to New York, but to places he would never normally visit.

And suddenly, the mainstream man finds himself intimidated, dazzled, overwhelmed.

His assumptions, his mockery, and his contempt fade beneath the sheer scale of the oldest and most civilized republic humanity has ever known.

He stands astonished, not merely by the country’s infrastructure, but by what Guy Sorman once called the “American heart.”

He cannot understand it. He cannot believe it. He cannot accept it.

He falls silent.

Yet not everyone does. For there are two kinds of mainstream people: those whose conformity stems from good faith, and those whose foundation is resentment.

The well-intentioned, often to their own surprise, realize they have been misled by propaganda, by a false narrative. They admire what they see. They enjoy it. They are genuinely happy.

The other kind -the one who considers himself intellectually and morally superior- chooses silence. He no longer mocks. Instead, he retreats into his trench, patiently waiting for something to go wrong. He longs for it, eager to return to his familiar habits.

And then, while he waits, a heat wave sweeps across Europe.

The mainstream man forgets about the World Cup. He forgets his carefully cultivated pose. Sweating, exhausted, and short of breath, he heads to the hardware store to buy reflective insulation panels to cover the windows of his home in that civilized, multicultural, and ecological paradise.

They still have not embraced air conditioning. Or rather, they regard it as an extravagant waste of energy…yet another symptom of American excess.

“You freeze in American shopping malls. What a ridiculous waste of energy!”

And so, once again, fan in hand, the mainstream man explains that Europe was never this hot before, and that everything must therefore be the result of climate change.

And so, year after year, trapped in an endless loop, the mainstream man establishes himself as the supreme icon of the pantomime of civilization… and, at the same time, its greatest detractor.