From the moment I wake up until my first sip of coffee, I am a combination of whimsical influencer and Osama Bin Laden. My saving grace is that I try not to communicate with anyone, except for the odd grunt, so I keep my whims to myself. I also display during those early hours superhuman strength that asks for absolute inaction, to do nothing, so my presence does not pose an explicit and imminent terrorist threat either. That would require too much effort.
I am telling you this because today I woke up in a good mood. It’s strange because my city suffered the consequences of a diabolical tempest named after some woman — it wasn’t Eve, but I don’t remember the name — and besides going outside half asleep and angry, the first thing I encountered was a colossal hailstorm that almost smashed my glasses. Such inconvenience is typically something that does not help one to start the day with a whistle. But incomprehensibly, I took it well.
In this unexpected state of euphoria I arrived at my workplace, the coffee shop downstairs. I ordered a coffee, pulled out my day planner and writing pad, and started taking some notes about the first days of Trump’s second presidency. For some reason, I wrote “TRUMP” in huge capital letters at the top of the page. In such large letters, that the bold guy with the crooked nose drinking coffee next to me saw it, and felt the need to strike up a conversation with me on the matter, as if I looked like a conversational animal at that time of the morning.
What I found was the kind of European who gets on my nerves. The anti-Trumpist, like the anti-American, I ignore, or I send him to hell without entering into debates. The partisan, or partisan to my view, I try to avoid, because people tend to be very annoying and try very hard to convince me again and again of things I am already convinced of. My problem is with equivocating.
The equivocating European is someone who claims not to be anti-Trump but not pro-Trump either. So far, he’s just lukewarm like one of those who God throws out of heaven, hopefully, or so the Scriptures say. Nothing too serious. The problem is when you discover that their obsession with equivocating leads them to say cosmic stupidities like that they are neither pro-U.S. nor pro-China, that is, they place themselves halfway between the world’s largest democracy and the world’s worst communist dictatorship.
That’s where my table and coffee companion got to on the AI issue. His thesis was that accusations that Chinese AI collects sensitive personal data are nonsense, because U.S. AI applications do it too, or so he assumed. Let’s face it, the main characteristic of the equivocator is that they have no idea what they are talking about. In my experience, equivocating is the result of informational laziness rather than moral laziness.
Faced with such a circumstance, I tried to lower myself to his level, and explain some elementary concepts about the data the American AI collects, the guarantees they offer, who has access to them, and the obscurantism of Chinese data collection, plus the obligation to put that data in the hands of the PRC, if required to do so.
Seeing that his equivocating thesis was losing ground, he brought out several other equivocator theories, each one more stupid than the previous one, showing an incredible ability to say nonsense without blushing. He said that the preventive pardon to Biden’s family is not so immoral, because “the other guy” (by this he meant Trump) had also pardoned those of January 6.
He relentlessly drew crazy and impossible parallels, and defended them with the traditional European arrogance exhibited by all the idiot leaders who have been destroying the Old Continent for years: the arrogance of the French like Macron, or of the German social democrats, or of the cynics of the European People’s Party who preach in Brussels, and have turned the EU into a sanctuary of Wokism and stupid ideas.
Personally, I am proud of the heritage of great Europe, of a large part of its history, of the cultural wisdom that its cathedrals contain and safeguard, and of the Spanish adventurers who risked their lives to connect us with the distant world. As much as I am proud of our Atlantic connection and the formation of the Western bloc of freedom and capitalism that brought prosperity.
But postmodern Europe of arrogant equivocators, not only does not stir in me the slightest drop of pride, but it can ruin my first coffee of the day. By the way, who told that guy I felt like talking to him? Old wisdom still applies: never argue with an idiot. Especially not first thing in the morning.
READ MORE by Itxu Díaz:
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