September 22 marked the 25th anniversary of the premiere of the series pilot The West Wing of the White House and, to celebrate, its creator and screenwriter Aaron Sorkin gave several interviews in which he repeated that reality continues to imitate this fiction about American politics. Two days later, Argentine President Javier Milei confirmed this thesis by delivering a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in New York that was a word-for-word plagiarism of a monologue by the charismatic fictional President Josiah Bartlet. by Martin Sheen.
The anecdote shows not only that today’s populist politicians can dispense with the appearance of solvency and seriousness without affecting their electoral results, but also that we have moved from politics-fiction to politics-parody. The leaders left behind what the book “Politics and Fiction”. Ideologies in a World Without a Future,” by Pablo Bustinduy and Jorge Lago, calls for “resolving fictions,” ideological narratives that serve to channel concrete problems and project citizens’ hope toward a desirable horizon, and they embrace the meme with delight.
