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🦋 Falsehood, Truth
Saramago posts today on the subject of politics. On the eve of the presidential elections in the United States, this brief observation does not seem out of place. Some time back, a Portuguese politician*, who at that time bore the responsibilities of prime minister, declared for whomever would like to hear it that politics is, in the first place, the art of not speaking the truth. The problem is that since he said that, there has not been, to my knowledge, a single politician, from the left to the right, who would correct him, who would say no sir, the truth is going to be the sole and ultimate objective of politics. For the simple reason that only in this manner can the two be saved: truth by politics, politics by the truth. (I'm pretty uncertain about the translation of the last sentence: I'm translating the preposition "con", which usually means "with", as "by", because I'm not sure how else to make sense of the sentence.** Please let me know in comments if you know better.)
 * The politician in question is António Guterres, as near as I can tell (based on a reference in this editorial from Lusopresse). I am tentatively translating Saramago's "governo" as "prime minister", since that was Guterres' position.
** Update -- Never mind, now I looked at the Portuguese source of the post (which I had been reading in Spanish) -- the preposition translated as "con" is "pela", which is Portuguese for "by". This makes me more confident in my translation of the Spanish.
posted evening of Sunday, November second, 2008
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