Catiline and the bison in the Capitol

It's not a movie or a Netflix series. A large group of Donald Trump's supporters disrupted the protocol ratification ceremony for the presidential election in the U.S. House of Representatives to prevent the legitimate presidential relay process from being consummated after Joe Biden's victory, which was confirmed by the results, subsequent recounts, state courts and the Supreme Court. Four dead, 52 arrested, 14 police officers injured, 534 legislators evacuated from their seats, as well as Vice-President Mike Pence, curfew in Washington, dispatch of National Guard troops, international commotion and a mild call to respect law and order from the still president of the United States, when an energetic man disguised as a bison had already appeared sitting in the chair of the president of Congress of the world's oldest democracy. "Until when, Catilina, you will continue to abuse our patience," Cicero told the Roman conspirator in that memorable speech before the Senate of Rome. 

Until when!, the Americans might exclaim today, will Donald Trump continue to abuse the constitutional patience of democratic institutions. After having sown uncertainty before the presidential elections and confusion after them, and after having stretched the rope of polarisation to the limits, overflowing with civil disobedience. After feeding division and delegitimizing a process endorsed by all electoral and judicial mechanisms. After having deteriorated the image of US democracy at international level. To the extent that Facebook and Twitter, its usual channels for spreading unfiltered demagogy among the sores of democracy, have blocked the president's account for instigating violence.   

Until when! we can ask ourselves how long democrats in so many countries, right- and left-wing populism, intend to continue abusing the patience of institutions and lies to weaken freedoms, to empty and alter the constitutional order, to question legitimacy, to disobey the laws or to continue conspiring. In the United States the polarisation caused by populism and radical extremism has led to a popular assault on Congress. A fracture in society that unfortunately is not alien to us because the ceremonies of democratic weakening, the Constitution, the Crown, the Parliaments, Justice and Institutions, are present in our country, and in others, for some years now. A project with no other head than that of the energetic man disguised as a bison on the Capitol and with no other possibility of response than the strengthening of liberal democracy.