Saturation and Disorientation: From Trump to Chile

The debate over MEPCO, the fuel price stabilization mechanism, in Chile is not just economic—it reveals a deeper political logic. While mechanisms like MEPCO buffer global volatility, today’s politics increasingly operates through saturation: multiple signals, overlapping reforms, constant movement. In Jameson’s terms, this produces fragmentation without totality; in Lacan’s, a sliding of signifiers without a point de capiton. Citizens feel the effects—rising costs—but cannot map their causes. What emerges is not clarity, but disorientation: a politics of surfaces where everything is visible, yet nothing fully makes sense.