You don’t win an argument calling the other side “stupid”
a.k.a “The fall of Brazil”
Shit… How to explain the mess Brazil is right now?
Let me try to go back and caught up some facts…
2014
In 2014, Brazil was a divided country. The two major political parties were fighting to elect the next president:
- PT, the worker’s party, representing the left. The leader of the party was this charismatic guy named Lula, president for eight years, with huge improvements in social areas and even bigger failures in economic areas. PT’s candidate was Dilma Rousseff, Lula’s creation and the one who always had his support.
- PSDB, the “right” party. Ok, PSDB is not quite to the right - and PT, honestly, is not quite to the left -, but PSDB’s candidate, Aécio Neves, was the representation of an anti-PT movement.
Dilma won. PT won. It was a tight result: 54 million votes against 51 million votes, but PT would rule the country for 4 more years.
2016
The country was so divided that any government couldn’t go really far, anyway… In 2016, Dilma Rousseff was impeached. “Operation car wash”, the operation that exposed the biggest corruption scandal in brazilian history was in its peak and found deep criminal connections with PT’s party and former government Lula. A lot of politicians were arrested, Dilma was taken off presidency and our former president Lula was condemned to 12 years in prison (he was finally arrested in the beginning of this year).
Now, it’s important to know a bit more about PT supporters: some of them are the brazilian equivalent to SJW. Many of them still support Lula and completely ignores the tons of criminal proofs exposed by Operation Car Wash, still arguing that Lula is innocent and answering that corruption is quite a brazilian way of living, and PSDB party, the opposition at the time was as corrupted as PT. I don’t want to get into the discussion of Lula’s supposed innocence or how much corruption was also flowing through PSDB’s politicians, but fact is: the scandal was big enough for PSDB to lose their supporters. It’s rare to find anyone who still defends the party, and this year elections proves that: PSDB’s candidate, Geraldo Alckmin, was only in fourth place, with a bit more than 5 million votes. In four years PSDB lost 46 million votes! Corruption hit hard in the party and in its supporters.
But, amazingly, corruption did not hit that hard in PT’s supporters. Lula is still a quite charismatic leader, even after condemned and arrested, and the great improvements of his government in Brazil’s social areas are still being spread as “the greatest step in Brazil’s growth in the recent history”. I will not, as well, get into how true is this sentence — you can, by yourself, see the data of the poverty evolution of Brazil and compare with the poverty evolution of the world and take whatever conclusion you want, because it doesn’t care in this analysis. It’s just important to see that a majority of PT’s supporters from the past are still supporting it. And most of non-PT’s supporters became anti-PT, thanks to this corruption scandals.
This scenario, not surprisingly, divided the people. If you still supported PT, you were complacent with corruption, and mostly, you were stupid. If you were against PT, you would automatically be against all the social evolution Lula worked on, and you automatically don’t like poor people, and mostly, you were stupid.
This kept growing, the left were getting more left and the right were getting more right. More didactically and internationally speaking, left were getting more democrat and right were getting more republican.
2018
In this divided scenario, one person started to grow: Jair Bolsonaro, a former army-captain that promised to be tough against violence and with ideas that sounds quite antiquated: he is homophobic (“I wouldn’t be able to love a gay son. I wouldn’t be a hypocrite, I’d prefer a son to die in an accident than appear with a moustacho.”), racist (“The slightest afrodescendant weighed 230 pounds. They don’t do anything. I don’t think they even serve for procreation anymore.”), and completely unable to be a president. He doesn’t have a clear government plan, and probably, not even an idea of what a president does.
How a guy like this can grow so much politically?
The truth is that, despite what most people are saying in social networks today, Bolsonaro electors are not idiots. Most of them doesn’t even agree with this homophobic racist quotes. But Bolsonaro grew mostly as an anti-PT option. This is because, back in 2016, PT supporters were defending their party using the argument “PSDB is also corrupt, see?”, a truth fact. Well, PSDB supporters had to find a new anti-PT party, and they started getting further and further in the political compass until reaching the end of it. Bolsonaro is the as far to the right as possible in politics nowadays, and he grew as an alternative to everything PT represents: the left, the minorities, the social programs…
Suddenly, this guy became a menace. He already had some supporters. The left was scared: how a guy like this has supporters? What kind of idiot supports this asshole? That’s what they said… Holy, crap, thought some other people, look what stupidity left is saying! They are scared of this guy. He might be good. That’s what right said... Fuck! How the hell is Bolsonaro’s support growing so much? Is the world made of idiots? That’s what left said... This guy is against corruption. PT supporters are comply with corruption. That’s what Bolsonaro fans said… Those are nazis; said PT… — literally, some left politicians do compare Bolsonaro to Hitler and their electors to fascists.
2018 election grew on this: there were no more than two sides, you were against corruption or against Bolsonaro. Once PSDB, the old PT enemy was corrupted, as Car Wash operation pointed out, they had to choose a new candidate. Bolsonaro grew in this spot.
If everything wasn’t a mess big enough, Lula, PT’s main figure was arrested, so they put another guy (Fernando Haddad) in his place with the clear message that he would be a simple alias of Lula. The message is clear: if you vote in Haddad, you’re voting in Lula.
Yesterday results proved this polarity: the two candidates on top are, not by chance, Jair Bolsonaro and Fernando Haddad. They will face each other in a second round of campaign that will take over Brazil for the next 20 days. It’s probable that Bolsonaro will be the next president, once there are more people tired of PT’s 14 years of corrupt government and that believes that it worth a shot to try something new. Even if something new is racist and homophobic. And people who are voting in Bolsonaro, most of them (if not all), are NOT stupid, are NOT fascist, are NOT ignorant, are NOT racist and are NOT homophobic.
They are voting in him as consequence of years and years being called racist, homophobic, ignorant, fascist and stupid by the left supporters. Left treated everybody like this, so when a real racist homophobic ignorant fascist stupid shows up as candidate, they see him as an equal.
Jair Bolsonaro is bad, he may be the worst candidate I ever saw, but he is a creation of PT. While brazilian SJW are deeply worried with cultural appropriation of a girl with cancer using a turban in the subway, a false accusation of sexual misconduct from a client of a bar or with a sticker of an opposite candidate in an Uber car (sorry, links in portuguese), this idiot just kept talking his way up in the election pools, and will most probably be the next president. Because brazilians are now forced to choose between a thief and a racist… and they already know the thief didn’t worked out.
Dark times will come.
