Nothing could be worse than minimizing the danger that Brazil is facing at this time in the hands of a character like the retired and ultra-violent captain, Jair Bolsonaro, who not only mocks an epidemic that is bringing the world to its knees, but tries to take advantage of it to undermine democratic institutions and strengthen their lust for power.
Taking advantage of this moment of national anguish to politicize a drama in which life or death is played with your reelection in mind is a crime without forgiveness.
With his sibylline style of saying and disdaining, of playing hide and seek, the president ends up confusing and imposing his style of apprentice on a dictator while some people still look at him as harmless because he is considered poorly prepared and incapable. On the contrary, the one who dreamed of being an Army general and remained a simple captain is more dangerous to democracy than many think. It gnaws without us realizing our liberties and decision-making abilities. And wait for the right moment to strike the blow.
Whoever thought that the military, starting with the generals that he placed in the Government, would be a guarantee against his authoritarian attacks today see how those have been isolated or have been expelled from the Government for not placing themselves at their command. All his sins are forgiven even those against common sense. He is allowed to present abroad a picture of the country that runs counter to the world's greatest leaders in the fight against the coronavirus epidemic because it is believed that no one will believe him.
The President is more dangerous than he seems because his ambitions for power are far greater than even those next to him imagine. His capacity for totalitarianism and the desire to put democratic institutions at his feet are insatiable and he comes back to him from a young age, when as a simple soldier he dreamed of presiding over the country using even terror methods, as when he used to play at headquarters terrorist and subversive. Then, too, the Army hierarchies forgave him because they considered him harmless or naive. Today we see that it was not.
He was considered harmless also when already in politics, as a deputy, he mocked democratic values, exalted dictatorships and torture, and humiliated women and those who did not fall into the heterosexual category. He was allowed everything because he was considered innocuous, from the lower clergy. He was allowed to vomit the greatest barbarities because he was thought to be a folk character, even funny, a nobody. It was not. And he reached the highest leadership of the State and by popular vote.
In the midst of the drama of the coronavirus epidemic that scares the world and that we do not yet know how many victims it will have, the president continues irresponsibly in his thirteen to deny the evidence and go against the public opinion, highly majority, as revealed in the latest poll of Datafolha. And he takes advantage of the tragedy to dream of even imposing a state of siege and placing the Army in command of the country. Army that, to avenge his old dream of power, now as president would have it at his feet.
While those who really count in the country and are responsible for their destiny continue to underestimate the secret dreams of omnipotence of the captain in reserve, they should look back in history to remember that they were characters who in their time seemed innocuous and deceitful who ended up creating holocausts and wars to take revenge on those who considered them minor and innocuous figures. Will it be necessary to remember names of the great tyrants of History that arose from the mediocrity of politics? It is not difficult to recall the tragedy of the world each time that minor figures, considered harmless and easily dominated, were placed in front of it while they were insatiable in their madness for absolute power.
If the sane, the normal, those who are capable of exercising power as a service to the community, would end up devoured by the cravings for power of the mediocre and false fools capable of anything to continue on the pedestal of power, tomorrow could be too late.
Let us not allow true Brazil, today frightened, the one that works and sacrifices itself to present itself to the world as the great country that is by tradition and history, by its ability to withstand the worst crises, by its natural and spiritual riches, suffocated by the ignorance and folly of those who want to make it a banana and peripheral country in the world.
That love for violent attitudes and confrontation against all, for violent conflicts, for hate politics was always the dream of all apprentices to dictators who tried to camouflage their inferiority complexes with the rumbling of cannons and the sacrifice of millions of people perpetrated on the altar of political madness of thirst for dominance.
That Brazil, rightly frightened by an epidemic that kills and makes us all prisoners of war, do not wait any longer and look for the constitutional formula that allows placing the country in the hands of someone normal, without pathologies and delusions of power capable of coping sensibly at these critical hours that could mark the future of a country that is showing solidarity and wanting to win this battle and continue with its vocation for peace and its wishes for happiness.
That Brazil does not have to regret not having reacted in time by letting someone who has already given sufficient evidence that they are incapable of governing a country of this magnitude, least of all in decisive moments like this, continue to dangerously drag it into an adventure whose end does not it's hard to imagine.
And it is for today. Tomorrow would be too late.
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