Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: Governments are rotting around the world, another warning for Brazil in 2023

At the top of the New York Times web page, on the left side, was news of panic in the Democratic Party at the risk of ugly defeat in the November election. On the right side, a report gave 19 recipes to eat well while spending less. This was how the NYT was at the beginning of Thursday night (14).

Recipes for good, cheap food are not uncommon in newspapers. But it felt strange. The NYT reader is not exactly poor, to abuse the euphemism or the litotes.

Joe Biden has been almost called a gaga or mentally incapable in the opinion pieces of right-wing newspapers, even quality ones, like the “Wall Street Journal”. But it is indeed painful or embarrassing to watch Biden’s speeches or interviews. Still, that’s a minor problem, given the tangle.

According to a poll commissioned by the NYT, Biden’s approval rating is 33%. At the end of his term, before the Capitol Hill coup, Donald Trump had about 40% in most reputable polls.

American inflation is at the Brazilian level, at 9.1% per year, the highest in 40 years. The average price of gasoline has increased by 46% in one year. In the US, expensive gasoline is like breaking people’s legs.

Only 30% of Americans were over ten years old when there was a similar famine. It doesn’t matter that the unemployment rate is at a minimum. Economy and employment are matters of greatest concern. Few people have seen such high prices.

Biden took over with plans to create a “transforming presidency”, as they say there, with a program of public investment in infrastructure, green transition and universal social benefits (which doesn’t go down well for much of the country, see the visceral implications with public health). Now, even in the Biden administration, there are important people who attribute part of the inflation to extra public spending. If it is true, it does not matter now, in electoral terms. Biden is also getting fried for it.

Part of the plans were falling apart or falling apart, blocked by the Republican Party and Democratic dissidents, disastrous dissent, since the Democrats’ legislative majorities are minimal. The division of the Democratic Party goes much further and gets worse, with “left” and “centrist” wings that talk less and less (more and more hate each other, in fact), with unimaginative centrists or frankly conservatives and an excessive left wing .

The American hole is still down, as it is almost everywhere, largely because of anger at the political system, which often takes the form of right-wing extremism. Governments fall by the tables. It’s not uncommon either, of course, but you don’t see how there can be more stable politics or, to put it bluntly, civilizing reform.

A scoundrel like Boris Johnson, the Conservative Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, falls, just as a reasonable person like Mario Draghi in Italy is about to fall (offered his resignation). Emmanuel Macron was in serious danger of losing the election to the extreme right and the government has already started with the film burned and a small majority in the National Assembly.

Putin’s war in Ukraine added fuel to the crisis that came from the epidemic, which swept through a world deteriorated by financial crises, which further degraded a tense social situation and growing inequality 40 years ago. Social networks encouraged the spread of the revolt against the system, with or without quotation marks.

If you want a monument, look around: in addition to the dramatic socioeconomic, political and institutional situation, whoever takes over in 2023 in Brazil must take into account that the ticket is hot around the world. More risk of frying around here too.