Opinion – Vinicius Torres Freire: The Brazil that pretends to have nothing to do with Bolsonaro’s coup

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Official and unofficial Brazil slipped away from the stage and the audience of the most recent show of Jair Bolsonaro’s coup tour.

Government politicians, publicists for reelection, people from the Armed Forces or from the Foreign Ministry tell journalists that they had nothing to do with the spectacle in which Bolsonaro smeared democracy for foreign diplomats. Everything was the work of the intimate clique of Bolsonarism. Furthermore, Brasília was quiet on the hangover day of the coup show.

“You don’t believe what comes out in your newspapers?”, a general asks the journalist. “Bolsonaro is just that. He joins two or three with whom he eats a sandwich with guarana, plus a comrade [colega de farda] reckless, crazy people with whom he fraternizes at the Palace and that’s it. He doesn’t listen to anyone, he lives in another universe.”

It should be noted in passing that, for this active general, there would be no “problem” with a PT government. The military expects only “respect for autonomy, capabilities and working conditions” — it includes good positions, salaries and pensions, and money for weapons. An attempt at compromise began.

A high-ranking diplomat says that Itamaraty did not participate in the “organization of the event”, of the coup show, “in charge of the Presidency of the Republic”. Government parliamentarians say and leak through the newspapers, as they have done since last year, that they have already given up on dissuading Bolsonaro from making atrocious speeches, because they are democrats, pragmatic.

It is as if Bolsonaro were alone, he was an unaccountable or psychopath “lone wolf”, a kind of Unabomber of democracy (Unabomber, the American domestic terrorist who sent bombs between the 1970s and 1990s). It is also a variant of the conversation that there would be no coup because Bolsonaro would not have military, parliamentary or social support to establish an authoritarian government.

The processes of Bolsonarism in the Supreme Court have no practical consequences, which, moreover, does not take decisive action on the scum with parliamentary amendments or on things like the default in the precatories, which would clash with governmentism. Better to “stretch” the environment.

Thus, Bolsonaro remains free to commit crimes. The coup continues, with the deactivation of the institutions, including a useful Congress.

Hands of associations of lawyers, attorneys, etc. and even unions from the Federal Police and Abin defended the polls from Bolsonaro’s lies. At the time of writing these lines, early Wednesday night, Arthur Lira (PP-AL), mayor and regent of the government, was missing, as was Augusto Aras, the attorney general, who found nothing.

It is true that many parliamentarians are on vacation or taking care of their campaign or their relatives, which explains part of the silence. But, apart from the opposition’s “business as usual”, not even the soft brains of the parliamentarians that are between the left and the center made a scandal.

The authors of Third Way manifestos and letters of repudiation or petitions, the elite collectives, have kept quiet. The Left, the Opposition, or Democrats in general do not have the ability, interest, or appeal to take people to the streets. To add to the embarrassment, the US State Department made more noise against the coup show than many Brazilian authorities or “civil society”.

For many people, for many turncoat collaborationists, if we keep quiet and pray, Bolsonaro will pass and no one will have a dirty record for having supported the delinquent. They don’t want to treat this bad disease that can still kill. A draft agreement began.

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