Evil has reached new heights in Brazil, say economists

Everything I say is taken out of context. The sentence by Minister Paulo Guedes (Economics) sums up the spirit of the book “Antologia da Maldade 2: Epigraphs para um país destressado” (Ed. Zahar, 2022), by economists Gustavo Franco and Fabio Giambiagi.

In conversation with Folha, the two say that the reissue of the partnership started in 2015, with the first anthology, posed a challenge. The great thinkers of humanity are still there, but where before there was Dilma Rousseff, as a comedy, now there is Jair Bolsonaro, as a tragedy.

In the first book, the evil practiced by the authors of the collection —”our mission in this book is to distort the original meaning of things” — was defined as malice, irony, sarcasm. In the new anthology, some political actors bring “evil in its purest form”, “in the literal sense of the word”.

The subtitle of the 2015 anthology was “A Dictionary of Quotations, Illicit Associations and Dangerous Liaisons”. Now, they are the “epigraphs for a stressed country”. What changed in the country between these two moments of institutional crisis?

Gustavo Franco: These collections are a kind of panorama of the time. The subtitle of the first had an allusion, not accidental, to Lava Jato, a theme that dominated the country at the time. At the other end, there was Dilma Rousseff, author of many interesting phrases, which are not normally included in lofty thoughts, but were fun. We may have learned to appreciate that humor later.

When you compare yourself with Jair Bolsonaro, it’s completely different. He doesn’t have that grace, that lightness that Dilma had when she talked about storing the wind. He doesn’t have that kind of humor. It is debatable whether he has any. If so, it’s close to the grotesque, which is a far cry from what this anthology sought in the first volume. It was a certain effort to accommodate Bolsonaro’s lines.

Now, they are illustrative of the stressed-out country that we are today. We anticipated, I think correctly, that with the election approaching this stress would only increase. We tried to find some lightness and humor in this troubled environment. If it’s possible.

fabio Giambiagi: In 2015, we were in an extremely delicate economic situation in that context of recession, and humor was a way to escape those anxieties. Now, the economic situation is, in a sense, better, but the country’s existential anguish has changed. Which makes the exercise more difficult, in the sense that there are situations that obviously don’t lend themselves to humor.

For me, dealing with the book was a kind of catharsis, to release the tensions of these last two or three years, which were bad for everyone. We hope that this is the feeling of the reader as well.

Has the concept of evil in the books also changed?

franc: In the preface to the first there is a more erudite explanation of the subject. Essentially, we are treating meanness as synonymous with irony, sarcasm, something like that. In the second, in the context of political polarization that we have today, it was necessary to elaborate this meaning a little more, since there is a lot of evil — really evil — in the atmosphere. In the preface there is a remark that we do not want to take sides. Our point of view is that of the snake, the poison. The aspect we are looking for is that of malice, of sarcasm. It’s not as easy to find these days as it was in the past, because tempers are so high.

Giambiagi: When I sent the electronic invitations [para o lançamento da obra], several friends replied that this theme is really in vogue, of evil in the literal sense of the word. The Federal Police asked for reinforcements due to threats to former President Lula. There are a lot of people with guns. We are talking about pure evil.

Our greatest malice is with the only sentence that is duplicated in the book, by Henry Kissinger [ex-secretário de Estado americano]which talks about the deficiency in political leadership in many countries and that we, not by chance, repeated associated with the two main candidacies [verbetes Bolsonarismo e Lulopetismo]. It is a rather great evil, but in a malicious, innocent sense.

By taking a few sentences out of context and classifying them into a theme, you give an authorial character to a book of quotes. In this sense, does the evil come not from the author of the sentence, but from the authors of the book?

franc: It’s exactly the idea. Almost all collections are organized in this format, with entries, topics that the reader will consult if he needs an idea, a sentence on a topic of interest. The fun is to put something unexpected, malicious, together with the expected sentence. That’s the poisonous angle. Then you progressively hook the reader every bit of the way and it becomes a book that has fluency.

Giambiagi: We developed a parallel between aphorism books and restaurants. There are thousands of aphorism books around the world, and any big city has a lot of restaurants, but there’s always room for one more. But you have to present yourself to the public as if yours were actually something different.

How was the collection of quotes for the second book. Is there material for a third party?

Giambiagi: In another interview I toyed with the possibility of doing a literary “Fast and Furious” series. But there is nothing defined. When we read newspapers, books, etc., things that for some reader would pass by, in our case, that click appears: this here makes a good sentence.

An example from today’s newspaper [última quarta, dia 10] it’s Elio Gaspari’s column, which quotes an American political commentator who, at some point, when he was a mocking candidate for mayor of New York, was asked what the first thing he would do if he was chosen. The answer, with humor, was: ask for a recount of votes. This would fit perfectly into the entry “electronic voting machine”. When we realize it already has several pages that could potentially be a new book.

franc: Fabio had a huge initial collection of quotes, but only with serious people. When we started talking about this project [em 2014] That’s when the idea came to mix this collection with everyday things. Just read the newspaper carefully and you collect one, two, five, twenty interesting sentences every day. It is inexhaustible.

And the entry allows you to purposely misplace the original sentence from its context. The thing acquires new, more interesting meanings, additional to the original. This formula seems very easy to replicate over and over again. Each round has a context. The first one had a central plot that was Dilma Rousseff and her phrases. Now, it’s how these lofty thoughts are mixed with Jair Bolsonaro. That’s a big challenge.

​THE Did Argentina have more or less space in the book this time? Even because the pope, also mentioned, is now Argentine.

Giambiagi: The weight is similar. Clearly that’s where my influence is. I am the son of Argentines. I was born in Brazil, went to Argentina when I was ten months old and came back when my parents had to leave there in 1976. Formally, I have nothing to do with Argentina, but my roots and my accent give me away.

The first thing I do every day is check out the Argentine press. It’s like an addiction. There are some guys who are great phrases, end up bringing good phrases that can be adapted and read in the light of the Brazilian reality. Even because some of our problems are very similar. In macroeconomics, we have improved a lot in the last 30 years in relation to them, but the social problems, the difficulty of growth and imbalances have some degree of similarity. In addition to a frenzied populism that runs through the blood of both countries.

X-ray

Gustavo HB Franco, 66. Founding partner of Rio Bravo Investimentos and professor at the Department of Economics at PUC-Rio. He was president of the Central Bank from 1997 to 1999. He holds a bachelor’s and master’s degree in Economics from PUC-Rio and a Ph.D. from Harvard University.

Fabio Giambiagi, 60. Associate researcher at FGV Ibre. He holds a bachelor’s degree in Economics and a master’s degree in Economic Sciences from UFRJ. Author, organizer and co-organizer of more than 35 books on the Brazilian economy. Among them, All About The Public Deficit (2021).