Opinion – José Manuel Diogo: Post-election shows two halves that forget to be part of the same body

In Brazil, passions almost always surpass desire, as love and art almost always lose to football. Because what divides us is psychological, not political, as it may seem at first glance.

That is why our reconciliation will be long, it will have hard phases, advances, setbacks, discouragements and uncertainty. As in any grief.

Freud explains. Grief is a slow and painful process, characterized by deep sadness and withdrawal from any activity that is not linked to thoughts about the lost object. It is not limited only to death, but to facing successive real and symbolic losses. Losing an election like this one was lost —and won—is both real and symbolic. That’s why mourning is applied and doubled.

Any child psychology manual describes the stages of grief simply. There is denial, in which the people kneel and pray listening to the voice of God from the Esplanade of Ministries; there is the rage, when truckers cut highways screaming treason; there is the bargain, when the ministers of the STF do not release the meeting without formal acceptance of defeat; you have depression, which hasn’t even started yet; and acceptance, which this time not even God knows when it will begin.

But this simplification does not adhere to the real. Grief is not a succession of phases that ends in healing or redemption or something that is overcome between one stage and another. The mourning that began on Sunday does not only apply to (almost) half of Brazilians, it will have to be lived with the participation of all.

It would be a mistake of lesa patria to look again with that condescension of the elites, at those who today block, between denial and anger, highways and social media. It was this arrogance that in the past cost Brazil, among other less resounding evils, the corruption of Lava Jato and the emergence of Bolsonaro.

For decades the “good power” of the left has rubbed the ego of the educated elite, while ignoring its peripheries. It created hundreds of universities but forgot the basic schools. At one end he made science sophisticated, at the other he limped towards faith.

This arrogant power granted on a silver platter the power of television to evangelicals who, in the antipodes of MPB, consecrated the sertanejo as an alternative cultural movement, in the path of the exponential growth of agribusiness. Money appeared and the excluded, now guided by a myth, were able to rule.

As a result, today, in Brazilian society, family, economy, work, culture, democracy, freedom, faith, order and even progress are realities that are often antagonistic depending on who speaks or listens to them.

The anguish, anger and discomfort that half of the population now feel contrasts with the exhilarating joy of the other half. The pain of some is the orgasm of others. Two halves forgetting that they are part of the same body, live in the same house and play for the same team: Brazil.