South America culture and politics thread

I think that Lesser of Two Evils / Necessary Evil thing has become ingrained to a point this country doesn't know to choose anything else. At this point, people are basically consciously making a Sadistic Choice based on Scare Campaign coming from both sides, or even worse, from the people themselves. It's so much misinformation that it becomes blinding.

Not helping is that our people has some of the most rotten attitude you could ever find when it comes to politics. The most extreme Petists and Bolsonaro electors currently are making Trumpists look like nothing.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 18th 2018 at 3:54:00 PM

See, I'm not really sure I buy this "bothsides" narrative because you don't really need to do any scaremongering to make Bolsonaro look bad. Like, you can see very plainly from his comments, his government plan, and the kind of people he hangs out with that his government will be a rotting dumpster fire. You don't need to exaggerate to make PT look bad either of course, but a lot of the reasons people have been giving to not vote for them when their opponent is Bolsonaro don't make a lot of sense.

Whether it's because of "CORRUPTION!!" (Bolsonaro is corrupt and his government will be even more corrupt than PT's), safety (Bolsonaro's solution is essentially "let cops kill more people" which doesn't really solve the problem long-term and just provides people with a false sense of security and makes it easier for corrupt cops to keep doing what they're doing), the economy (he doesn't know anything about economics and his economist has no experience in crafting public policy), or whatever else you can think of, Bolsonaro is a demonstrably worse option in all regards.

That's not to say that I wanted PT to be the one against him either, we certainly had other options we could have voted for that would have had a much better chance of beating him.

On Bolsonaro, I think he has a big chance on winning the elections not because of his own electorate, but because of the very campaign the opposition launched against him. And seeing Haddad is trying all moves at his disposal to try to win those elections, such as denouncing Bolsonaro's fake news-based campaign (It's sorta hilarious as they don't even realize Bolsonaro can take them down with the same maneuver for a thing they did last March on Twitter), it really shows how PT is desperate to win this time around.

People are definitely not wrong when they say Bolsonaro is our Donald Trump; even his popularity is raising the same way Trump's did. The worst part is, if Haddad actually manages to take Bolsonaro down that way, I fear people will actually revolt against Haddad and PT and stuff will finally break into a full-blown civil war, such has become the extreme polarization caused by both parties.

If you voted for Amoedo in the first turn, you already did very well. He was the cleanest guy of the bunch. To the point even his campaign had costed almost nothing on the Brazilian pocket.

Also, say, what did you think of Daciolo?

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 4:17:45 PM

Daciolo is... an interesting case. Something... happened with him once he turned to religion, but he was once the best bridge the Brazilian Left had with the military - namely, firefighters. He was even affiliated with PSOL once.

I don't know what exactly happened to him, nor would I like him as a President, but his opposition to Bolsonaro (despite them sharing similar religious opinions) is not really surprising.

Actually, the way the elections have become, I'm not surprised at anything.

I mean, for the first time, none of the first turn candidates are supporting the remaining ones. Not Daciolo, nor Ciro, nor Amoedo. Marina Silva as always has been forgotten.

It says a massive hell when Bolsonaro and Haddad are completely on their own; we have officially hit the worst case scenario.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 1:36:29 PM

That's some very nice Both Sidesism on your part. Let me know when "Petists" are committing hate crimes all over the country in the span of a week after election day like Bolsonaro voters are doing.

There is no scaremongering going on against Bolsonaro. There is the simple truth of what he is as a person coming to light and his voters people know this, subconsciously or not. They may hide behind actual scaremongering of fictional communist plots (when Bolsonaro is far more supportive of a dictatorship) so-called corruption purges (when Bolsonaro is neck-deep in corruption himself) and economic concerns (nevermind that Bolsonaro's economic gameplan would be ten times as disastrous for this country as PT's was) but the truth of the matter is plain for those who want to see it.

And said truth is that most of this country either actively hates or doesn't care about minorities of this country. If you vote for Bolsonaro, tolerate Bolsonaro, or think he's "just as bad" as Haddad, that's the one truth you're adhering to.

As I said before, everyone in Brazil is distorting truth to an extention that I'm really not willing to believe anything anymore.

Now, in case you didn't read my posts: I don't like the guy. I didn't even want him on the second turn, despite knowing such stuff was unavoidable. And I'm sure he will win for the exact same reason Trump won.

Which is bad, mind you, but not for the reasons you're preaching.

Bolsonaro is inept as a politician despite his 30-year career. His economist, as said before, is weak on public relations. The problem isn't even Bolsonaro himself; it's his vice Mourão, a guy basically in love with the Brazilian Military Regime, and a chunk of his own electorate who sees his speech as "charte blanche" to spill hatred around the Internet.

And just so you know, there are Petists who have such a hate speech (that they love to deny), and were shown to be just as hostile. I do remember a guy who got shoved into the path of a truck/bus not long ago by Petist syndicalists because he was mistaken for a Right-wing. And this is not getting into the fact that recently-elected deputy and political You Tuber Arthur Moledo is constantly attacked verbally and sometimes even physically by Petists.

Saying that all of this is one-sided and stacked solely on Bolsonaro's side is naïve at the very least.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 3:12:18 PM

What is more horrifyingly naive is looking at one side lynching and murdering people all over the country for being black and LGBT all over the country and then looking at the other being mean to some idiotic Youtuber once and thinking they're same.

Honestly, if you don't see the hatred flowing through this country and powering Bolsonaro, I don't even know what to say to you except maybe look closer.

Edited by Gaon on Oct 19th 2018 at 11:30:27 AM

What you're doing is the exact Scare Campaign I'm accusing the Left of. If you think one guy can be attacked by people on the streets while minorities can't, I'm sorry, but you're preaching the exact same hate.

You lost me the moment you said "some idiotic Youtuber", confirming your side in all of this.

Your hate is no lesser than their hate. Nothing justifies aggression, ever. No matter who or what the person is, or the size of the aggression.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 3:51:08 PM

I do not condone attacks and hate against anybody, but to pretend the situation is remotely similar is ridiculous. There's one side lynching and murdering people to a astonishing degree and one side with some supporters who occasionally do some reprehensible stuff once every blue moon. Sitting on the fence on a high horse saying "both sides are equal" doesn't make you clever. It makes you look apathetic to hatred, pretending a white, straight, male Youtube socialite is under the same threat as a black Transexual beggar is insane and you can't tell me to look otherwise. You're trying to display ambivalence in a conflict where one side is composed (mainly) people with all the power versus one side where people have none, and you're trying to act like both things are the same.

The biggest incident with Moledo, as far as I'm aware, was Ciro Gomes maybe kinda sorta perhaps slapping him if you squint. If he has been actually stabbed on the streets like minorities are being then I apologize for my insensitivity, but otherwise, I can only say "sorry" and carry on. For the record, he is a idiotic youtuber who tries to play centrist and ends up stregthening the right. Critizing the equal opportunity programs and preaching reduction of the legal age of prosecution makes one a idiot, even if undeserving of being attacked.

Bullshit. Not in the case of Moledo, but when you have someone preaching your extinction loudly to the world, things become a lot murkier.

Edited by Gaon on Oct 19th 2018 at 11:49:34 AM

Can you send me proof that this kind of thing has been on a rise because of Bolsonaro? Or is it the media bumping it forward because they can use it against the politician due to his stupid opinions? You fail to realize how desperate everyone is to take this guy out.

Brazilian people are easily manipulated to believe that kind of stuff. This population is known for A: Being extremely disonest, and B: Having the second worst sense of what is real lately.

Also, many a time I saw Petists on Moledo's videos attacking him verbally and some physical cases as well. Ciro Gomes' case was already confirmed as Ciro being aggressive by sources that are not Arthur himself or on his side.

You can coat your opinions with "minority brutality" all you want, but I know the people I walk along, and I tend to analyze every news I come across as I can't basically trust anything coming from Brazil anymore.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 4:00:32 PM

I'm sure the guy who constantly badmouths women, blacks, poor people and anyone vaguely LGBT doesn't have anything to do with the times his supporters mistreated minorities emboldened by him. My brother personally experiencing a spike on Homophobic shits with Bolsonaro shirts stopping by on a bike to tell him that they'll lynch him once Bolsonaro is elected is entirely unrelated to Bolsonaro's statements on LGBT people. The fact a student was lynched for voting PT, a capoeira master murdered for voting, a woman beaten and threatened with rape by guys wearing a Bolsonaro shirt, a woman had a swastika etched on her skin while wearing a #Ele Não shirt and my university has seen a dramatic spike on people painting swastikas on the (mostly composed of minorities) art studies building plus messages like "Bolsonaro will end you all" on that building is entirely unrelated to him.

Entirely unrelated, yes.

You talk a big game about seeing reality but I wonder if you are really seeing reality.

Edited by Gaon on Oct 19th 2018 at 12:01:00 PM

Or is it the media bumping it forward because they can use it against the politician due to his stupid opinions?

Um, has that thing ever happened anywhere?!

It happens all the time with electoral campaigns. Scare Campaign is a trope after all. And the main media in Brazil is known to be on political payrolls. Which is Hilarious in Hindsight, as Rede Globo, the biggest media company here, supported the Brazilian Military Regime when it came.

Also, it isn't a stretch to say something similar happened with Trump, with the same end result: his victory. Which, as we all saw, was bad, but not for the things people say it would be (the massive xenophobia he actually preached).

Nowadays Trump voters are even trying to find reasons to still stay with him if I'm not mistaken.

Thing is, hate crimes always happened here. Most of them (if not almost none of them) never made it to the news. They're using the Bolsonaro wave to put it to prominence and make it look like it was a rise motivated by him and his mysoginistic/homophobic tendencies. In the same fashion, police officers die all the time, some of them quite heroically, and they are never treated with the respect they deserve here, because the image the media painted on all of them is that of Police Brutality. To our Mainstream Media, a heroic police officer dying won't sell, but yet another guy being beaten, being shown with a context they distorted to their tastes, will. It has all become about shock value.

And let's not even get to how Human Rights are used here to protect guys who break into a house and go full violent on its residents so they can buy their crack, while said residents are completely ignored. Victimization is weaponized in Brazil.

Septimus, trust this Aspie when he says this country is a moral swamp.

As an extra, on a different topic: It wasn't just Bolsonaro nearly getting elected on the first turn. The entire deputy chamber suffered an enormous revolution these elections, with around 70% of chair changes. This is how public opinion changed, and not because of Bolsonaro, but because they are all tired of being lied to about everything, everywhere. I wouldn't count Moledo and Kataguiri among them until I see what they'll do, but some good deputies made it this time, including from NOVO, who got a whopping 11 chairs, surpassing all expectations.

Brazil has indeed changed.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 4:30:01 PM

Speaking of the police, just remembering how even his (seemingly) intended policies for that seem to be completely devoid of sense.

I mean,

1. Police-related regulation is under the States' jurisdiction anyway, but even if the idea is to just give the police more firepower and freedom of action to engage druglords, this essentially just stimulates more conflicts and more dead cops - unless this is coupled with improvements on intelligence and border control, which are things in which the Union can interfere, but haven't been mentioned yet afaik;

2. More lax gun control, but how so? Will there be a price reduction on guns? Will they reduce requirements for (absolutely essential) training? Will they impose stricter checks for criminal records?

The way I see it, that doesn't seem to bode well for the population at large, much less so for the police.

@Zero Dozer: I'll say this, at least, despite the fact that you seem willing to discard already persecuted people's rights to stand up against the (much) lesser evil. If Bolsonaro's policies come back to bite you or any of your friends, which, with so many radical ideals he's promoting, one probably will, you have no right to complain about it or claim you couldn't have seen it coming.

If you're saying this, then you understood (or refused to understand, which is honestly common to Brazilians to say the least) nothing of the many walls of text I've put in this thread in these last twelve hours.

So stop that Scare Campaign.

Gun control in Brazil is a murky discussion. It doesn't help that Brazilian law itself treats legitimate defense as a crime. The whole law in this country is upside-down.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 6:01:10 AM

I understand that you think that Bolsonaro isn't as big of a threat as the media portrays him. I do think he won't be able to enact all his policies, because that's how things work, but if he is able to enact half of the things he wants, the country will still suffer for it. It's not like Brazil is a fully matured, long-lived democracy with social conflicts almost resolved. A person like Bolsonaro, therefore, can do more damage than Trump or Marine Le Pen could.

Edited by Grafite on Oct 19th 2018 at 10:05:16 AM

The country will suffer no matter who gets elected; the Brazilian economy is diving headfirst into crisis and both politicians' proposals are unrealistic to say the least. And this is not even getting into the people's reaction; none of the sides will react well to the other winning. Much like you, I don't think Bolsonaro will be able to put much of his plan into action, and I admittedly think that's quite the shot in the dark. Unfortunately, seeing the other side and the fact everyone already knows or assumes what it'll do, people are willing to take that bet. This is just how bad PT managed to burn themselves.

One extra note that I feel like I have to state a million times: I'm not voting since 2012, which means I just have my voter title revoked. As I also said before, my vote would have gone to Amoedo rather than these two, and a null for this current case.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Oct 19th 2018 at 6:07:54 AM

If you're talking from a strictly legal point of view, there is no crime if the agent acts in legitimate defense. Now, how the law is applied is an entirely different issue I'd rather not get into. Especially because my point is less about self-defense and more about how effective his security policies would be.

Edited by KusaMigeru on Oct 19th 2018 at 6:08:51 AM

Double post for good news: the skull of Luzia, our most ancient humanoid fossil, seems to have been mostly recovered from the debris of the National Museum (article in Portuguese).

No it doesn't, self Defense is not a crime.

What happens is whenever someone is killed in self defense a legal inquire under the charge of murder is initiated by the state prosecution, to investigate if the killing was legitimately in self defense. If the police and the investigators determine that it was rightful self defense, then the unlawfulness of the act is excluded from the criminal record of the defendant and he or she can go free of charge.

It's getting progressively harder to engage with you when you spout far-right talking points like this as if it's candy, just like your absolutely nonsensical talk about how cops getting their reputation ruined by stories of police brutality. Maybe, if they want to stop being called corrupt mass-murderers, maybe they should stop torturing and murdering minorities for being minorities? Just a thought.

It's particularly ridiculous to suggest this country focuses too much on corrupt and rabid cops when you have wall-to-wall programming of shouting news reporters basking on the glory of dead criminals and praising cops for executing them. Guys like Datena or the thankfully late Alborghetti, who outright go on rants talking about how all criminals deserve to die.

If you think victimization is somehow being weaponized and that everything everyone is telling you is a lie created by the false media I reiterate what I said earlier even more strongly: You think everyone in the country is being duped by the falsehoods and lies, but you already fell for it yourself when you decided that there is no truth except that which you arbitrarily decide is true. Your kind of apathy is exactly why we're in this mess.

Here's the riddle of the year: If everybody is so sick of being lied to and "just want some change, man" why did they pick the establishment politician whose political appeal primarily consists of hate speech and being wrapped in a flag and cross? Not Daciolo, who's absolutely insane but outside of the curve and way less reliant on sheer hatred than Bolsonaro, not Boulos, who heads and shoulders was the wildest and more "new" politician of the bunch with the strongest policies. Not them. But Bolsonaro.

The response to that question is deceptively simple: because they don't care (or actively hate) minorities. Doesn't take a genius to figure it out. The hate crimes you consistently ignore and wave away prove that.

So like, is El País (Spain) in the pocket of our politicians somehow too? Or the New Yorker (America)? The Guardian (England)? They all ran pieces on Bolsonaro. How deep does your rabbit hole go? Is there a New World Order of Rothschilds running everything behind the scenes too?

Edited by Gaon on Oct 19th 2018 at 5:55:27 AM

The information circlejerk among Bozonaro's voters got ridiculous to the point of calling The Economist and BBC left wing newspapers, for the crime of calling out the dangerous rhetoric of Bozonaro's stances and speeches.

The irony of the situation is that his supporters always claim without fail "well you don't know anything about what's happening here, if you were brazilian you'd understand", but the reality is they're the ones who don't know anything about what's going on in the rest of the world and are so self-absorbed that they can't see past their own nose. As I said before, it's very clear that we are currently in a very dangerous time for liberal democracy, where various factors are enabling the rise of far-right authoritarian politics, which have measurably disastrous effects. Bolsonaro supporters either don't see how their favorite politician is our version of that phenomenon, or they recognize it and support it.

Also: it's not exactly "anti-police" to criticize our police force for excessive force and corruption. There's this extremely naive belief by our (largely white) middle class that the police is largely on their side and not part of the problem, when in reality police corruption is one of the biggest structural issues in this country. It's been cited as a key reason as to why the interventions in Rio keep failing. Our citizenry collectively refuses to acknowledge the fact that the crooks in the police force, collectively, are much more harmful than the ones on the street. It's basically the same problem the US has, except even worse.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Oct 19th 2018 at 9:31:43 AM