The Brazilian Politics Thread

I mean, the fact that all his sons were in politics profiting off his position and influence for years should have made it pretty obvious how he was going to run things.

The guy's always been a crook.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 18th 2019 at 4:35:49 AM

How anyone could have been surprised by this is beyond me.

People are really good at lying to themselves, I guess.

Well, first of all, hi. It's good to see I'm not alone when it comes to raging about this government.

OK, fine, the main Brazil subreddit also seems to have an "anti-Bolsonaro" stance, but yeah.

Anyway, with all the talk about the project for privatizing public universities moving forward, I strongly believe that this whole "Eduardo for ambassador" debacle is yet another diversion tactic...

The president stated earlier this morning that "hunger in Brazil is a lie", that "you don't see people, even poor people, with skeletal physiques", and that it's all a "populist discourse".

He later claimed that "some people are hungry", but that it's the brazilian people's fault for eating badly, and it's not his problem".

It goes unsaid that this is bullshit, and following from the above post, it makes me think they're trying to draw attention away from something else.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Jul 19th 2019 at 8:21:15 AM

Some times I wonder how much is this bullshiting everyone and how much of it is him being delusional. "There is no hunger in Brazil" is such an absurd claim I have trouble parsing why he would even say it.

...so does he not look around when he goes out onto the streets? I see homeless people outside almost literally every day when I go to university.

Edited by Draghinazzo on Jul 19th 2019 at 9:23:43 AM

Ditto.

"Let them eat cake"

He probably has the homeless cleared out in his area on a regular basis to make sure they don't ruin his view.

Edited by M84 on Jul 19th 2019 at 9:22:54 PM

I mean, I guess most homeless people I see aren't as skeletal as people on those African charity drives ads you see sometime. If that is your baseline for what "hunger" is like then, I suppose Bolsonaro could have never seen "hunger" here in Brasil. Of course, not only this is a ridiculous standard, it is also assuming poor people in most remote regions of the country live the same way as poor people in urban centers.

Edited by Heatth on Jul 19th 2019 at 11:32:51 AM

Around where I live they often look relatively similar.

Generally older looking, but that's dry climate for ya.

Either way, Bolsonaro is not only talking out of his arse here, I honestly think he's starting to go off his rocker.

More than 50 inmates killed in a prison riot in the state of Para.

Allegedly it began with the prison gangs taking two wardens hostage as they battled one another.

It's an example of one of those logical errors, I cant remember which one. But he's implying that since hunger isn't obvious and extreme, then it doesnt exist. Appeal to anecdotal evidence?

If I were to speculate, I think he's trying to give people an excuse not to feel empathy for the poor—"They aren't that hungry, and if they are it's their fault."

It Is a comon fallacy of worst example, if something dosent look like the most extreme versión of something then it dosent matter.

Is a very comon with authotitarians and abusers who try to mislead people over their nature

I am starting to patrol the streets of São Paulo, that statement is bullshit by a wide margin.

Plenty of starving homeless people all over the fucking place.

Bolsonaro sacks National Institute for Space Research Director after the director defended the institute over satellite images showing increased Amazon deforestation.

Press F for the Amazonian wildlife. People have forever been talking about Trump's presidency accelerating global warming, but I saw all along that Bolsonaro would be the real threat, being in charge of the country with the Amazon forest.

Guessing Bolivia, Peru, etc. aren't strong enough to fight Brazil?

If Kazuya is to be believed, Peru couldn't organize a birthday party without a corruption scandal breaking out and people dying on a human stampede over the lack of snacks.

Even if someone is suicidal enough to go to war with Brazil, it has the strongest military in South America. Only Argentina can really compete.

At any rate, this doesn't surprise me. I'm surprised we still have such an agency in the days of Bolsonaro, the anti-intellectualist in chief.

Plus, just about everybody in South America has far too many problems of their own to try and get into a conflict with Brazil, or each other for that matter. Surprisingly enough, South American countries don't really have all that many conflicts within themselves these days, not compared to how often other continents used to have them.

The last "South American War" was the Paraguayan War, which occurred in 1864-1870 and was destructive to the point nobody really wants a repeat.

Edited by Gaon on Aug 3rd 2019 at 9:05:53 AM

Yeah. Paraguay, especially, was broken so hard it has yet to completely recover from the conflict to this day, and they were a big power before that war.

Ehh, in terms of military might, perharps, let's not spread the myth that Paraguay was some manner of Utopian first world country rivalling Europe.

They weren't. What they were was economically and industrially more organised than just about everybody else in the region (not too hard; they'd had more investment pumped into a smaller area over a more consistent period of time to turn them into a money spinner and supply hub).

The snag? Smaller, facing some very big dogs with larger populations to draw on and their one ally with a major dog in the game... was a bit of a conflicted mess coming out of the gate. And, being generally better organised than those around you in civilian areas doesn't guarantee being all that brilliantly organised in general in all areas. Especially militarily... particularly with supply and logistics for the military, let alone with the structural organisation and training inside it.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Aug 3rd 2019 at 5:58:54 PM

Not my intention. They were a decent power for what passed for a power in South America at the time, but not utopian, and certainly nowhere near Europe. They were a local power. That doesn't necessarily mean much out of local context, but then global context isn't the matter at hand. Paraguay was doing well enough to cause a huge war, but not well enough for much else. And even then, they were still growing when the war started, having come out of a period of very quick improvement, which, of course, led to them growing confident and being part of the cause for a war. So yeah, not Europe-level, but certainly a big power for where they stood.

Edited by TheLovecraftian on Aug 3rd 2019 at 2:01:27 PM