By FLAVIO AGUIAR*

Following an old custom: I have been following the way in which our media submit to the agenda of the right for a long time

Take it easy with the litter, because whoever writes here isn't even a saint, but he doesn't even have feet of clay. If you think, whoever reads me, that I'm going to criticize Alckmin's possible pre-candidacy for Lula's vice president, you're completely wrong. If you think I'm going to defend Alckmin's possible pre-candidacy for Lula's vice, you're squarely mistaken. Neither one nor the other.

I will defend what Lula is doing now, by agitating for Alckmin's pre-candidacy as vice-president of his pre-candidacy. Now: we are at the end of the 2021 lights out, in the midst of a sinking of the political image of the Ku-Klux-Koyzo and an attempt to raise the candidacy of Marrequinho da Lava-Jato for the post of Marreco or even Marrecão of the “third way” .

There is no “third way”. Hunchback is nothing more than a second copy of the KKK. More grateful, perhaps, to the financial-banking-rentier-agrobusiness-bourgeoisie front – chemodependent-on-the-state-favors-resentful-of-the-middle-class-millions-missing-the-dictatorship-with-or-without-pajamas , scammer corporate media, etc. It remains to be seen whether it will be salable to the Povão, starting with those who confuse paying tithes to pastors with buying blessings in the future heaven.

But this duplicate made headlines, pages, podcasts, columns, favors and the blink of an eye in corporate media and attachments in the virtual world. And following an old custom, it gained an enormous space on the screens of our media, those of the left, or progressive, or whatever. In our media, it still hasn't dawned on us that accepting the enemy's agenda, even to speak ill of it, favors the enemy and promotes him.

Following an old custom: I have been following the way in which our media submit to the agenda of the right for some time. An idiot Bolsonarism person says a beast impropriety anywhere on the globe: boom! bomb! this becomes headlines and gains immeasurable space in several of our media. The MST distributes thousands of basic food baskets to needy populations throughout the country: it becomes almost a footnote.

And this is just one example. Because there are thousands of examples of this rhetoric of victimization that is justified by the “need to denounce”. A sado-masochistic obsession, pardon the expression. Because in general the “denunciation” comes as a solo show, without comment, without contextualization, without analysis, just underlining the disaster – but also the empowerment of the unbalanced in our own environment and spirit.

There was an exceptional period, with the success of Lula's trip to social-democratic Europe. But it was an exception. Now, at the end of the year occupied by pre-2022, there was no other. For some time, in our midst, the KKK, Marreco or a third or fourth way was the only thing to discuss whether this or that was possible or impossible for the right.

A single political fact rivals this claim in our political space and also in theirs, that of right-wing commentators, dumbfounded and furious with this announcement: the possibility of forming a Lula-Alckmin ticket.

Whether the plate will be created or not is another story. The fact is that the launch of the theme in the arena of the bloody Coliseum of our politics and theirs proved, for me, that Lula is the shrewdest politician we have since Vargas and also Brizola.

You'll have my vote if you get there, with or without this, that or that other vice. I say “if he gets there” because I am sure that in some sinister corner something very radical is being plotted against him. Take care, Bahia.^[1]

* Flavio Aguiar, journalist and writer, is a retired professor of Brazilian literature at USP. Author, among other books, of Chronicles of the World Upside Down (Boitempo).

Nota

[1] For those who don't know: Lula's nickname when he was a member of the São Bernardo Metalworkers' Union.