Against the lord of death

Marcelo Guimarães Lima - Uirapuru, singer of the forest, pencil on paper, 21x29cm, 2021
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By MARCELO GUIMARÃES LIMA*

The birds in the forest sing: Bolsonaro out!!!

The birds of the Brazilian forests cry out BOLSONARO!!!! Living creatures in general, human and non-human, in Brazil and elsewhere alike, also claim for their lives and proclaim against the Lord of Death and his allies, here and abroad. Those who profit, symbolically and/or materially, from the current situation, they do not cry out. Some, journalists, politicians, judges, among other categories, pretend exemption. Others follow and help Senhor da Morte in his self-proclaimed role of restoring the nefarious regime of 1964, a regime of censorship, torture, murder and unrestrained exploitation of the working classes, updated to the neoliberal times of the XNUMXst century.

As I write, the CPI of the fateful pandemic disaster begins, a disaster commanded by the (im)popular “Bozo”, and backed by incredible figures, among them the assistant who confesses to having taken the vaccine in secret because this was the boss’s orientation, grown man but who accepts orders without regard for the ridiculous and tragic of his position and does not measure the consequences. And not just the public consequences of his stance, but, what you would expect from people who are absolutely self-centered and incapable of empathy, those consequences for their own individuality, their subjectivity, their personhood, their sense of ownership and of eigenvalue.

One thing is certain of those who surround and help the “accidental” president: they are all made of the same moral and intellectual stuff. Mr. Paulo Guedes, an economist, a millionaire, in short, a speculator and helper of speculators, proclaims in an official meeting that the Chinese invented the Covid 19 virus, and affirms, peremptorily, with admiration and deep appreciation, the superiority of the United States as a vaccine producers today. What do I say? Today's minister makes it clear that the great nation of the north, the land of Uncle Sam, is paradise incarnate on earth, the model, the masterful guide of peoples and especially of semi-barbarians like us, poor and disoriented Brazilians.

Mr. Paulo Guedes is an economist and minister: where did he get the information on the “Chinese nationality” of the Covid 19 virus? What research did today's minister carry out for such a statement of great importance and above all in a public work meeting? It should be noted that the Minister does not speak of a hypothesis, a probability, but of a pure and simple “fact”.

Scientific education prays that conclusions must be based on data and reasoning that pass through the sieve of rationality and empirical and methodological reliability typical of the scientific attitude, of the methodical procedures of verifiability (what can and should be verified) typical of science. But perhaps economics is not a science in the strict sense, “j'en sais rien” I say, using the precise formulation of the French language which means: on such a controversial subject I duly keep silent. And in this case, there would be no need for Mr. Paulo Guedes.

Contempt for Brazil and Brazilians, evident in the sayings and initiatives of the Captain of the Deep, is the atmosphere that breathes the Brazilian ruling class. What do I say? Contempt for Brazilians is the intoxicating perfume (the word “tacky” applies here) without which the Brazilian ruling class could not live.

How could it be different in a country where, for example, food is produced on a large scale and the people go hungry again under the current coup regime? The centuries-old exploitation of the masses in Brazil only confirms for the dominant groups the sub-human or infra-human condition of those who produce the country's material wealth in goods and services.

Like the birds of the Brazilian forests, we want an end to the state of exception of Bolsonarism and its daily procession of horrors, logical absurdities, aberrations of conduct, naturalized nonsense, active cruelty and systematic and systematized lies.

We risk here the hypothesis that the so-called Brazilian neo-fascism cannot be thought of as “pre-social”, according to the characterization of Vladimir Safatle, but as “post-social”. The large-scale engineering of disorientation, conceived by Bernard Stiegler, among others, gains the specific contours of the present time in its rooting in the new communication technologies that are coupled to the precariousness of existence, the experience of personal worthlessness, typical of neoliberalism.

Although in fact the initiative does not concern the immediate improvement of life for the majority, as the journalist, historian and political leader Rui Costa Pimenta, among others, has rightly observed, the CPI will be able to help the more than urgent changes in the national political scene. It takes place within the coup regime installed in 2016 that elevated, by scandalously illegal means, Mr. Jair Bolsonaro from a mediocre, marginal and folkloric politician to the post of president of the nation. Which, in itself, gives an accurate idea of ​​the “seriousness” with which the ruling class views the country and its political structure. In such a context not much can be expected from this process.

In any case, it is always good to remember that reality is dynamic, that reality is what resists and surpasses us, which is equally and especially valid now for the current owners of power and their superiors.

About the CPI, says the cliché repeated by several politicians in these times, we always know how it starts, but we don't know how it ends.

How will Bolsonaro end up, we ask? How will the coup regime end? Scammers in general? In history, for example, some great fascist leaders ended up lynched in public squares or committed suicide. But those were other times.

*Marcelo Guimaraes Lima is an artist, researcher, writer and teacher.

 

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