An irresponsible in power

Image: Elyeser Szturm
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By Chico Alencar*

Covid-19 is detonating all the “dogmas” of “fiscal adjustment” and the dynamics of profit as the engine of society. “Economy” that regulates itself by speculation in the stock exchanges and does not pay attention to hunger, misery, disease, homelessness and unemployment is… anti-economy!

Only a microscopic and lethal virus for part of society made ultraneoliberal economists become, belatedly and hypocritically, “Keynesians”; Guedes and other heralds of the minimal State and market messianism reluctantly swallow the elementary: the Public Power must always have the life of the population, not business, as an absolute priority. Social spending ceiling, now being disregarded by the state of calamity, is a crime against public health and education.

Covid-19 is detonating all the “dogmas” of “fiscal adjustment” and the dynamics of profit as the engine of society. Life is above debt! “Economy” that regulates itself by speculation in the stock exchanges and does not pay attention to hunger, misery, disease, homelessness and unemployment is… anti-economy!

In the bitter crisis, what is asked is solidarity, care, attention, reflection. It is necessary to go against the “values” of the consumer society: levers of individualism, carelessness, inattention to the other, the superficiality of a futile life.

But, in the midst of all the concern, there is an irresponsible person with power: a president, who has always been an enthusiast of torture, who minimizes the pandemic, who acts against the recommendations of the WHO and the Ministry of Health itself. That encourages street acts asking for the dictatorship to return, announces little parties with public money and compares the coronavirus to pregnancy: “one day it is born”. A fool!
As we are all reducing our outside activities to a minimum – even the most abandoned, who have to work on the street, are in less demand – there are those who can read more and even… think more.

Who knows, maybe the current President of the Republic will take advantage of his time and find evidence that his election was a fraud, as he promised to reveal? Who knows, maybe he will update himself on the forgotten investigations regarding the oil spilled on our coast? About the increasing deforestation in the Amazon? Who knows, maybe he encourages his Minister of Justice to fight the militias and the massacre of native peoples, and not worry about Ronaldinho Gaúcho and his tricks? Perhaps he, seized by an acute pang of conscience, orders Queiroz to appear and reveal everything he knows about his son Flávio 01's relationship with Adriano, the matador-mor?

Not to say that I didn't talk about flowers: maybe Jair has a “dawn” of sensitivity and reads The plague, by Albert Camus? I do not suggest death in venice, by Thomas Mann, which is a lot of lyrics for a single captain (increasingly alone), but the film by Visconti, based on the masterpiece, is worth watching. Contains plague, deceitful authorities, failure in life, dream and passion.

On our part, social isolation, support for health professionals, defense of the scrapped SUS, responsibility, love and cooperation.

* Chico Alencar He is a professor, writer and former federal deputy for PT and PSol.

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