Virosis

Image: Elyeser Szturm
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By Jean Pierre Chauvin*

Glued to the pandemic, the virus of Brazilian brutalization only increases. The rulers here continue to make stupid and irresponsible metaphors, which show that they are puppets of the US ultraliberal arms pseudo-democracy.

Monday, March 16, 2020 AD, around 14:XNUMX pm. The intercom rings for the first time. Answer: – I Food! – Look, nobody ordered here… [Interrupting] – Speak up! I CAN NOT HEAR YOU! I hung up. In the space of ten, fifteen minutes, the young man rang the intercom four, five times. On one of them he rested his finger for a long time.

Wednesday, March 18, 2020 AD, around 11am. In the express market I pass by some people, among them a lady who seems to want to start a conversation with another customer about the lack of patents on some items, especially alcohol. Minutes later, the creature abandons the cart full of goods, blocking the narrow corridor that leads to the only open cash register. I counted to ten, around, moved the cart to the side and continued. When the operator had gone through half of the products, the lady reappeared and mumbled something that I interpreted as “not even to wait…”.

Someone will say that these are “isolated” cases and that this account sounds exaggerated and personalistic. Cabotinism aside, this is not an isolated case. Glued to the pandemic, the virus of Brazilian brutalization only increases. And since the rulers of the Island of Vera Cruz continue to make stupid and irresponsible metaphors – which show that they are puppets of the US ultraliberal arms pseudo-democracy – I give myself the right to risk images, too. 

Reader, reader, don't worry. Nor will I stretch out my hand; you don't even need to manifest yourself in supportive posts (much less mythomaniac repudiation) immediately below these lines. I remain self-isolated, since the weekend, in a financed apartment of 52 square meters, in a simple neighborhood, probably thanks to the “recognition” and “fair” remuneration of teachers, according to the employer/business media in the country, reverberating the roars and ideologies (pretendingly non-ideological) of non-educators – elevated to positions, in theory, strategic.

Did I say “strategic”? Forgive me. Strategies aimed at social well-being and respect for the democratic rule of law are two things that have always been lacking in the staff colonized – mostly since the reckless, post-parliamentary coup era –, which converted resentment and bad faith as principles, impudence and stupidity as methods, and lack of purpose as the “program” of “government”. If this were a farm with few owners (maybe it still is, who knows?), some of the beings who misgovern the country would be worse scarecrows: they scare because they pretend to be people and like the Brazilian people.

Amidst the worldwide chaos and war of disinformation, there is something I have been thinking about since the coronavirus surpassed the status of a flu symptom and began to kill mercilessly. When have the ladies and gentlemen of the world felt compassion or exercised pity? Counterexamples persist, shielded by beliefs, cognitive and character flaws, spreading viruses and imposing material contingencies. With speeches in Economês, pseudo-experts burn billionaire reserves, because, let's face it, monetary policy matters much more than public health.

On the Internet, many columnists suggest, optimistically, that the pandemic will teach humanity to be people, since the virus will bypass speculative capital. I doubt it a bit. Once the vaccine is found, the remaining so-called human beings will return with even greater appetites to the concentration of income and the consumerist illogic. In the name of biotechnological modernization, they will repeat old habits with redoubled strength and selfishness, according to the premise that "the world belongs to the smart ones", in their self-help variants: "the market is competitive", "don't give up on your dreams" and " whoever wants to get there”.

In case your lordship is still around, thank you, I would like to recommend three readings that, believe me, can clarify a little what is behind the neoliberal ills. In profit or people (Bertrand Brasil), Noam Chomsky tells the story of the Washington Consensus, held in 1989 (yes, the same date on which the Berlin Wall fell and the old Arpanet, a computer network that belonged to US intelligence, due to “carelessness ” won the world), when a handful of subjects reinforced the imposture of the market against the “intervention” of the State.

The consequences of neoliberalism, disastrous for almost all mega-individuals, continue. For this, the owners of money reinvented words, merged Greco-Latin prefixes (neo, hyper, ultra), as an ornament. These and other unsuccessful disguises were dissected by Byung-Chul Ham in Psychopolitics (Aine). If you allow me, I would also recommend reading reinvention of intimacy (Ubu) by Christian Dunker, with attention to the chapters “The Moral Paradox of the Brazilian Worker”, “The Culture of Indifference”, “Mental Illness in Politics”, and especially “Neoliberalism and its normalopaths”.

They explain much better what is outlined in this pseudochronicle.

This no man's land, this big mining, this mismanagement... This here hasn't even started and it's over.

Take care.

*Jean Pierre Chauvin is a professor at the School of Communications and Arts at USP.

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