Murilo Oliveira
Brazil, August 29, 2021.
Perhaps this has to do with a symptom of Brazilian political problems that I have pointed out for a long time, politicians in Brazil in general do not exist as ideological cleavages but as a class, perhaps two as I have recently claimed, or even three as an event now. Those who join together as a class simply, “professionals”, without any ideology who make it a way of life, a rarer type that is a kind of refined sensitivity to what may be of “public interest”, and the “great public” that is, those who are friends with a certain professional politician who can grant themselves benefits.
I would say that there are three political types that actually exist, the professional, the public interest sensitive, and the professional’s friend. There will be some types derived from the sensitive to the public interest, but they do not come to be or understand it, partisans as they are, and they end up having circumstantial analyses, which at the end of history bring them closer to the third type, the friend of professional.
To continue with what I am saying without digressing too much, I would say that politics is an art of listening, if you can listen to a large number of actors, and synthesize this thought, and give vent to it, dispatch this great demand with consistency and contemplating the multiple actors as far as possible, the art of the administrator itself shows itself capable. One of the things that’s bothering me right now is that the President of the Republic doesn’t have that specific ability, and essential, he doesn’t have a capable listening process, and things pile up in a way that drives him crazy, and for that he believes a break is needed.
Deep down it’s the most tiring thing in the world, and it’s not an essential skill for any trade, but this one is, and this isn’t a social networking process as you think, this is actually some formal processes of institutional engineering. Exhaustive processes, where you need human resources to which you can delegate functions, and none of this has been happening. What is observed is a crazy guy trying to get rid of any commitment to reality at any cost.
Ultimately, what I see is a subject who is so trapped by the circumstances and demands of the population that he is certain to commit a translocated act. He is naturally someone without competence for what he does, and methodologically limited, so things point towards a democratic discontinuity. There is not the intellectual capacity, the discipline of listening, the methodology of delegation of responsibilities required.
Things take a natural course of aggravation.
Only the discipline of listening, which is one of the greatest requirements of politics, if not the greatest, requires that you have sufficient sociological and statistical knowledge to have a sufficiently representative sample. What is not simple nowadays. A subject raised on a sectarian basis does not make proper use of this requirement.
At the limit, sectarianism, both on the right and on the left, generates identical anomalies. Such as censorship, limiting freedom of expression, very risky games, sectarian by definition. And in this I’m trying to talk about the middle of the political spectrum, if it still exists. That’s the point, the middle of the political spectrum is gone. What we call the center today, or “centrão”, is the disorganized right, gathered around the arms industry, cattle ranching, and the bible.
But this is the last election, now we are discussing whether there will be an election, which is much more serious. The fact is that under any circumstances, as there is today, half of the population will not accept the other half.
Brazilian political engineering was lost with the phenomenon of social networks. We had originally thought of being a parliamentarism, we changed halfway to a presidentialism, which in itself generated a system that anomizes it, which was intended to mutate to a more closed presidentialism like the North American, and today was reduced to nothing.
I don’t remember exactly what year that was, but it must have been around 1992, and we had just elected the first President of redemocratization, and the constitution provided that we would have to choose between parliamentarism for what it was written for, mornarchy, or presidentialism. And we revolted with that stupid first president and impeached him. Everyone’s joy at presidentialism, allowing us to remove a President, made us, contrary to constitutional engineering, to choose presidentialism as a form of government.
It was never simple to have a presidentialism, with a parliamentary constitution. But social media has annihilated the belief that things could change slowly until a new adjustment. Social Democrats and Labor have become bitter enemies, first because Labor failed to keep their part of the deal, then because the reactionarism that marks social media has turned crowds against Labour, and one has begun to accuse the other.
What saddens is, contrary to what it seems, the Brazilian was even overly careful, he tried to rely on time, on the sovereign will of the people, and in the end, nothing was logical at any time.
@CoexistenceLaw
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