First of all, an outburst: the Brazilian political situation is not easy to follow. It’s a roller coaster of facts, and feelings. Here is the caricatured face of our elite: the mansion in which Temer appears on video, red as a pepper, laughing horribly at the imitations that a comedian makes of Mr. President, has a simple debt with the Revenue of approximately 5 million reais of IPTU. And that’s okay. Life goes on.

In a small house, or a modest apartment, we struggle to pay the bills. Imagine the situation for any of us, in this context of inflation and general economic difficulties: this year we couldn’t pay the IPTU. Worry, anxiety, sleepless nights. Imagine if we would have such a feast, amid good wines and jokes. But for the top floor, things aren’t quite like that, are they? They take it with the belly, it makes no difference. It would be a joke if it weren’t tragic.

In a serious Republic, such a situation would not happen. In a Republic that tried hard to look serious, they would at least hide the video. But not. They lost their shame. There’s no more liturgy, no more reverence, they don’t even bother to do things behind the scenes, or to keep it under wraps. It’s really wide open. The video was deliberately released: the idea of ​​recent times is to build Temer’s image as the experienced politician, as someone relevant to the pacification of the Nation, perhaps as a third way. It’s total mediocrity.

Ah, meanwhile, they dropped a bomb on the Chinese consulate in Rio de Janeiro. Do you see how, spoken like that, it really sounds banal? Interesting that the national mainstream media does not seem to have given the importance the event deserves. The Chinese embassy in Brazil released a correct, coherent and firm statement. Even the US embassy demonstrated. That’s right, in the real world there are limits, there is diplomacy. As much as they are rival countries, going through a trade war in which the US tries to maintain Atlantic hegemony in international relations, while China struggles to promote Pacific hegemony, there are certain rules that keep the game going, that allow the wheel of the Enlightenment keep turning. Where is the Minister of Foreign Affairs? Where is Itamaraty? What would Barão de Rio Branco think in such a situation?

And worst of all, the radical Bolsonarists, who vary between 7 and 9%, feel encouraged to act like this. Let us remember the attacks on China by mr. President, of Congressman Eduardo, of the then Minister of Education, Abraham. These do not make an in-depth analysis of the importance of China for international relations, or even for Brazilian exports. They haven’t read last year’s book, Feeding the world: the emergence of the modern agricultural economy in Brazil, by professors Francisco Vidal Luna and Herbert Klein. They don’t understand the rules of the Enlightenment game. They use chess pieces to play checkers. Or rather, don’t use any parts.

I wonder what are the leaders doing at this time, the movements. The MBL (Movimento Brasil Livre), for example, got a national coalition: everybody laughing at them. They even held a demonstration on the 12th, summoning the left, against Bolsonaro. They were left alone. In the videos, one of them expressed himself at the microphone: “Today is a very sad day, we organized this truck, made all this demonstration and ended up no one coming”. Such a thing is really laughable. In the next moment, to cry.