I just got back from Sao Paulo. My plane came in from Santiago just at the moment that Jair Bolsaro was elected president with what appeared to be 55% of the vote.
Over the next three days I saw a general feeling of apathy among Brasilians. Nobody talked about the elections or what might happen.
When I got back to California, I took my 12-year old car in for battery service. I was in the presence of two wrecker drivers and an office manager. These are humble people with high school educations. When I told them that I had just gotten back from Brasil, these words came from one of them:"Oh the country that elected Trump, Jr."
Some Brasilians question Jair's intelligence and wonder if he has a plan at all. I pointed out to one very-bright Brasilian that Hitler only had a high school education. Josef Stalin probable had a 6th grade education. Between them they were responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000 people.
After a lot of thought, I can take an educated guess as to what Jair has in mind. He is going to do everything that he can to create an economic boom like Brasil has not seen before. As is happening all over the world, this boom will create more wealth for the very rich and the very talented. It will not "trickle down" to the poor.
His second goal is going to be to stamp our corruption in Brasil's legislative branch of government. He has promoted Judge Sergio Moro to Justice minister. Even a man of Judge Moro's competence will have a hard time stripping away all the immunities that the legislative branch has voted itself. We are going to have to go back to the English kings of centuries ago to see what Jair will do. He will dissolve parliament and arrest all the corrupt members of the legislative branch. He could declare a national emergency and suspend the constitution. Any way he does it, the Brasilian government will go into paralysis. There will be high tension and a lot of anger and frustration that could lead to violence and major disruptions.Many Brasilians will see this as an excuse for him to turn himself into a dictator. They will wonder if democracy will ever be restored.
His third goal will be to attack the drug and organized crime elements to either destroy them or marginalize them to the point of being irrelevant. Brasilian police already are accused of doing "extra-judicial" killings of drug and organized crime elements. It will get much worse. I see Jair taking a page from the US book and bringing in contractors from security companies in other countries to do the real dirty work. There will be a blood bath far worse than anything seen during the military government.
These drug and organized crime gangs have incredible financial resources and weaponry at their disposal. They will not, as William Shakespeare would say, "Go quietly into the night." We need to only look back in recent history to France's experience with Algerian nationalists and the British experience with the Irish republican Army. You are going to see terrorists attacks on a brutal and grand scale. Major populations centers in Brasil will begin to believe that they are living like people in Kabul. Never forget that the largest Irish Republican Army attack in London hit the financial district and caused some one billion dollars in damages.
Over the next three days I saw a general feeling of apathy among Brasilians. Nobody talked about the elections or what might happen.
When I got back to California, I took my 12-year old car in for battery service. I was in the presence of two wrecker drivers and an office manager. These are humble people with high school educations. When I told them that I had just gotten back from Brasil, these words came from one of them:"Oh the country that elected Trump, Jr."
Some Brasilians question Jair's intelligence and wonder if he has a plan at all. I pointed out to one very-bright Brasilian that Hitler only had a high school education. Josef Stalin probable had a 6th grade education. Between them they were responsible for the deaths of 100,000,000 people.
After a lot of thought, I can take an educated guess as to what Jair has in mind. He is going to do everything that he can to create an economic boom like Brasil has not seen before. As is happening all over the world, this boom will create more wealth for the very rich and the very talented. It will not "trickle down" to the poor.
His second goal is going to be to stamp our corruption in Brasil's legislative branch of government. He has promoted Judge Sergio Moro to Justice minister. Even a man of Judge Moro's competence will have a hard time stripping away all the immunities that the legislative branch has voted itself. We are going to have to go back to the English kings of centuries ago to see what Jair will do. He will dissolve parliament and arrest all the corrupt members of the legislative branch. He could declare a national emergency and suspend the constitution. Any way he does it, the Brasilian government will go into paralysis. There will be high tension and a lot of anger and frustration that could lead to violence and major disruptions.Many Brasilians will see this as an excuse for him to turn himself into a dictator. They will wonder if democracy will ever be restored.
His third goal will be to attack the drug and organized crime elements to either destroy them or marginalize them to the point of being irrelevant. Brasilian police already are accused of doing "extra-judicial" killings of drug and organized crime elements. It will get much worse. I see Jair taking a page from the US book and bringing in contractors from security companies in other countries to do the real dirty work. There will be a blood bath far worse than anything seen during the military government.
These drug and organized crime gangs have incredible financial resources and weaponry at their disposal. They will not, as William Shakespeare would say, "Go quietly into the night." We need to only look back in recent history to France's experience with Algerian nationalists and the British experience with the Irish republican Army. You are going to see terrorists attacks on a brutal and grand scale. Major populations centers in Brasil will begin to believe that they are living like people in Kabul. Never forget that the largest Irish Republican Army attack in London hit the financial district and caused some one billion dollars in damages.
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