By Eric Nepomuceno on October 11, 2020
A series of phrases expelled in recent days by President Jair Bolsonaro, reformed General Hamilton Mourão, and the active Minister of Health, General Eduardo Pazuello, by making it clear that the factory of pearls of stupidity installed in Brasilia continues to work at full steam.
Once installed the government, the most primitive president in the history of the Brazilian Republic, immediately made it clear that he did not intend to have absolute exclusivity when extracting and exhibiting such a necklace.
He knew how to summon a formidable group of hopeless beasts to help him, with the more than justified conviction that no one would be able to overcome him. There were praiseworthy attempts by ministers to at least get close to the chief, but no matter how hard they tried, it was all in vain.
Bolsonaro shows solid signs of being the only person in the universe capable of overcoming himself in the imbalance, his clumsiness and the unbridled aberrations. He reinvents himself every day, and when he repeats himself, he does so with innovative twists.
It does not matter that the relationship between his government and reality is becoming increasingly distant. Nothing and no one seems able to prevent the intense work of the pearl factory of stupidity.
Let’s look at some examples. Let’s start with Pazuello, a general who initially occupied the Ministry of Health as an “interim” for four long months, and who after having spread out other military officers in key positions previously occupied by doctors and researchers he was officially confirmed for the job.
Last Wednesday, during the presentation of the “Pink October” campaign, whose objective is to alert women about the risks of breast cancer and the need for prevention measures, Pazuello admitted that before arriving at his job he had no idea of the existence of SUS, the Unique Health System. And then he clarified that “cancer is a complicated disease…”
When this ogre arrived at the Ministry of Health, Brazil had 13 thousand deaths caused by covid-19. After five and a half months, it surpassed the 150 thousand mark.
The Vice President of the Republic, reformed General Hamilton Mourão, surprised us in another direction. In spite of his ultra-reactionary (not to be confused with conservative) and well-known positions, in a report granted to the Deutsche Welle he paid heartfelt homage to Carlos Alberto Brilhante Ustra, one of the most abject symbols of torture during the dictatorship that lasted from 1964 to 1985.
When Ustra died in 2015, he was the only military chief ever to be convicted by the courts. Against him there were more than 500 validated testimonies, highlighting his coldness, his sadism and his violence. For Mourão, however, he was a “man of integrity and honesty, who knew how to defend the human rights of his subordinates.”
This necklace – of stupidity and disgust – offends not only the memory of the victims of that filthy executioner, it also offends the memory of the country. And it opens space for more tension, if Joe Biden’s victory is confirmed: when Obama’s vice president, it was his turn to hand over to then president Dilma Rousseff, herself a victim of Ustra, a robust set of secret reports in which Mourão’s “honest man” holds a special place.
No one, however, is capable of surpassing Bolsonaro. On Thursday night – and he reiterated it yesterday afternoon – he decided, out of the blue, to attack Argentina, Alberto Fernandez and Cristina Kirchner again. He said that Argentines have the government “that they deserve”.
I read in the Buenos Aires newspapers a slight mistake, when they say that Bolsonaro accused the Argentine electorate of having allowed the return of “left-handedness”.
A primordium of education, of sensibility and of diplomacy, typical, absolutely typical, of the apprentice of genocide. What I wonder is if the Brazilian people deserve such a beast. Or if they allowed themselves to be manipulated. The only thing I know is that it makes me indignant, it fills me with shame.
The necklace of stupidity suffocates my country more and more. How long will it be possible to breathe?
Source: Pagina 12, translation Resumen Latinoamericano, North America bureau