FHC, when silent, is the poet of the mediocre bourgeoisie.

"Pepper in other people's eyes is refreshing." This wise popular saying leaves no doubt about the cynicism, opportunism, and double standards that a person or group uses to gain an advantage or distort facts and realities, consequently misrepresenting them, manipulating them, or simply choosing to lie with utter brazenness or deliberate recklessness to gain political advantage for the PSDB and the bourgeoisie.

This is the case of the man considered an intellectual and beloved by the Brazilian right, the former president Fernando Henrique Cardoso — the Neoliberal I —, also known by the nickname FHC. The octogenarian gentleman can't stop talking and therefore speaks nonsense, throughout the last 11 years, a period during which the labor and socialist parties have been in power, a fact that, above all, bothers the great-grandfather of the PSDB party, head of a terrible government that couldn't even create jobs for Brazilian workers.

The government of the feathered grand vizier was a reference point for a series of failures and negative, or sometimes mediocrely positive, figures and indices, symbolized by the 14-month blackout that occurred from July 2001 to September 2002, as well as the sinking, also in 2001, of the P-36, the world's largest oil production platform. This incident demonstrated that the PSDB government, in order to sell off the country, treated it like a free-for-all, something that Brazil undoubtedly is not and never will be, if it depends on Brazilians who love and respect Brazil and want to take care of it.

FHC — the Neoliberal I — is a prodigal man. However, prodigal and habitually prone to spouting nonsense, because he lives in a parallel world. When one sees a photograph of him or his gestures filmed by television, he behaves like an 18th-century "nobleman," lacking only the lace cuffs on his shirts and the white wig of French aristocrats, which became fashionable in Europe and its colonies, imitating the courts, as FHC and the national bourgeoisie in general still do today, because centuries pass, but the customs, values, principles, subservience, colonized thinking, and the immeasurable and ineffable inferiority complex of the rich and middle classes of this country continue to endure through the ages. And the worst of all is that these people are proud to be treated like cockroaches and to receive crumbs, like a seal receives fish in a zoo.

This is the lamentable way in which the bourgeois and petty bourgeois behave, like FHC and those who accompanied him in his submissive misrule, who never cared about the independence and autonomy of Brazil, because they consider that preventing the distribution of income and wealth, in addition to preventing the emancipation of the Brazilian people, are matters of social hegemony, since in the colonized minds of these people the hereditary or acquired status quo is what maintains their opulent lives full of opportunities.

That is why, psychologically, these reactionary, conservative, and mediocre groups, as thinkers, love the United States and its main satellite, England, and defend them peremptorily, because they consider the Yankee country the guarantor, the maintainer of the establishment, of the capital system, and of their stable and abundant lives. But, for this to happen, in the minds of the inhabitants of the Big House, it is necessary to have a world police force, of planetary scope, in this case the USA, which, with its cavalry, symbolized in Hollywood westerns, always comes to save the interests of the "coxinhas" (a derogatory term for right-wingers), the bourgeoisie, and the petty bourgeoisie from the villains of the lower classes and the communists, socialists, and laborites, who want to destroy their rosy worlds.

These privileged classes have immense nostalgia for the Cold War era because they lived in a bipolar world, each side with its own role and interests, which, without a doubt, gave the ruling class a strong sense of security, as they knew they could always count on their foreign cavalry, accomplices and partners in the 1964 coup that deposed the great labor president João Goulart. Psychology, man... Freud explains it!

FHC, a politician who swallows syllables and uses convoluted and, in turn, unintelligible phrases, just like his lectures, yet is still considered an intellectual, is the epitome of innocuousness, because he is iniquity personified, as he considers his errors and sins as absolutely normal, which, evidently, leads him to believe, along with his followers or admirers, that he carried out a great administration during his eight years in government, a fact that obviously did not occur, because the Neoliberal I went to the IMF three times, on his knees and begging for money, because, in the company of Pedro Malan and other "geniuses" of posterity, he bankrupted Brazil three times. Period!

I could spend all day or a week writing about the failures and irresponsibilities of a neoliberal, conservative-leaning government that sold off this giant tropical country. FHC is the greatest traitor this nation has had the misfortune to produce—the Joaquim Silvério dos Reis of the 20th century—but because he committed all these blunders with his government team (José Serra, Pedro Malan, Armínio Fraga, Mendonça de Barros, André Lara Resende, Gustavo Franco, among others), he is strongly shielded by the private business press, historically coup-supporting, which idolizes him for aligning Brazil, in the style of Juracy Magalhães, with US interests and for dismantling the Brazilian state to favor large capitalist groups, selling off Brazil and never, at any time, considering its independence and emancipation.

This is the "Prince of Sociologists," who became the "Prince of Privatization" and is accused by his adversaries and former allies of having bribed each congressman who voted in favor of the reelection amendment for R$ 200. FHC, unlike US presidents who are discreet and silent when they leave power, is not content with his role as a former leader without a vote and lacking the confidence of the vast majority of the Brazilian people.

Vain and dissatisfied with having led an incompetent government with extremely low social and economic indicators, the leader of the highly inept "Tucanato" (PSDB party) never stops talking and lacks the common sense to realize that his image was hidden by the presidential candidates José Serra (twice) and Geraldo Alckmin, who, aware of FHC's terrible image among most voters, removed him from the political process and locked him away in the closet of the PSDB's terrible past, a party that governed for the rich because it wanted a Brazil for a privileged minority of Brazilians.

Now, this prince of privatization opens his mouth without measuring his words and claims that the "PT's mensalão scandal, which was never proven, whose trial was overwhelmingly political, ideologized and therefore biased, as it was guided and broadcast daily by the media like a shoddy show, where some judges behaved like matronly stars, is more serious than the PSDB's, which has already begun to expire for some involved, because after ten years the case begins to prescribe, as well as accused people exceeding the age limit to be imprisoned.

FHC, while in power, didn't build schools and universities and even had the audacity to approve a law preventing the construction of technical schools in Brazil. He thinks he has enough moral authority to make comments, speaking incoherently and out of context. For the feathered grand vizier, the "mensalão" scandal involving the PT was a systematic purchase of votes in Congress to gain support for the Workers' Party government, while the PSDB scandal, which predated the PT's and was the origin of businessman Marcos Valério's activities, was merely an off-the-books fund for the PSDB.

It would be comical if it weren't tragic, because it's evident that Fernando Henrique Cardoso admitted that the PSDB engaged in illegal campaign financing, but knowing that time will exonerate his allies, he acknowledges the occurrence of wrongdoing, but doesn't care because, it seems, the Judiciary in Brazil is lenient with the mistakes of some citizens and not with others, as in the cases of José Dirceu, José Genoíno, and Delúbio Soares, three historical leaders of the PT who, surrealistically, are imprisoned, while those accused of scandals involving members of the PSDB are never judged.

Not content with talking about monthly payments, the traitor of the Brazilian nation believes that the PSDB's kickback scheme involving trains and the São Paulo subway, worth over R$ 1 billion, never existed, despite investigations in Switzerland and Brazil proving that high-ranking PSDB members and their advisors were "supposedly" involved, such as councilman and former secretary Andrea Matarazzo, an important figure in the São Paulo PSDB hierarchy for decades and suspected of receiving bribes from Alstom. Matarazzo raised millions for FHC's reelection, but, perhaps suffering from acute amnesia, the former PSDB president can't remember. What a mess!

Furthermore, the pretentious politician of air blasé And with bored faces and gestures, he said he's rooting for "anyone who defeats the PT." If that's the case, he could nominate a chimpanzee to his party to run in the October elections, or a newborn, maybe José Serra, or even a lamppost to run for the PSDB. After all, I believe Brazilian society wouldn't be surprised by the candidates from the party that represents the Brazilian right wing, heirs to slavery, when we know that for now the PSDB candidate is Senator Aécio Neves. Anyone... Really, FHC is right.

The leading figure in the PSDB party couldn't stop talking, and continued with his nonsensical inferences, as his lectures must be, because they don't correspond to the realities facing the Brazilian nation, or indeed, society. The grand vizier with the long, yellowish beak concluded: "Lula, by putting up so many unlit lampposts, might end up darkening Brazil." His statement is so absurd that whoever heard or read it in the foreign and market-driven press must have laughed out loud, because the incongruities are evident and the notion of reality has long since abandoned this character in Brazilian politics.

And why? Because, as I have stated many times, FHC, like the bourgeoisie who own the Big House, lives in a parallel world, whose geographical scope is limited to Paris, London, New York, and Miami, and he barely knows Brazil and its people—an absurdity for someone who was president of the Republic and who never stops talking about what he never understood and doesn't care to understand.

If there is one person who literally illuminated this country, it was the Labor president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, through the "Light for All" Program, which the equally Labor president, Dilma Rousseff, continues, in addition to increasing the number of small towns, villages, and people living in the countryside who have access to electricity.

In ten years, completed in 2013, the "Light for All" program benefited more than 15 million rural residents. Investments exceeded R$ 20 billion, of which more than R$ 15 billion are the responsibility of the Workers' Party government. Now, let's address the question that keeps nagging at us: "Does former President FHC—the Neoliberal I—have any idea what these gigantic numbers mean?" I answer: "I believe not." And why? Because the Tucano grand vizier gives the impression that he lives and has always lived in a parallel world, fueled by champagne and distant from the realities of the poorest, those who have less, the wronged, and the disinherited. FHC, silent, is the poet of the mediocre bourgeoisie. That's it.