An opposition obsessed with failure only helps Bolsonaro.

By Paulo Moreira Leite, from Journalists for Democracy

The notion that we live in a country condemned to never solve its main economic and social problems is quite old.

Unable to see their own responsibility for the backwardness of a nation where a monarchy born out of time coexisted with a slavery that shamed humanity, the elite of the First Republic attributed the country's social and economic backwardness to the theory of the three sad races -- Indian, black, and Portuguese.

Thus, based on a racist ideology with scientific pretensions that would fuel the great tragedies of the 20th century, our difficulties in building a true democracy were justified.

After the Second World War, the economist Albert O. Hirschmann (1915-2012), one of the best-known scholars of Latin American development, was so impressed by the self-deprecating behavior of the leaders of this part of the continent -- Chileans, Colombians, Paraguayans, but especially Brazilians -- that he defined a common trait, which he called failuremania.

The notion defines an unchanging thought.

With each increasingly serious crisis, after each political stumble or economic fiasco, there is no need to look for explanations or deep causes, much less to produce rational and well-informed assessments of errors and successes.

It is enough to see in each disaster a new manifestation of a destiny to which we are supposedly pre-condemned as a people, as a society, as a history. Far from being a surprise, failure here is the confirmation of a wrong destiny, the reaffirmation of a worldview—according to which there are peoples capable of emancipating themselves and reaching a high degree of development and civilization, and others eternally condemned to backwardness, defeat, and submission.

It is not surprising that failure is a concept that inhabits the essence of Bolsonarism. The inability to recognize Brazil's potential as a sovereign nation fuels boundless reverence for the American empire, which scandalized even fellow travelers in 2018.  

It is an attitude consistent with the vision of "superior peoples" and "inferior peoples" that is at the root of the worst tyrannies of the 20th century. Its function is to block any effort to transform reality and...

The construction of a prosperous society, less unequal and more just.

The reasoning is absurd, but it has a method and obeys a hellish logic. If progress is impossible, then every effort at change is nothing more than folly and a waste. The only way out is to side with the strongest, handing over immense riches in exchange for crumbs—which will always be insufficient for the needs of so many, an imbalance that will make the massacre of the discontented an acceptable and necessary routine.  

It is therefore not surprising that the recent survey published by Veja, conducted under conditions that should undermine the credibility of any consistent survey, is being received with immense fanfare by Bolsonaro's supporters. In a government corroded by internal crisis and open conspiracies, even stones are useful for reviving disunited and shaken troops.

But one only needs to recall Brazil in July 2015 -- exactly 26 months before the October 2018 election -- to remember the immense distance that separates us from the race to the polls.

In the polls from July 2015, no name that reached the second round in 2018 appeared in the surveys with a strong chance. Bolsonaro was nothing more than a verbal terrorist in the lower ranks of the Chamber of Deputies. Decisive changes occurred during that period, and it is naive—at the very least—to imagine that, facing the most serious pandemic in its history, Brazilian society has already decided how it will vote in 2022.

This is the main point to be considered by those who understand the need to do hard work, without rest or underhanded accommodations, to rid the country of the worst government in its history.

Any questions?

(Learn about and support the project) Journalists for Democracy)