Existential astonishment

"What is truly immoral is having given up on oneself" - Clarice Lispector

How often are we surprised, in our daily lives, by the unusual things that have been happening in Brazilian politics? 

Sometimes I am reminded of Pessoa, in the person of Caeiro,I know how to feel the essential wonder that a child feels if, upon being born, it realized that it had truly been born....”. Really “I feel reborn anew each moment, for the eternal novelty of the world.". 

This genocidal government doesn't give us time to dedicate ourselves to the issue that should be the focus of all our attention: the pandemic, the virus, the deaths, the drama of the health crisis. 

On the day that Brazil officially reaches almost 50 deaths and 1 million infected, all attention is focused on the corruption of the Bolsonaro family, on Queiroz, on the practice of "streakinha"...for the nomination of a functionally illiterate person to represent the country, as a consolation prize for its inhuman ignorance, at the World Bank." 

I'm tired of feeling secondhand embarrassment. I want my capacity to be outraged by serious issues back! I can no longer have to dumb myself down to understand what's happening to a country that doesn't have a Minister of Health in the middle of a global pandemic, that doesn't even have a plan to count the dead. I don't want to have to explain to people who don't live in Brazil that we have a President who encourages his followers to invade hospitals under the pretext of verifying if the doctors are lying and that the disease isn't so serious. And worse, explain why some people follow this insane voice, a voice searching for a brain, and invade hospitals. 

A strange country in which it was done impeachment of a President who did not commit a crime of responsibility, and now Congress refuses to discuss it. impeachment when the current President commits crimes of responsibility in droves, almost daily. 

A country that is ceasing to be, even, the country of the future, because mediocrity is killing all dreams. Only those who dream, who believe, have a future. I trust more in those who are capable of dreaming, but how can one live under the yoke of complete obscurity? 

Victor Hugo said in the immortal Les Misérables:One would judge a man far more accurately by what he dreams than by what he thinks."I've traveled throughout Brazil in recent years discussing excessive punitivism, going to every possible space and using what the legal profession gave me: a voice." 

Everywhere I've been, I've warned that we should have the humility to sometimes look to nature for inspiration. Darkness doesn't fall all at once. We aren't surprised at midday by a pitch-black night that falls in seconds over Lake Paranoá. Nature is wise; dusk gradually pushes away the light, extinguishing the day, and night begins to impose itself slowly, until it reaches the full force of darkness. And we gradually get used to the lack of light. 

This is what an obscurantist regime is like. It gradually robs us of our capacity to resist, to be indignant, to protest, to react. Until, defeated by the mediocrity of this fascist project, we lose our voice, our breath. And without breath and without a voice, we cannot resist. We become citizens as if affected by the effects of the coronavirus without being infected by the virus, but infected by the vermin of Bolsonarism. A state of lethargy, without intelligence, without even the capacity to protest. 

Once again I turn to Victor Hugo for help:The time comes when protesting alone is not enough: after philosophy, action is indispensable.And, I insist, it is necessary to believe again that we must confront this mediocrity that depresses us. The country needs to believe again that there is life outside of this mediocrity. 

I refuse to be dictated to by this bunch of complete idiots, corrupt and incompetent people. Society is gaining strength and taking a stand. There are several groups and manifestos. It is necessary that all this support be repeated and reinforced with individual actions. 

In times of isolation, let's each, also in isolation, say enough is enough, that's it, I've had enough!

"To kill the dream is to kill ourselves. It is to mutilate our soul. The dream is what we truly own, impenetrably and inexpugnably ours.(Fernando Pessoa)