We Used to Be the Envy of the World...

      ...Now we're just a horrible influence.

     At best, our example is emulated for the wrong reasons by the wrong people.

    But by the same token, I used to admire the Brazilian people. I worked with them in the early 80s, learned how to speak fluent Portuguese from them. Hell, I was even engaged to a Brazilian girl for a time. It was the decade when the Brazilian migration, mainly from the state of Minas Gerais (General Mines) began in earnest. 

    The migration picked up steam during the end of João Figueiredo's term, which ended in 1985, and my Brazilian friends would say, "No Brasil, todo mundo está com medo." In Brazil, everyone is afraid. It seemed many if not all my co-workers and friends were left wingers. Even many of the ones that stayed in Brazil staged massive protests in 1984 that spelled the end of the Figueiredo era.

     Then yesterday, they decided to have their own January 6th, albeit a day late.

     In an eerie reprise of that day, thousands of rioters converged on the capitol in Brasilia and stormed into the presidential palace, Congress and the Supreme Court building. Apparently, the South American soul brothers of our emerging neonazi faction has a problem with the October 30 election being won by President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, who was sworn in just a week ago.

     Bolsonaro, taking a page out of Trump's playbook, was such a butt-hurt loser that he refused to hand the sash over to da Silva as per Brazilian political tradition. In fact, two days before his term even officially ended, he high-tailed it to Florida where he now resides as, yes, an illegal alien.

 

    In fact, as one can expect, he couldn't wait to go Mar a Lago so the equally miserable currently under investigation for fraud one term ex presidents can hold pretend Cabinet meetings with stuffed animals and trading caresses while consoling one another about how they got robbed. 

     So, while saying next to nothing since his ignominious defeat at the hands of the guy he railroaded and imprisoned on trumped-up fraud charges, it's not as if the rioters in Brasilia haven't had guidance. Just the month before last, right after the Brazilian elections, Steve Bannon told them their president had been robbed and that they should riot in the streets.

     Bolsonaro's goons were listening and the fucking idiots believed him.

     Yet it's not the similarities to January 6th to which we ought to pay attention but the differences.

     The similarities include the Brasilia police being caught flat-footed. The difference was in how they responded. While the Capitol and DC Metro Police showed a nauseating surfeit of deference to the right wing rioters (proving in spades the police knew in advance who they'd be confronting and it wasn't BLM or the nonexistent antifa), the police in Brazil quickly got their footing and did what we should've done two years ago. 

     They perp-walked countless rioters out of the buildings they occupied in zip ties, they dumped tear gas on them from helicopters high above and, in a scene straight out of the Middle Ages, police on horseback even beat back rioters using long poles.

     Here in the US, our police literally let them walk out of the Capitol building so the FBI could then begin the exhausting task of arresting nearly 1000 of those assholes in their home states. So, yes, Brazilians followed the wrong example. Luckily, the police in Brasilia weren't so faulty in their judgment.

     The next step, as Rep. Joaquin Castro called for, is to extradite Bolsonaro back to Brazil so he can face justice.