According to unofficial data, there are 4,450 from the Army, 3,920 from the Air Force and 76 from the Navy, a number that may be even greater than that of the official PSDB and PT activists who held government posts during their governments in past decades. Therefore, after two years it is difficult to dissimulate and try to separate the Armed Forces from Mr. Bolsonaro, not only because of the extent and degree of personal involvement of the military inside the Alvorada Palace, but also due to the level and intensity of regular meetings held in the last two years between retired generals and officers and those on active duty, inside and outside the government, especially between the upper echelons. After all, it would be like trying to separate two eggs from a single eggnog.
That said, the failure of this government is expected to weigh heavily on the prestige and credibility of the Brazilian Armed Forces, putting a shovel on the myth of the military’s technical and moral superiority over the common mortal. It is now becoming absolutely clear, and once and for all, that the military has not been trained to govern. Its geopolitical manuals and gymnastics and war exercises are one thing; the other is the entirely different knowledge and accumulated experience indispensable for the formulation of any type of public policy, especially to propose to govern a country with the size and the complexity of Brazil.
Furthermore, it has also become clear in recent history that the military’s presumption of moral superiority is only a myth because the military is as human and corruptible as any other homo sapiens. Just remember the recent episode of the irregular request of “emergency aid”, aimed at the poorest people, by hundreds of military personnel in the first phase of the pandemic in Brazil. It is estimated that there were more than 50,000 irregular grants reported by the Federal Court of Auditors and that they had to return the amount to the public safes. But even after the return of the irregularly acquired values, this episode teaches us that there is no reason to believe that soldiers are above suspicion or that they are immune to “worldly temptations”.
In fact, there is no more exemplary case of the failure of this belief in the superiority of military judgment than what happened to the former Commander-in-Chief of the Brazilian Armed Forces, who is self-convinced of his “strategic genius” and his great “moral wisdom” decided to endorse on behalf of the Armed Forces, and personally oversees the operation that led to the presidency of the country an aggressive, crude and despicable psychopath, surrounded by a bunch of rascals with no moral principle, and true ideological buffoons, who together pretend to have ruled Brazil for two years.
May it serve as an example so that these people who consider themselves superior and enlightened, with the right to decide on behalf of society, do not repeat themselves, be they in uniforms, togas, cassocks or pajamas.
In the 20th century, the military made an important contribution to the industrialization of the Brazilian economy, but they also contributed decisively to the construction of an extremely unequal, violent and authoritarian society. And they castrated an entire progressive generation that could have contributed to the advancement of the democratic system installed in 1946. Even so, now in the 21st century, the new generation of activists, much more mediocre, is dedicated to destroying the best they had done in the last century.
It seems that the time is coming for Brazilian society to dispose of these “savior myths” and return its military to their barracks and constitutional functions. To assume, once and for all, with courage and with your own hands, the responsibility of building a new country that has your face, and that is done in your image and likeness, with its great defects, but also with its great virtues.
May it be a proud and sovereign country, more just and less violent, that respects differences and all beliefs, and that it becomes more human, more fraternal and more fun. And that Brazil will once again be accepted, admired and respected by the rest of the world. These are at least my wishes for the year 2021.
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Jose Luis Fiori | Radio Free (2021-01-05T15:46:43+00:00) 2020 saw the physical and moral disintegration of Brazilian society. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2021/01/05/2020-saw-the-physical-and-moral-disintegration-of-brazilian-society/
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