https://archive.md/aSTYE
"IMAGINE A COUNTRY where a polarising president lost his bid for re-election
and refused to accept the result. He declared the ballot rigged and used social
media to urge his supporters to rise up. They did so in their thousands,
attacking government buildings. Then the insurrection failed, the ex-president
faced a criminal investigation and prosecutors put him on trial for plotting a
coup.
That sounds like a fantasy of the American left. In the hemisphere’s other
giant democracy it is reality. On September 2nd the trial of Jair Bolsonaro,
Brazil’s former president and the “Trump of the tropics”, will begin in the
Federal Supreme Court. The evidence reads like a flashback to Brazil’s
turbulent past. A former four-star general schemed to overturn the result of
the election; assassins planned to murder its real winner. As our investigation
into the plot explains, the coup failed because of incompetence rather than
intent.
Mr Bolsonaro and his associates are likely to be found guilty. That makes
Brazil a test case for how countries recover from a populist fever. In Poland,
two years after Law and Justice (PiS) lost power, a coalition led by Donald
Tusk, a centrist, is constrained by a new PiS president. In Britain, Brexit is
now unpopular but Nigel Farage, the politician who inspired it, is leading in
polls. Even Hamas’s massacre of October 7th 2023 did not shake Israel out of
its bitter divisions.
But Brazil’s most striking comparison is with the United States. The two
countries seem to be swapping places. America is becoming more corrupt,
protectionist and authoritarian—with Donald Trump this week messing about with
the Federal Reserve and threatening Democrat-controlled cities. By contrast,
even as the Trump administration punishes Brazil for prosecuting Mr Bolsonaro,
the country itself is determined to safeguard and strengthen its democracy."
Original at
<
https://www.economist.com/leaders/2025/08/28/brazil-offers-america-a-lesson-in-democratic-maturity>
Via
What Could Go Right? AI Cannot Replace Humans:
https://theprogressnetwork.org/humans-and-ai/
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
