Yesterday I watched the Brazilian news at night, a terrible thing to do before bed if you want to avoid nightmares. As I watched all the bad news with horror, all the violent protests, the destruction caused by natural disasters that just recently hit the Southern region of the country, and the government's disdain to it all, I also watched with glory an extremely intelligent commentator named Arnaldo Jabor make a phenomenal analysis and call for change. I decided that it would benefit everyone to read what he had to say. So here it is:
"Formerly it was said that all the violence was caused by poverty, ignorance. It isn’t so. A country where all cases of obvious crimes disappear filed away in Congress, ethics disappear, the evidence vanishes, fired and resigned politicians rule the country…
In this environment the diffused idea spreads: not that 'anything can happen', because they do not fear punishment. It is much more than that. There is a fading awareness of evil. That's the thing. The consciousness of evil presupposes the idea of right, of good, but there's no longer not even that. There is no longer “good”. It is normal to beat a man to death at the mall, to place newborns in a trash bag and toss it in a public lagoon at the park, to fire shots randomly killing innocent people.
The crazy Islamic fanatic blows himself up in the name of Allah. Some others kill for any political causes, but here in Brazil there is no flag. Evil in Brazil horrifies because it happens without reason.
Philosophers talk of the banality of evil, but here there is the gratuitous evil, the lightness of evil, the pleasure of evil, the evil video game. This is the tragedy, there is no longer a cause or motive, only consequences.
And then Brazil arms itself against the enemy - With billions spent on planes and French submarines, but the war, gentlemen, is inside our country."
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