Author: Bruno Gonçalves Rosi

Bad Religion

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Culture, Current Events, Liberty, Philosophy, Religion , , , ,

The Heidelberg Catechism is one of my all-time favorite Christian documents. Written in 1563, mostly by Zacharias Ursinus, the Heidelberg (as it is sometimes called) is composed by 129 questions and answers (the classical format of a catechism), supposed to be studied in 52 Sundays (that is, one year). I believe it is very telling that, being a catechism, the Heidelberg was written thinking mostly about younger people, even children. Ursinus himself was only about 29 years old when he wrote it. Maybe it is a sign of the times we live in that the Heidelberg sounds extremely deep for most readers today.

Throughout its questions and answers, the Heidelberg covers mostly three Christian documents: The Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer (“Our Father who art in Heaven…”) and the Apostle’s Creed. The catechism is also divided into three main parts: Our sin and misery (questions 3-11), our redemption and freedom (questions 12-85), our gratitude and obedience (86-129). Probably an easier way to remember this is to say that the Heidelberg is divided into Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. That is also, according to many interpreters, the basic division of the Apostle Paul’s Letter to the Romans, historically one of the most important books in the Bible.

I mention all these characteristics about the Heidelberg Catechism because I think they are worth commenting on. As I learned from a friend, that is the Gospel: Guilt, Grace, and Gratitude. As C.S. Lewis observed in Mere Christianity, Christians are divided on how exactly this works, but all agree that our relationship with God is strained. That is the guilt. However, in Jesus Christ, we can restart a peaceful relationship with God. That is the grace. This should be followed by a life of gratitude. That is the way the Gospel is good news. If you don’t emphasize these three points you are not really presenting the Biblical gospel. To talk about grace without talking about guilt is nonsense. To talk about guilt and not grace is not good news at all. To talk about guilt and grace but not of gratitude is antinomianism. To talk about gratitude (or obedience) without talking about guilt and especially grace is legalism. But also, notice how unbalanced the three main parts are: Ursinus dedicated way more space for grace and gratitude that he did for guilt.

That’s not accidental. Also, it is very interesting that he talks about the Ten Commandments when he is dealing with gratitude. It didn’t have to be this way. Ursinus could have included the Law when talking about guilt. He could use the law to show how miserable we are for not fulfilling it. But instead, he wanted to show that obeying God is a sign of gratitude. You are free already. Obeying will not make you any more saved. But it is certainly the behavior of a truly restored person.

If you read so far, I should first thank you for your attention, but also say that I am completely unapologetic for speaking so openly on Christian themes. At some point in history, Christians decided to adapt to the modern culture. That was the birth of Christian Liberalism. Modern man, some of them assumed, could no longer believe in stories of gods and miracles. Modern science was able to explain things that societies in the past thought to be supernatural occurrences. The Bible was at worst pure nonsense or at beast a praiseful reflection of the piety of people in the past, but certainly not a supernatural revelation from God. But if you take away the supernatural elements of the Bible, what do you have left? Good morals, some thought. I believe they were wrong.

The social gospel is one consequence of Christian liberalism. The central miracle in the Bible is that Jesus, a mortal man, was dead for three days and resurrected. That is indeed a miracle. Make no mistake: people in the first century knew as well as we do that people don’t come back to life after three days. Maybe they knew it better than we do, for in the 21st century, for many of us, death is not a part of everyday life. For them, it certainly was. Christians have believed through almost two thousand years that Jesus’ death and resurrection have something to do with us being reconciled to God. But if Jesus didn’t resurrect, and no one really heard from God that he is angry, what do we have left? The answer, according to Christian liberals, is social justice. Reform society. I believe that for this, they own society at large an apology, and I will explain why.

I heard from too many people that the reason they don’t go to church is that Christians are hypocrites. “Do as I say, but not as I do”. Maybe they are right. The balance between guilt, grace, and gratitude if fundamental for Christianism to work. Salvation (reestablishing a rightful relationship with God) is by grace, not by works. Say that salvation is by works and you set the board in a way that you are sure to lose. As I already mentioned, I think it is just wonderful that the Heidelberg Catechism talks about the Law of God (The Ten Commandments) when it is discussing gratitude, not guilt, and I believe this is a great lesson for us today.

I say all this today because I believe that political correctness is (at least to a great degree) the bastard son (or daughter) of the social gospel. See the recent Gillette commercial that caused so much controversy, for example. Are they really saying anything wrong? Don’t men behave sometimes in ways that are less than commendable? I believe we do. Especially coming from a Latino culture as I do, I am more than willing to say that men all too often are disrespectful towards women and also towards other men. However, how the people at Gillette know this? If there is no God, or if he didn’t speak, how can you tell what is ethically commendable behavior and what is not?

I am no specialist, but as far as I know, more than enough atheist philosophers are willing to admit that in a sole materialist worldview there are no universal grounds for morality. As the poet said, “if there is no God, then all things are permissible”. It is always important in a conversation like this to explain that I am not saying that atheists cannot be ethical people. That is absolutely not what I am saying. Some of the best people I ever met were atheists. Some of the worst were Christians who were at church every single Sunday. With that explained, what I am saying is that there is no universal guide for human behavior if there is no God and everything just happened by chance. There are particular guides, but not a universal one, and to adhere to them is really a matter of choice.

The way that I see it, people at Gillette want men to feel bad and to change their behavior. They want men to feel guilty and to have gratitude. But where is the grace? I believe that is why this commercial irritated so many people. It makes people at Gillette look self-righteous or legalistic. Or both! But it definitely doesn’t help men to change their ways, supposing that there is something to change. I believe there is. There is a lot to change! But political correctness is not the way to do it.

Blame it on Rio

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , , , , , ,

I grew up in Rio de Janeiro in a very middle-class neighborhood. Not the fanciest one, but also not the poorest. Very much in the middle. This neighborhood also had the characteristic of being surrounded by hills. Many if not most hills in Rio de Janeiro have favelas. Favelas are poor neighborhoods that are formed by poor people who mostly want to live close to where the jobs are. Because I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood, studied in middle-class schools and had a middle-class family I was in danger of only knowing middle-class people. The thing that prevented me from that the most was going to church. In church, I lived with people from all kind of social backgrounds – including people who lived in favelas.

The history of Rio de Janeiro is mostly a history of expansion from the area we today call downtown. On several occasions, poor people (including my grandfather and his mother) were relocated (or frankly expelled) from their houses by the government that wanted to make some urban reform. People faced two options: to be relocated to far removed areas, far away from their jobs, or to occupy some undeveloped area in the vicinities of where they previously lived and form a favela.

Because Rio de Janeiro is the historic capital of Brazil, it received a lot of investment by governments over the decades. Many governments wanted to make it a vitrine of Brazil’s development. Also, Brazil has a strong history of developmentalism. Especially since Getúlio Vargas, who rule the country from 1930 to 1945 and again from 1951 to 1954, Brazilian presidents tend to believe that it is their job to bring economic development to the country. The higher the GDP growth, the best. I mean, who am I to say that GDP growth is a bad thing?! But we have a lot of stories worldwide of countries that grew too fast in too little time leading among other things to major population dislocations and new pockets of poverty around great cities. Lagos, in Nigeria, is a textbook example. So is Caracas, in Venezuela. So is Rio de Janeiro. This kind of development is pretty much like using steroids: the results are fast, but the side effects are terrible. Fernando Henrique Cardoso tried to “flip the page” from Vargas in the 1990s, but Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff returned to developmentalist policies in the 2000s. Even Jair Bolsonaro often talks as a developmentalist, apparently a tic from his military years. Anyways, developmentalism led to the fast growth of Rio de Janeiro over the decades – and the formation of new favelas.

One of the best stories of developmentalism in Rio de Janeiro is the neighborhood of Barra da Tijuca. Until the 1960s this part of the city, caught between the hills and the ocean, was basically desert. That’s when the government commissioned the architect and urbanist Lucio Costa to develop the area. Mr. Costa was also responsible for designing the city of Brasília, and it shows: Brasília and Barra da Tijuca are fairly similar. Not my kind of city or neighborhood. It’s very hard or even impossible to explore Barra da Tijuca on foot. Its area is roughly the size of Manhattan, but it has no subway lines. The bus lines are not very dependable. The city blocks are very large. Everything is very distant.

In my evaluation, Mr. Costa thought that he was God. Brasília and Barra and very interesting if looked from above, from the sky. But if you are on the ground level and don’t have a car, they are just not friendly. But that’s how modernists (including socialists) are: they swear they love humanity but hate human beings.

The news that the government was developing the Barra da Tijuca area spread fast. Many families came to the region looking for jobs in construction. Many of them settled in the vicinity of Rio das Pedras. Rio das Pedras became one of the main favelas of the region. In the absence of government, people started to organize themselves in neighborhood associations. Even with most of the construction projects done, the families never left. Barra da Tijuca became an affluent neighborhood with many jobs. Alongside came drug trafficking.

The “pre-history” of drug trafficking in Rio de Janeiro is almost idyllic. You just have to watch the movie City of God (2002). Of course, one could not sell drugs in fancy neighborhoods like Ipanema or Copacabana, where the government is strongly present.

So, most drug trafficking happened in the favelas, including Rio das Pedras. The first generation of drug dealers was mostly respectful towards residents of the favelas and other poor neighborhoods. Some even became legendary for pacifying the neighborhoods from other forms of crime: because they didn’t want to have trouble with the police, drug dealers would punish criminals themselves. However, this changed very fast. The dispute for territory led drug dealers to become more and more violent.

In response to drug dealers and the slackness of the government, people organized in militias. What once were neighborhood associations became paramilitary organizations. Just like happened with the drug dealers, the vigilantes were initially friendly towards the people living in the neighborhoods. However, this changed very fast. The dispute for territory led militias to become more and more violent. Eventually, drug dealers and militias became mostly indistinguishable. Some militia leaders entered politics.

Marcelo Freixo, a Rio de Janeiro politician of the PSOL (Socialism and Liberty Party – as I said before, a contradiction in terms) rose to fame in the 2000s for presiding over a parliamentary inquiry on the militias. Mr. Freixo had a character inspired on him in the movie Elite Squad 2 (2010). The first Elite Squad (2007) was a very good movie. The sequel, not so much. Elite Squad is somewhat based on real events and tells the story of (what else?) BOPE, an elite squad in the Rio de Janeiro military police (somewhat analogous to the SWAT), especially during the visit of Pope John Paul II to the city in the late 1990s. The movie has some similarities to Black Hawk Down (2001). If you haven’t watched it and want to be spoil free, you might want to skip to the next paragraph.

Pope John Paul II decided to stay in a dangerous neighborhood, surrounded by favelas. The BOPE was responsible for his security. Although disagreeing with the strategic intelligence of allowing the Pope to stay in a dangerous region of the city, the squad did its job. In very military fashion, “orders are orders”. The movie shows the police officers as very dubious figures: they are extremely violent and often disrespectful towards citizens. But they are also very honest and dutybound. Captain Nascimento, the main character, is a tragic figure. He became a police officer to protect innocent citizens. He discovers that by obeying orders he is often just putting his life in risk for very little or no results. Worse, he is misunderstood by all those around him, including his family.

Even his son ends up calling him a fascist. Elite Squad also portrays the drug dealers in a nuanced way. They are violent and vengeful, but Captain Nascimento himself understands that no one grows up dreaming about becoming a drug dealer. Drug dealers and BOPE members fight a private war and ironically might be the only ones to truly understand one another. The real villains of the movie are the upper-middle class youngsters who use drugs, financing the drug dealers who the BOPE fights. It is against them that the police officers direct most of their rage.

So, I believe that Elite Squad is a very good movie, that pictures quite well how life in Rio de Janeiro is for many people. Most of the time it is hard to precisely identify villains or heroes. However, no wonder, despite being very popular, the movie was trashed by leftist intellectuals who called it fascist. The sequel gains in quality in almost everything but the characters, and this makes it worse than the original. The villains are completely villainous and the heroes, heroic. It lacks the nuances of the original. The character inspired by Marcelo Freixo is morally perfect. The vigilantes whom he fights are cartoonish evil.

Brazilian and international media gave much attention last year to the assassination of Marielle Franco, a Rio de Janeiro politician who, just like Mr. Freixo, was a member of the PSOL. Ms. Franco’s assassination, like any other, is a tragedy. The police investigation is still ongoing, and no one really knows who killed her, but it seems very likely that she was murdered by members of a militia. Despite what international media might lead one to believe, Ms. Franco was far from being the first Rio de Janeiro politician to be murdered in the last few years. Mr. Freixo himself is under police protection for many years now. Other politicians from several political parties were not so lucky and didn’t receive the same attention from the media. The left’s last blow against president Jair Bolsonaro is to say that one of his sons, Flávio Bolsonaro, is somehow connected to Ms. Franco assassination. In their narrative, Flávio would be connected to militias who in turn killed Ms. Franco. All things are possible. Not all are plausible. Definitely, not all are proven. To be honest, there are people in the right saying that Jean Wyllys, also from the PSOL, is connected to Jair Bolsonaro’s assassination attempt last September. Maybe they should all go have a drink together. They have much in common.

Making a generalization (but I hope not an overgeneralization), politicians and intellectuals from the left tend to romanticize drug dealers. They are pictured as social victims or social bandits, almost Robin Hoods. On the other hand, they vilify the militias in a cartoonish way. Just like Elite Squad 2. I began this text mentioning that going to church prevented me from entirely growing in a middle-class bubble. Because of that, I heard people saying that old drug dealers had at least some sense of justice. Younger ones (sometimes as young as 16 years old) are almost animals, psychopaths without any sense of empathy. If you watched The Godfather trilogy you know what I mean. I also heard people frustrated with the government, that offered no protection against criminals. The same people were (at least initially) supportive of militias.

Politicians in the right, in turn, consider unimaginable to legalize any drug. But on the other hand, they were very slow to understand the danger of the militias, and citizens making justice with their own hands in general.

So, this is a story about Rio de Janeiro, one of Brazil’s most important cities. For decades politicians believed it was their job to bring economic development to the country – and to the city. This led to fast economic growth, which in turn led to the development of favelas. Favelas are areas where the official government is generally not present.

Therefore, its residents form neighborhood associations. Favelas are also places where, because of the lack of government, drug dealers can work in relative peace. However, over time drug dealers become more and more violent in their dispute for territory. The neighborhood associations, in turn, become militias. And the militias quite often become mafias. Some politicians rise to fame fighting these mafias, but the policies they defend are the same that begin this story in the first place. Politicians on the right are accused of dangerous liaisons. And no one seems to be willing to limit government to its primary function of protecting life and private property.

Brazil’s sole openly gay congressman leaves the country after death threats?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

According to The Guardian and other online sources in English, Jean Wyllys, “Brazil’s first and only openly gay congressman” left the country after death threats. But is that so? Running a great risk (or certainty) of being called homophobic, fascist, racist, taxidermist, guitarist, etc., I’m gonna give some information that The Guardian and other sources neglect.

First of all, Mr. Wyllys is not “Brazil’s first and only openly gay congressman.” He was preceded by at least one other “openly gay congressman,” Clodovil Hernandes (1937-2009). Mr. Hernandes was elected for Congress in 2006 and before that was for several decades a respected (although sometimes controversial) fashion designer and television presenter. Mr. Hernandes was always open about his sexuality and while in Congress had good relations with Jair Bolsonaro, frequently accused of homophobia by Brazilian and international media – including The Guardian.

But coming back to Mr. Wyllys, he rose to fame after winning the Brazilian version of the of the Big Brother reality franchised television show in 2005. Following that, he ran for Congress in 2010 representing the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL. Socialism and freedom – a contradiction in the very party’s name) but received only an average of 13,000 votes. His election was only possible, considering the number of votes he had, through the votes of another highly voted candidate of the same party. In 2014 he ran for reelection and this time, justice be done, received a great number of votes: almost 145,000 – more than enough to be elected by his own rights, although still way behind Jair Bolsonaro himself, who received 464,572 votes in the same election. However, in the last elections, Mr. Wyllys went back to electoral mediocrity, with meager 24,295 votes. Once again, as in 2010, he was benefited by his electoral law and party votes and got elected, despite being behind candidates who received way more.

After Bolsonaro was elected president in last October, many leftists in Brazil declared they were part of “The Resistance.” One of the mottos of this informal group was “nobody lets go of nobody’s hand.” There were many rumors on the internet saying that Mr. Wyllys would leave Brazil with Bolsonaro’s election. Answering these rumors he said, “the slogan of my campaign was resistance. For all those who spread fake news saying that I would leave Brazil, I am here and here I will stay.” However, Mr. Wyllys’ resistance didn’t last for a month. Just a few days before the swearing-in he released a note from overseas stating that he will not assume his position as a congressman in February and that he will also not return to Brazil due to alleged death threats. Mr. Wyllys didn’t present any proofs of the death threats he affirms is receiving.

Mr. Wyllys despicable 24,295 votes – and the downfall from his previous almost 145,000 – show that he is actually a minor figure in Brazilian politics. However, considering the cover given him by The Guardian and other media, one might think he is something else. One might think that his alleged death threats are a major threat to Brazilian democracy. But let’s consider some things that The Guardian and other media ignore:

Last September, during the presidential campaign, Jair Bolsonaro suffered a knife attack in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais. Bolsonaro’s stabber, Adélio Bispo de Oliveira, was affiliated to PSOL – Mr. Wyllys’ political party – between 2007 and 2014. According to official records of Brazil’s House of Representatives, on the same day of the attack, Mr. Oliveira was in the House, in Brasília. Brasília and Juiz de Fora are almost 700 miles apart. Did somebody register his presence to create an alibi? Immediately after the attack, Mr. Oliveira was assisted by extremely expensive lawyers. The identity of who pays these lawyers is secret. If all these things don’t raise eyebrows, I don’t know what to do.

In 2016, during the voting for the impeachment of Dilma Rousseff, Mr. Wyllys spit on Jair Bolsonaro. Mr. Wyllys spit was followed by a wave of leftists spitting on opponents as a sign of political resistance.

The case is still under investigation, but there is a lot of evidence that Fernando Holiday, a black and gay city councilor for São Paulo, suffered a murder attempt last December. Evidence also suggests that this was a political crime, for Holiday defends a controversial social security reform. But I don’t see The Guardian celebrating that São Paulo, Brazil’s greatest city, has a young, black, and gay councilor or that worried that his life might be under threat. Maybe because Holiday defends free-market and conservative policies?

Joice Hasselmann, elected for Congress in 2018 elections, also claims she received death threats. The difference between Ms. Hasselmann and Mr. Wyllys is that she presented proofs: in late November a pig’s head with a death note was left on her residence’s door. The case is under investigation. A woman, elected for Congress of one of the world’s largest democracies is apparently receiving death threats, but the coverage by international media is minimum. Maybe because Ms. Hasselmann is conservative?

In sum, Brazil’s democracy is fragile indeed. A presidential candidate was stabbed. A counselor in the country’s largest city was the victim of a murder attempt. A congresswoman by the country’s most populous state receives death threats on her home. If Mr. Wyllys is indeed receiving death threats, he shouldn’t leave the country. He should honor his voters, despite how few they are, and most of all, he should cooperate with the police.

Venezuela: a nightmare coming to an end?

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Yesterday, January 23, Juan Guaidó, the head of Venezuela’s National Assembly, declared himself acting president of the country. Mr. Guaidó claims that the election that brought Nicolas Maduro to a second six-year term was not fair and that therefore Mr. Maduro is a “usurper” and the presidency is vacant. Donald Trump immediately recognized Guaidó as president and so did Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro and the entire Lima Group (Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Guyana and Saint Lucia).

Venezuela does not have a very democratic history, but things began to deteriorate in 1999 when Hugo Chávez came to power as president. He ruled the country until his death in 2013 and was succeeded by his vice-president Nicolas Maduro. Initially, Chávez didn’t look so bad, but he became increasingly more dictatorial through his government.

Hugo Chávez was the first president linked to Foro de São Paulo to come to power. He was succeeded by Lula da Silva in Brazil, Evo Morales in Bolivia, and many others. Foro de São Paulo (or São Paulo Forum) is a conference of leftist political parties and other organizations from Latin America and the Caribbean launched by the Brazilian Workers’ Party (PT) in 1990 in the city of São Paulo. The aim of the Foro was to build mutual support between these organizations, especially considering the collapse of the Soviet Union.

It can be said that Foro de São was exceedingly successful for a while. At one point in the 2000s, a great part of Latin America was ruled by politicians connected to it. However, the problem with socialism, as Margaret Thatcher once said, is that “eventually you run out of other people’s money.” PT’s rule in Brazil began to fall in 2013 when a great number of Brazilians started protesting against Dilma Rousseff’s government. Dilma was impeached in 2016, and her predecessor and mentor Lula da Silva was jailed in 2018 by Operation Carwash. Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s new president, is a fierce anti-communist. His election also marks a turn of events not only in Brazil but in the whole in Latin America. Maduro can no longer count on the support he received from Brazil, the continent’s greatest economy.

With money running out and corruption escalating, the decline of socialism in Latin America is just a matter of time, just as it was in Europe. Wind of Change.

Why I turned right

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Culture, Politics , , , , ,

I understand things are not the same everywhere in the World, but until just a few years ago, to call yourself “right-wing” in Brazil was virtually unthinkable. The reasons for that are not totally clear, but the fact is that “right-wing” was a name with a very bad connotation. Brazil went through a military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. This dictatorship was set in place to prevent a perceived communist threat in the country, especially after the Cuba Revolution of 1959. Therefore, it was an anticommunist dictatorship.

My understanding is that, because of that, to be “right-wing” in Brazil was understood as “being in favor of dictatorship”, and left-wing to be “for democracy”. Of course, examining things with just a little more care, nothing could be further from the truth. Fidel Castro and Che Guevara were no democrats. Actually, the military dictatorship in Cuba lives on. Mao Zedong was a horrendous dictator. So were Stalin and Lenin. There is no reason to believe that Trotsky would have been any less authoritarian.

There is no reason to believe that the socialists/communists in Brazil would have been democratic once in power. But they didn’t come to power, and because of that people could fuel the romantic image of revolutionaries unjustly persecuted by the military. Although I disagree with Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho in many points, I believe he is totally right on this: the military in Brazil was great in fighting the communist guerrilla. Thanks to them, we don’t have something similar to FARC in Brazil today. But when it came to propaganda and cultural war they were just awful. Communists in Brazil (and in other places) were great in selling the image of Che Guevara as a romantic hero fighting against the evil North-American Imperialism.

And this is the paradigm I grew up with. Either you are a freedom fighter, opposing evil capitalists and imperialism, or you are subservient to foreign powers and injustice. Considering this background, of course, nobody would like to be called right-wing. However, things changed.

One of the things that made me turn right was studying the right-wing political ideologies. I discovered that classical liberals and conservatives were not against the poor, just the opposite. The best example I can think of is Adam Smith: his Wealth of Nations is actually a love letter for those who are oppressed by unjust economic exploitation. What Adam Smith was trying to find out is what makes the lives of the simple people better. His answer, in a nutshell, was the free market. Similarly, the Founding Fathers were trying to give the common folk a better living without oppression. And they did. Very different from all the leftist revolutions. In short, free markets and liberal democracy work.

The second thing that made me turn right was the hypocrisy of some leftists. I realized that they want you to have freedom of choice, but only if you choose what they want. If you feel you have homosexual inclinations, they want you to have the freedom to embrace homosexuality. And so do I! But God forbid (or Marx forbid) you decide (for whatever reason) to fight homosexuality and become (or remain) straight.  They want women to have the freedom to get jobs. But they don’t want them to have the freedom to stay home to raise the kids. The examples are many, but the summary is this: I realized that many leftists are not ready to defend your right to be different.

I’m really sorry that things come down to what two consenting adults do in a closed room. I really am. But it seems to me that much of the leftist agenda is to have the freedom to choose only if you choose what they want. And this is what made me turn right: to accept other peoples choices as much as I want them to accept mine. Liking it or not.

How the populists came to power

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Culture, Politics , , , , , , , , ,

Jair Bolsonaro was elected president in Brazil. Donald Trump in the US. In other countries, similar politicians are gaining popular support. Some are calling these politicians “populists”. I don’t really know what they mean by this term. The populists that I know better are Getúlio Vargas, Brazil’s president for almost 20 years in the mid-20th century and Juan Peron, a leading political figure in Argentina in the same time period. What they had in common? Both fought the communist influence in Latin America, favored the labor movement and were anti-liberal. They were also extremely personalist, leading to something that could be understood as a cult of personality. I completely fail to see important similarities between Trump and Bolsonaro on the one hand and Vargas and Peron on the other. But I can see some similarities between Trump and Bolsonaro. The latter two both came to power against what the left became in the last few decades.

Once upon a time, there was a young German philosopher called Karl Marx. He was very well read but wasn’t very bright on economics. Anyway, he decided that he would correct the classical liberal economic theory of Adam Smith. The result was that Marx concluded that in the center of the economy, and actually in the center of history itself, was the class struggle between the workforce and the bourgeoisie. Of course, although appealing on the surface, Marx’s economic theory is pure nonsense. Maybe Marx himself knew it, for at the end of his life he was more interested in living a peaceful life in London than in leading a revolution. But this didn’t stop Marxists from starting Revolutions throughout the world, beginning in Russia.

Ludwig Von Mises brilliant pointed out that Marxism would never work as the economic foundation of a country, for it ignored private property. Without private property, there is no price formation and without prices economic calculation is impossible. In doing so, Mises founded the Austrian School of Economics. The economic debate between Austrians and Marxists ensued, but arguing with a Marxist is like playing chess with a pigeon. He will climb on the board, knock down the pieces and believe that he won. Regardless, facts don’t care about your feelings, and reality proved again and again that Mises was right.

However, at the same time, something else was happening. In Italy, a Marxist named Antonio Gramsci concluded that armed revolution was not the best way to power. He believed that a cultural approach would be better. Some German scholars in Frankfurt concluded pretty much the same. Their question was “why the proletariat will not follow us?”. The answer was that they were too alienated by capitalist culture.

Following Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, Marxists all over the world gave up studying economics and decided to study culture. They concluded that everyone can feel oppressed. The class struggle seized to be between factory workers and factory owners and turned into a fight between man and woman, black and white, gay and straight. Identity politics was born.

And that’s how the “populists” came to power. It is not so much that the common people (and especially conservatives and libertarians) are crazily in love with Bolsonaro or Trump. It is just that people eventually get tired of being called oppressors. The left, once legitimately concerned with the conditions of the poor, ignored that the best solution for poverty is the free market. Instead, they decided they would crush the common people they swore to protect, calling them homophobic, misogynists and so on. Common people answered by voting for whoever was on the other side of the political spectrum.

Some challenges Brazil has to overcome to achieve development

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

Now it is true. As I predicted some time ago, Jair Bolsonaro became Brazil’s president. Bolsonaro is not the brightest guy in the room, but I believe he has some qualities a leader requires. Above all, Bolsonaro shows conviction, a quality central to leadership, as Albert Mohler observes. Bolsonaro has the conviction that socialism/communism is the wrong way, and that Brazil has to try an alternative. The alternative, he has grown to understand, is the free market.

In his first remarks as president, Bolsonaro said that Brazil is “leaving socialism.” Some Brazilian friends, even people with high education, found this quote preposterous. In their view, Brazil can’t abandon socialism because she never tried it. That’s quite scary! After almost two decades of rule of the Worker’s Party (PT) there are people in Brazil who believe that Brazil never tried socialism.

It must be observed that PT is a big party, with many internal tendencies. Still, historically the party has the objective of turning Brazil into a socialist country. It is quite shocking that some people haven’t realized this!

On the other hand, many Brazilians still charge capitalism for all the country’s problems. The difficulty with this is that, if we take capitalism as free-market, Brazil has never been capitalist. Brazil’s economic history, in a nutshell, is of government control of the economy.

One of the challenges Brazil has, as surprising as it may be, is to teach people what is socialism and what is capitalism. The other is to make people understand that socialism is just bad. It has been tried. It failed, as it should. Capitalism, understood as economic freedom, worked everywhere. And there is no reason to believe that it wouldn’t work in Brazil.

The childishness of the left

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , , ,

Jair Bolsonaro took office as president of Brazil this last January 1. The government has barely begun, but I think we can already observe a little of what the next four years will look like. During the campaign, Bolsonaro made it clear that his government would be “liberal in the economy and conservative in customs.” Here an explanation is necessary for English speakers: in Brazil “liberal” almost always means “classic liberal,” that is, defender of the free market economy. Conservative, at least in the context of Bolsonaro’s speech, is not so different from the sense of the English language: conservatism as an appreciation of the customs and traditions of Judeo-Christian society.

The speeches of the Bolsonaro himself and his ministers already in office follow exactly this tone. Paulo Guedes, chosen to be the “super-minister” of the economy, made it clear in a speech of almost an hour that Brazil’s problem is excess of state. During the last 40 years or more Brazil has treated symptoms, not the causes of its economic backwardness. The speech of Paulo Guedes was a class of economic history of Brazil.

However, what dominated the Brazilian media in recent days was not a speech, but rather a remark by a minister. Damares Alves, the human rights minister, the one who was harshly criticized for saying she saw Jesus when she was in a guava tree, said at an informal moment that “boys wear blue and girls wear pink.” The speech fell on the media and provoked the reaction of Brazilian celebrities. Many “artists” appeared changing colors, men wearing pink and women, blue. What draws attention in this case, besides the difficulty of understanding figures of speech, is the infantilization of the left activists. Damares said that “boys wear blue and girls wear pink,” not that men wear blue and women wear pink.

The minister’s speech fits into a moment Brazil is living. The cultural wing of the left wants to teach that gender is only a social construction, with no connection to biology, and therefore children should be treated as neutral, awaiting their decision as to what gender they want to adopt. Damare’s remark, therefore, refers to the education of children in public schools, not adult men and women. Brazil is a country free enough for adult men and women to wear the colors they want. The identification of many celebrities with the minister’s speech shows that leftist activists have the mental age of kindergarten children.

The Left’s Gospel has no Grace

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Religion , , , , , , ,

The Protestant Reformation was started in 1517 by Martin Luther, an Augustinian monk who was revolted about the selling of indulgences by the Roman Catholic Church. The indulgences were on that occasion simply documents sold by Rome that would guarantee access to heaven for those who bought them. Luther understood that the Bible taught something different: salvation is through Christ alone, and can’t be bought or sold. Jesus’ death on the cross was substitutionary: he died in the place of sinners. Those who put their faith (their trust) in this sacrifice are saved from hell. In a nutshell, this is the gospel (the good news) as Luther understood it and as Protestant churches have been understanding it in the past 500 years.

However, for Luther, the Protestant Reformation didn’t begin in 1517. What happened to him in that year was just the culmination of a process that started many years before. Luther was obsessed with the idea of sin. More so than the average person, he understood that as a sinner he could never be considered just by God, no matter how much money he spent on indulgences. The distance between God’s justice and human sin is simply too great. Understandably, instead of loving God, Luther hated him. that’s when he discovered salvation by faith alone. Yes, it is true that our justice can never satisfy God. But it doesn’t have to. We can rely on Jesus’ justice. And that is what for Luther begin the Reformation.

Luther’s idea of salvation by faith alone can easily be mistaken by antinomianism. Antinomianism is the idea that the law has no importance at all, especially for salvation. That is certainly not the case for Luther and other reformers. For them, we are saved by faith alone, but not by a faith that is alone. True faith will always be followed by good works. So, although the good works in themselves do not save, they are part of faith. Nevertheless, Luther’s idea of salvation by faith alone is pretty radical. Can we be sure that faith alone will not fall into antinomianism? Can we be fully confident that this idea will not lead to licentiousness? This debate has been going on for the last 500 years.

In any case, I find it fascinating how the Reformation begin with one unsuspicious monk in an unimportant region of Germany over 500 years ago. The Reformation is part of the modern (re)discovery of the self. Before Luther, other people were trying to reform the Roman Church already. Notoriously, Erasmus was criticizing the excessive pomp of the church and the shortcomings of the official Latin translation of the Bible. However, as important as they could be, these were external things. Luther’s reformation begins as a reform of the self. A someone said, nothing is deeper than a man full of regret. If Luther was simply pointing to the mistakes in the Roman Church, and not to his own sinful nature, his reform wouldn’t produce the change it did.

The problem with the Left, since Rousseau, is that the problems are outside the self. For Rousseau, we are born in chains. Society turns an otherwise noble savage into an egoistic person. For Marx, man is nothing but a soulless homo economicus, trapped into the materialistic engines of history. The New Left believes we are poor victims of advertisement that makes us buy stuff we don’t really need. And that inevitably turns leftists into hypocrites. One can never perform well enough to these standards and is left pointing to the speckle in somebody else’s eye.

Ever since I can remember, one of the most common reasons people give to stay away from churches is the Christians. Churches are full of hypocrites, they say. I can’t really access the veracity of this statement, but one thing I can say is this: salvation by works is a game set to be lost. If your religion says that you obtain salvation by performance, that will inevitably turn you into a hypocrite. Or a cynic. Or both. And will also make you hate anyone outside your religious group.

The problem with the left is that it preaches salvation by works and sets the problems outside the self. The gospel of the left lacks a sense of personal sin and of grace.

Merry Liberty Christmas!

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Liberty, Religion , , , , , , ,

Christmas, as I hope everybody (at least in the West) still knows is Jesus’ birthday. I don’t want to spend too much time here talking about how it is very unlikely that Jesus was born on December 25, and how this date was probably just chosen at some point in the late Ancient times/Early Medieval times to Christianize European pagans. The Bible never specifies when Jesus was born (although it does offer some hints), and so, some very devout Christians over history (Puritans, for example) thought that we should not even celebrate Christmas. The gospel according to John doesn’t even talk about Jesus’ birth. In it, Jesus simply appears as a grown man. The same thing happens in Mark’s gospel. Matthew and Luke give accounts of Jesus’ birth, with Luke being more detailed. So, ½ of our gospels don’t seem to be very interested in Jesus’ life before he was about 30 years old. Someone has said (and I think somewhat appropriately) that the gospels are accounts of Jesus passion (his death and resurrection) with long introductions.

But anyways! I don’t think that celebrating Christmas is bad, not at all! I believe it is a good occasion to remember Jesus, the founder of Western civilization. May we like it or not, the West is profoundly linked to Christianity. Christianism begin as little more than a small and persecuted Jewish sect, but eventually became the main religion in Europe (and northern Africa, and the Near East), and from there to the World. Some might say (and I think that sadly they might be right) that today Europe lives in a post-Christian era, but we should not forget that someday in the past to be European and to be Christian were basically synonyms. And I also believe that we, professing Christians or not, should be thankful to Christianity in a number of ways. I am very convinced that it was thanks to Christianity, especially after the Reformation, that we have many of the things that we, as liberty-lovers, are thankful for, such as science, capitalism and lots of individual liberty.

Of course, from the human perspective, the link between Christianism and West is merely accidental. I myself, as a Brazilian, am not sure if I classify as a Westerner. Maybe I am from the far West? It is very clear that for many decades now Christianism is moving to the global south: Latin America, Africa, Asia, and I hope not to be forgetting anyone. And I think that is just beautiful! I don’t believe that there is one essential Christian culture. Instead, I believe that culture is an essential human phenomenon and that Christianism can give a new birth to cultures, just as it does to individuals, bringing forward what they have best and leaving behind the bad stuff.

Sadly, the very places where Christianism is growing the most today are usually also the places where Christians suffer more persecution. Although we tend to connect the first few centuries of Christianism with martyrdom, with people being crucified, thrown to the beasts and the like, the fact is that the 20th century had more martyrs than any other century before. It is also sad for me that most people, including Christians and liberty-lovers, tend to ignore this. In the last few weeks, I heard of at least two churches being closed in China, with all members being taken to jail. I wish that people who care about freedom paid more attention to this. I also wish that people who care about Human Rights did the same. Some people are worried about gay couples not getting wedding cakes from Christian bakers, but they don’t seem to have the same concern about Chinese Christians being thrown in jail just because they are Christians.

Speaking of which, I want to be very honest and say that Marxism (or post-Marxism, or cultural Marxism) can easily become a religion. Marx is a prophet, The Capital is a holy book, the proletariat (or any oppressed minority, for the modern left) is both Messiah and holy people, a future communist utopia is Heaven. I believe that it was a Catholic apologist who said that “the problem with not believing in God is that we start to believe in any dumb thing – including in ourselves”. The problem with Marxism as a religion is the same problem I see with every other religion apart from Biblical Christianity: it is performance driven. It is about what you do. And as so, it can create a slippery slope in your heart. You become self-righteous and judgmental (in a bad way) of people outside your faith-group or even people inside your faith-group who you consider not holy enough. Of course, Christians are not exempt from this either, but I believe we have the right medicine for this.

As much as I believe that the New Left is one of the greatest problems in the West today and that several forms of totalitarianism are one of the main problems elsewhere, I don’t believe that libertarianism or conservatism are in themselves the solution. I became a libertarian (or a conservative-libertarian) because I am first a Christian. My first question was “what the Bible has to say about politics and economics”? I believe that somewhere in the libertarian camp we have the best answer for that. I believe the Bible teaches that very small and simple governments and market freedom are the answer. However, I would say that this is just partly the answer.

The way that I see it, the conflict between the left and the right is very much a conflict between Rousseau and Locke, or a conflict between two kinds of freedom. For Rousseau, you are only free when you are your true inner self. If necessary, the community can make an intervention to force you to become who you truly are. For Locke, you are free when you can make your own choices, regardless if they look good for others. As libertarians like to say, a crime without a victim is not a crime.

I believe this is also a basic conflict between modern western culture and more tradition culture – the conflict between collectivism and individualism. My answer as a Christian (and a libertarian) is that we should not force people to be Christians. That would, at best, produce external conformity – which is actually really bad. My understanding is that, as long as they are not predictably and willfully hurting others, people should be let free to do whatever they want. And I do mean whatever. On the other hand, I don’t think that this is good – or as good as it can be. Ironically, I believe that Rousseau is onto something important: you are only truly free when you are who you are really supposed to be.

One great irony or paradox in Christianism is that you are only truly free when you are a slave to God. Understanding 1st-century slavery helps to get the analogy better. God bought us for a price. We belong to him. However, God is not satisfied with having us as slaves. Instead, he adopts us as sons. That is the (I believe) famous parable of the prodigal son: a son abandons his father and loses all his money. He comes back hoping to become a slave in his father’s house. His father takes him back as a son. So, Jesus gives us a new identity as sons of God. And I do mean sons, and not sons and daughters or children. In the 1st century daughters had no inheritance, but in Christ, we all share of it. So that is our true identity if we walk after Christ. And that is when we are truly free.

I don’t want to force anybody to be Christian. I believe that one of the greatest mistakes in Christian history was exactly that: to force people to become Christian. As I said, religion can easily create a slippery slope in the heart, and Christianism is not necessarily an exception. But while other religions are about what we do, Christianism in its essence has at least the potential to be what has been done for us. And that is truly humbling. And I believe this has important political implications: we pray for all. We hope for the best. We trust in God. We respect others.

So Merry Christmas to all! I hope that this is a time for remembering the birthday boy, and what he did, especially on the cross. And that we can all work for a world freer, where people can become Christians – if they choose so.

Damares Alves and the left’s hypocrisy

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Culture, Current Events , , , , , , ,

The last polemic in Brazilian politics was due to a testimony of Damares Alves, chosen by Jair Bolsonaro to be his minister of human rights. In a video that is available on YouTube, during a religious service, Damares tells how in her childhood, between 6 and 8 years of age, she was systematically sexually abused by someone close to her family (some sources I found say that the abuser was her uncle). To add to the sexual abuse, the criminal also exploited her psychologically: he told Damares that if she denounced him, he would kill her father. He also said, taking advantage of the religious beliefs of Damares, that she would not go to heaven because she was “impure.”

Damares tells that she unsuccessfully tried to ask for help from people in her family and her church. She would frequently climb a guava tree in her backyard to cry. When she was 10 years old, she climbed that same tree, having rat poison with her, in order to commit suicide. She tells that this is when she saw Jesus, coming to her. Jesus climbed the tree and hugged her. She felt accepted by Jesus, and she gave up the suicidal ideas.

Damares went on to become a lawyer. For many years she has been defending women who like her are victims of sexual abuse. Because of the violence she suffered as a child, she can’t bear children. However, she adopted an Indian child who would otherwise be murdered by her parents – some tribes in the Amazon believe that some children must be murdered at birth due to a series of reasons. Damares saved one of these children.
Someone cut from the video only the part where Damares says that she saw Jesus from the guava tree. The video went viral, and “crazy” is one of the milder insults directed at Damares on social networks.

In sum: the Brazilian left makes fun of a woman who was sexually abused as a child. Damares’ religious faith helped her cope with the pain. To be honest, I am usually skeptic about stories like the one she told. But what does it care? Somehow her faith in Jesus helped her to cope with one of the most horrendous things that can happen to a person. But it seems that Bolsonaro’s political adversaries have no sensitivity not only to a person’s religious beliefs but to the violence women and children suffer. When the violence does not fit their cultural and political agenda, they don’t care.

As I wrote here, Liana Friedenbach, 16 years old, was kidnaped, raped, and killed by a gang led by the criminal Champinha. Defending Liana, Bolsonaro wanted laws to be tougher on rapists. Maria do Rosário did not agree with Bolsonaro, and even called him a rapist. Bolsonaro offended her saying that “even if I was a rapist, I would not rape you.” The left in Brazil stood with Maria do Rosário and condemned Bolsonaro. The same left today mocks a woman who was sexually abused in her childhood, but who grew to help women in similar situations. Instead, they prefer to make jokes about Jesus climbing guava trees.

Jair Bolsonaro, Maria do Rosário, and the Champinha case

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Liberty, Politics , , , , , , ,

Over a decade ago, in November 2003, Liana Friedenbach, 16 years old (a minor in Brazil law), and Felipe Silva Caffé, 19 years old, were camping in an abandoned farm close to São Paulo.

While they were camping, the couple was found by a group led by Roberto Aparecido Alves Cardoso, aka “Champinha”. Initially, Champinha and his group wanted to steal from the couple. Realizing that they had little to no money, they changed their minds and decided to kidnap Liana and Felipe.

In the first day of captivity, one member of the gang raped Liana. Felipe was killed on the next day with a shot in the back of his head. Liana heard the shot, but the group lied to her saying that her boyfriend was set free. Liana was then raped by other members of the group led by Champinha.

The group never contacted the families asking for a ransom. On the third day, Liana’s family, worried about the lack of contact, called the police, which found the place where the couple was camping, with some of their belongings. Noticing that the police was closing in, Champinha killed Liana with knife strokes.

Champinha, the leader of the group who kidnapped, raped, and murdered Liana, was underage when the crimes happened, and because of that could not be sent to prison. Instead, he was interned in a correction institution.

The crime shocked Brazil. It was answering this crime that Jair Bolsonaro, at the time a congressman, was clamoring for a change in Brazilian law, allowing criminals like Champinha to be prosecuted. Maria do Rosário, a congresswoman from PT, the party of former president and today prisoner Lula da Silva, was opposing Bolsonaro. During their debate, Maria do Rosário called Bolsonaro a raper. Bolsonaro answered “I am a raper? Look, I would not rape you because you don’t deserve it”. Later Bolsonaro explained that he intended to insult Maria do Rosário by saying “even if I was a raper, as you say, I would not rape you because you are too abominable, even for that”.

So that’s it. I hope this helps non-Portuguese speakers who can read English to understand a polemic phrase attributed to Bolsonaro. And I also hope that Brazilian law is changed someday so that justice can be made and criminals like Champinha and his gang get the death penalty for their crimes.

Why Cultural Marxism is a big deal for Brazil, and also for you

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Liberty , , , , , ,

I already heard the criticism that cultural Marxism is not a real thing. It’s just a scary word, like neoliberalism, that doesn’t mean anything really. Well, for those who think that way, please pay a visit to Brazil.

When I talk about cultural Marxism, here is what I have in mind: I’m not a specialist in Marx or Marxism by any means, but what I understand is that Marx gravitated towards economic theory in his life. He began his intellectual journey more like a general philosopher but ended more like an economist. A very bad economist. Marx’s economic theory in The Capital is based on the premise of the labor theory of value: things cost what they cost depending on how much work it takes to produce them. Of course, this theory does not represent reality. You take the labor theory of value, Marx’s economic theory crumbles down. That is what Mises explained on paper at the beginning of the 20th century and reality proved throughout it everywhere and every time people tried to put Marxism into practice.

Although Marx’s economic theory didn’t work, Marx’s admirers didn’t give up. In Russia Lenin tried to explain that capitalism survived because of imperialism. Many Marxists working in International Relations make a similar claim. In Italy Gramsci tried to explain that capitalism survived because capitalist elites exercise cultural hegemony. The Frankfurt Schools said the same. It is mostly Gramsci and the Frankfurt School, sometimes collectively called critical theory, that I call cultural Marxism.

Marxism arrived in Brazil mainly in the beginning of the 20th century. Very early then, a communist party was founded there. This communist country was initially very orthodox, following whatever Moscow told them to. However, after WWII and especially after the Military Coup of 1964, Brazilian Marxists started to gravitate towards Gramsci. During the Military Dictatorship, many leftists tried to fight guerrillas, but others simply chose to get into universities, newspapers, churches and other places, and try to overthrow capitalism from there.

In general, I am not a great fan of John Maynard Keynes, but there is a quote from him that I absolutely adore: ““Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist”. That’s how I see most Brazilian intellectuals. They are of a superficial brand of Marxism. It would certainly be incorrect to call them Marxist in an orthodox sense, but I understand that they are what Marxism has become: something vaguely anti-establishment, anti-capitalism, in favor of big government and very entitled.

Why is this important for you? Because Brazil is the second largest country in America in population, territory, and economy. That’s why. The economy is a win-win game. An economically free, prosperous Brazil would be good for everyone, not just for Brazilians. But that can only happen if we first defeat the mentality that capitalism is bad and that the state should be an instrument for some vague sort of social justice.

A Brazilian view on the French Protests

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Politics , , , , ,

Paris has been taken by a great number of protesters complaining about (yet another) tax, this time on fuel and with the justification of “combating climate change”.

Five years ago, in 2013, several cities in Brazil (Rio de Janeiro among them) were taken by protesters. They were initially complaining about a rise in the bus tariffs. A small rise, if examined by itself, but apparently the last drop among a number of reasons to be discontent.

The Brazilian protests of 2013 were very ironic. Lula da Silva, a socialist, was elected president in 2002. He was reelected four years later, despite major indications that he was involved in corruption scandals. Lula left office very popular, actually, so popular that he was able to make a successor, Dilma Rousseff, elected president in 2012. It was during Dilma’s presidency that the protests took place. They were initially led by far-left groups who demanded free public transportation. So here is the irony: a far-left group, with a far-left demand (free public transportation), was protesting against a (not so far) left government. The situation became even more ironic because millions of Brazilians, who didn’t identify as socialists, also went to the protests, not because they wanted free public transportation (most people are intelligent enough to understand, even if instinctively, that such a thing cannot exist), but because they were fed up with the socialists government at one point or another.

The lesson is: “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.” The 2013 protests culminated this year, with Bolsonaro’s election. Mises observed very acutely that socialism simply cannot work. What he observed on paper, reality has confirmed again and again. France is just the latest example.

The real threat to democracy in Brazil

Bruno Gonçalves Rosi Current Events, Law , , , , , ,

Earlier this week, Ricardo Lewandowski, a judge in Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court, was in a commercial flight. The passenger sitting next to him turned to the judge and said: “I am ashamed of Brazil’s Supreme Federal Court”. Lewandowski’s reaction was to threaten the passenger with jail. He turned to him and said, “tell me, do you want to go to jail?”  The passenger was indeed stopped by the police at the destination, but released right after. The video of the exchange is easily found on Youtube.

Lewandowski came to the Supreme Court appointed by former president Lula da Silva, today serving time in jail for corruption and still indicted for several crimes. He has been criticized several times for favoring Lula and his party.

I wonder if the press, that complains so much about Jair Bolsonaro being a threat to democracy in Brazil, will have the same treatment for Lewandowski. When you cannot criticize in public a public server or a public institution without being stopped by the police, democracy is no longer in place.

Since the 19th-century Brazilian judges and magistrates believe they are above the law. It is just a sad fact in Brazilian history. The challenge for Brazil is to show people like Lewandowski that they are just humans, open to criticism, like everybody else.