Tag: behavior

At some point in history, the press discovered that it could sell truths—and how much it could profit from doing so. Then, realizing this new potentiality, it took it on with gusto and, over decades, gradually intensifying it as intensifying it proved more and more profitable, it became a tool of systematic manipulation. For a while, nothing seemed able to stand up to it, to diminish its sovereign power; and it deluded itself that it would always be like this. What has happened in the West, then, in a sudden way and notably in Brazil, is something simply delightful to observe: this whole scoundrel empire, this conglomerate of lies, is now targeted by the fury of the very masses it has manipulated and seems doomed to collapse. It is a privilege to notice it in real time! And who could have predicted it? After many years of lying, lying, and lying, to the point of doing it with an astonishing shamelessness, overstepping all limits and insulting the intelligence of those it deceived, it has fomented a very violent reaction against itself that did not warn when it would burst. It is true: it is still too early to risk the final chapters of this story; but, for now, there is no way to contain the stretching of the same smile that lived on Voltaire’s face.

In recent years a drastic psychosocial change has taken place in Brazil that is bound to have long-lasting effects and that, for now, are of imponderable extent. Driven especially by politics, and contrary to what is happening in the rest of South America, the phenomenon would delight both Gilberto Freyre and José Maria Bello. Only a blind person would not notice it when analyzing it sociologically in light of the last decades. A war of values, above all, is underway, started by a spark that seemed insignificant but which generated a chain effect and whose victory now seems a mere matter of time. The dominant intelligentsia, which had established itself over decades of work, at exactly the moment when it seemed sovereign and invincible, saw a reactive movement emerge from where it never expected to see it, a movement that hit it with unforeseen violence. Today, we see it in despair, using all the powerful means at its disposal to avoid defeat; and yet these seem ineffective, only postponing an end that already seems inevitable. It will be a pity if the future cannot appreciate this moment through unbiased lines.

It is very difficult, today, not to sympathize with those targeted by the fury of the imbeciles. It is the same feeling inspired by a cowardly action: one instinctively sides with the weaker side. And to see all these public lynchings, all this rabid infamy that tears down reputations and careers overnight, and always insatiable, always looking for the next target, is something that arouses in equal measure disgust and revolt. Who allowed such stupids to have a voice? Even theoretically, the results of Rousseau’s wretched demagogy are all too obvious; but observing them in practice, effective and acclaimed, can only lead to utter misanthropy.