Brazil elects fascist

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-46016139

Pro-torture, openly racist, wants to destroy the rainforest, threatens to rape reporters...
This guy is Trump turned up to 11. Not good.

@Paladin is overjoyed.

However, it looks like we have more refugees coming.

Once again it was the fuckup of the opposition that let this happen. They kept a former president, convicted of corruption, currently in jail, and not legally eligible to run, on their ticket until the 11th hour.

Nah. Just like with Trump, you don't accidentally elect someone. You have to want them, and you have to actively vote for them knowing the position they represent. People voted for Trump because of what he represented. People voted for Bolsonaro because of what he represents. This is who they wanted.

Yeah, certainly this guy's political party had other candidates running that Brazil could have chosen.

You are seriously living in denial if you don't think having a bad candidate plays a part in how people vote. In Brazil's case you had a candidate WHO WAS SITTING IN JAIL AND NOT EVEN ELIGIBLE TO RUN representing the left. I don't care how bad you think the other person is, thats not going to fly with most voters. The winner said some nasty things, but that's not going to whitewash an opponent who was actually caught in corruption and sent to jail for it.

Far as Trump goes, can you honestly sit there and say that the same country that elected Barack Obama twice wouldnt have picked Elizabeth Warren or another fresh face democrat that didn't have the baggage of Hillary? She should have learned the lesson the first time she got beat by a change candidate that touting "experience" doesn't help with an electorate that wants something different than the standard career politician .

The people who voted for Trump voted for Trump. The people who voted for Bolsonaro voted for Bolsonaro. It doesn't matter why they did, just that they did. They made the active choice to vote for these people and what they represent.

They didn't just appear from nowhere, these men made it through the vetting process to become candidates, and the people elected them. They do not get to pretend they had no choice.

You're right, they could have voted for more of the same shit or a guy that was spending his days in prison. Or just not voted. Nice choices .

Firstly, Lula was the one in prison, not Haddad, the primary opposition candidate to Bolsonaro.

Secondly, they could have voted for anyone else instead of the fascist, too, like Gomes, Alckmin, or just wrote in their choice. That's at least three people who weren't fascists. Oh, and under Brazilian election law, Lula could have actually ran, and was quite popular. Yet the fascist still won. They chose the fascist. They voted for him directly.

Again, let's not pretend they didn't have a choice. Bolsonaro didn't just slide out of someone's ass and fall into the Presidency, he was elected.

I’m actually quite interested to see how this turns out

Brazil is an absolute fucking shithole of crime, murder and corruption

Maybe he can do something about it

who the fuck are you exactly to tell me why I vote for somebody? Your position is fetal, and I'm casting a vote for you to kiss my ass.

Oh, I'm sorry, I had this strange belief that voting for a candidate means you endorse their positions and/or platform. Silly me.

I'd almost think you were going into cover your ass mode so that when history judges Trump, you can say "but see, we had no choice..."

Good luck with that.

Also, who am I? I'm the person who has to deal with the outcome of what you've done. So go fuck yourself once you're done fucking over everyone else.

He may have some sort of solution, perhaps a final one.

I just wanna go vacation there someday

good point! That said Obama was a hard act to follow. I wouldn't want to be a Democrat president trying to fill his shoes. From the Democrats point-of-view
though a four year break with a much hated Republican president in charge will make it that much easier for a Democrat to win in 2020. That could truly be the time for even a mediocre Democrat to win it. Since in many people's eyes Trump is fucking it up big-time, many undecided voters might not want to risk electing another Republican. On the other hand the incumbent generally has a slight advantage. I wouldn't want to bet on the 2020 election.

You may not come back depending on what Bolsonaro decides to do. Have you read up on his platform? The man believes Pinochet didn't go far enough in torturing and killing dissidents.

Haddad did not enter the picture until it was far too late.

Yes, they chose what you call a fascist over the person everyone else saw as a known criminal. That's how it went .Choose a better candidate next time. And with all those other candidates, the alternative choice was split. Who knows what would have happened had it just been one on one.

Know ones debating that.

my son was going to go there for a friend's wedding, but the guy got married in the US instead so he never went.

I may not come back right now as things are

Not just what I would call a fascist. Here's a few tidbits about the guy's platform, and a few words from the man himself:

• If elected president, he said he would remove writer and philosopher Paulo Freire from public school curriculums, whom he described as "that horrible guy from the left." During the audio-taped interview, he also took time to say that people enjoyed “total freedom" during the country's military dictatorship, which lasted from 1964-1984. He said Brazilians during this time "went to Disneyland and returned home.”
  
  
• Bolsonaro has also been quoted in the past as saying, “Women should earn less because they get pregnant" and "I'd be incapable of loving a homosexual son." Moreover, he said that the Brazilian dictatorship's "mistake" was "torturing and not killing” while claiming former Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet "should have killed more people.”

• “Because women get more labor rights than men, meaning they get maternity leave, the employer prefers to hire men … I would not employ [women equally]. But there are a lot of competent women out there.”

• “If a gay couple came to live in my building, my property will lose value. If they walk around holding hands, kissing, it will lose value! No one says that out of fear of being pinned as homophobe.”

• “There is no doubt. I would perform a coup on the same day. [Congress] doesn’t work. And I am sure that at least 90 percent of the population would celebrate and applaud because it doesn’t work. The Congress today is useless … lets do the coup already. Let’s go straight to the dictatorship.”

• “Elections won’t change anything in this country. Unfortunately, it will only change on the day that we break out in civil war here and do the job that the military regime didn’t do: killing 30,000. If some innocent people die, that’s fine. In every war, innocent people die. I will even be happy if I die as long as 30,000 others go with me.”

• Regarding political opponents: “This time, the cleanup will be even greater. This group, if they want to stay, they will have to abide by our laws. Either they stay out or they will go to jail.”

Source(s):
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news...-Hopeful-Outlines-Platform-20171114-0022.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/28/world/americas/brazil-president-jair-bolsonaro-quotes.html

The chickenshits want to be able to sleep at night.

I say, FUCK their sleep.

Let Freddy wake 'em up until they're twitching wrecks.

That's the thing: who gets voted into office affects everyone. Right now, the LGBT community is under the microscope, with transgender people receiving intense scrutiny. So yes, there are consequences, and there are choices that could have been made but were disregarded for whatever reasons, because the end result is that in this case Trump got elected, and in Brazil, they now have to contend with Bolsonaro, a man who seems to love the idea of dictatorship, and expressed it explicitly over the years he was pushing to run for the presidency, just as Trump explicitly expressed his ideas. In both cases, these men laid out exactly what they wanted to do, and were elected anyway.

Essentially, because one candidate didn't live up to the demands of peerless service of the rooster they wanted, the people voted for the fox to guard the hen house instead, so that when the bloodied bodies of chickens lay on the lawn in the morning, they'll still say they had no choice. They had no choice.

That's the part that drives me crazy, the Democrat had to give them an oil massage, and a manny-petty, and a blowjob, and spoon feed them a hot fudge sundae, but the Repugs didn't even have to PROMISE that shit, much less deliver!!

you are honestly comparing Trump to this clown? You think the LGBT community will face a fraction as much scrutiny in the US as they would in Brazil under this guy? Now factor in our system of checks & balances and your fear is even more unfounded. Granted everyone should vote for the politician that will best serve their needs, which for you would be a Democrat. But the difference between a Republican and Democrat president/leadership in how anyone's life will change might seem like a lot, but life under an almost complete dictatorship would be much, much worse. There's really no comparing the two types of leadership. Democrats & Republicans might seem like "apples & oranges" but total fascism and Republicans is "apples and umbrellas."

Bottom line nothing is 100 percent to everybody's satisfaction 100 percent of the time, but we all need to keep things in perspective. And whether we are liberal or conservative if things are truly unbearable in the US:

These "checks and balances" seem to have almost mythical status as the catch all reason why nothing could ever go dramatically wrong in the US, but the phrase is rarely if ever used in an interrogative manner. You're hinging a lot on that nebulous concept being infallible in the face of historical evidence to the contrary. Many dictatorships have grown from seeds planted in sophisticated, complex societies.

Trump doesn't seem particularly fond of checks and balances and has run roughshod over them at every available turn,his main stumbling block having been the courts which he is making a point of bringing to heel. In the past two years what we view as "normalcy" has been almost completely revamped to a world most of us wouldn't have recognised previously and there's plenty of reason to believe that the bulwarks in place to prevent such a shift becoming a landslide are being eroded and pushed aide with surprising ease.

No you aren't there yet, but don't fool yourself that it couldn't happen. Complacency is an insidious enemy.

I have to say that in this case it looks very much like a reactionary vote. It’s not just the other candidate, but the liberal party out there had been in power for years and their last elected President was impeached. Quite simply, they’d lost the people.

Oldfella, how do you think Germany got taken over?
Do you think they left an open back door on their Parliament propped open by a broom with a post-it saying "come destroy our democracy"?

The Nazis never came to power just through elections, albeit their sizeable number of seats in the Reichstag helped with Hitler’s demand to become Chancellor.

The interesting things to look at are the Reichstag Fire Decree and Enabling Act, which both took place after Hitler had acquired the office. If anything it’s those acts that show you the danger of being apathetic and assuming “it can’t ever happen to us”.

Be still fearful one.....if Trump wants to go full on fascist dictator he better hustle - elections are in two years! Not saying we can't be goose-stepping to the Nazi beat (anything is possible) but we won't be within our lifetimes. I can't guarantee anything beyond that, nor can any mortal human.

The problem is you can't really guarantee that. You seem like a decent person but this complacency is dangerous in itself.