Yeah politics in general in Brazil seemed fucked up with the corruption, jailed presidents and a country on the brink of becoming the next Venezuela.
If anything Bolsonaro might 'wake up' the left that they need to change course and can't coast to victory automatically. As for Bolsonaro. When you dig into the details you figure out that his most controversial statements were made on a television show that specifically had him on to say those controversial things. Overall he seems more 'bark' than 'bite' and on some points he already backtracked during the campaign. There's also lawmakers and such who have to enact any of his policies to begin with.
Unlike what the '#resistance' thinks dictatorships don't happen overnight. They're planned and they're usually backed by business interests and/or the military.
Hitler wasn't elected he was appointed. A fact that seems to be overlooked everytime a politician raises his or her voice.
It doesn't seem like a President who got in with 55% of the vote is a prime candidate to launch a dictatorship. On the long term that could be a risk if checks and balances on power fail.
But let's be real here. The media acts as if Steve Bannon has a copy machine in his basement and churns out 'The German Trump', 'The Tropic Trump', 'The Japanese Trump' or wherever elections are held.
Bolsonaro is nothing like Trump. He uses hand gestures and he says controversial things. That's about it in terms of things they have in common. Bolsonaro is pretty much a carreer politician.
He didn't 'hijack' an established party as his vessel to avenge a roast at a dinner party.
The media also doesn't seem to realize that calling Bolsonaro 'The Trump of the Tropics' makes him more likely to succeed electorally. Especially countries with deep economic problems (Italy, Brazil etc.) look at Trump as if he's created an economic miracle and wish the same for their own countries. Because that's how Trump portrays his victories and that's pretty much the only thing the media backs him on. Also compared to HITLER or a Military dictatorship Trump doesn't seem that 'scary' as a leader of your country.
So the media kinda creates this ridiculous narrative that this Trump-like guy will launch a military dictatorship.
In reailty though the media and liberals have a terrible 'radar' to detect dictators.
People they backed that turned out to have dictatorial ambitions include:
- Vladimir Putin (who the media and liberals portrayed as a 'boring bureaucrat' who in the revolving door of Russian Prime Ministers would be gone within a year)
- Xi Jinping (again a boring loyal party member who was picked for the job because he wouldn't threaten those in power and didn't have any grand ambitions)
- Recep Tajip Erdogan (who as 'liberal' mayor of Instanbul showed that he preferred markets over religion)
- Kim Jun Un (I'm not even kidding. The media predicted that Un was a liberal and would dismantle the dictatorship because he had studied abroad)
- Muhammed Morsi (the 'moderate' leader of the Muslim Brotherhood who filled a stadium to declare war on Israel and Syria on the eve before he was ousted by the military and had started to purge his political opponents)
And they failed to see it coming with all of them.
