Journaled on Thursday, 21st of November 2024 | Santo Cristo, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: 27 degrees, hot, overcast, and rainy.
Today, everything is officially back to normal. After the G20 summit and yesterday’s bank holiday, Black Awareness Day, the workweek starts on Thursday instead of Monday, which feels just as crazy and leaves only two days of real productivity before the weekend rolls around again.
I often think that governments, especially this one in Brazil, want us to be stupid, lazy and unproductive, because if we are, we won’t be able to question their irresponsibility in office.
People are becoming little more than vote-feed, keeping the same bad, corrupt, dishonest individuals in power. If we are weak, undisciplined and spoiled by immediate pleasures, how can we improve and grow?
We have become vote-feed, letting politicians walk all over us, unable to do anything because we have made ourselves stupid, blind, ignorant and subservient to immediate pleasure.
The Brazil I knew when I arrived in 1989 and the Brazil of today have improved in some ways, mainly thanks to the internet and the conveniences it brings to everyday life and information. In most other fundamental ways, however, the foundations of a good, healthy society have slowly eroded over the years, to the point of disappearing altogether in some areas.
Many could say the same about other countries and societies, such as England and the United States. We hold on to memories from our childhood and teenage years as small, priceless gems that we measure everything else against.
Even bearing that in mind, I’m trying to be fair and pragmatic. Brazil is a shadow of its former self, of its potential, and of what it should be. Whether this will change in the future is doubtful, since with this government it seems impossible.
They preach equality, equal rights and fair play, but it’s really a cheap sales pitch, or, to put it more frankly, a scam. In reality, they do the opposite of what they should.
Lula’s government is, to my mind, a geopolitical cancer, and it will take Brazil a long time to recover once it is gone. Its main objective and focus right now is clearly power. With power, they can do whatever they want, and that is exactly what they are doing, with the people of the country paying the bill.
I’m sorry for the rant, venting my disapproval and, above all, my frustration as something of an in-between man these days. Some see me as neither English nor Brazilian, having voluntarily given more than half my life to Brazil with very little in return.
Besides my beautiful daughters and the baggage I’ve gathered along with experience, the question is where all this time has gone. The last twenty years have passed in the blink of an eye, and I am still fighting to survive, like more than two hundred million other residents of Brazil.
It’s not that I’m really complaining, because I don’t like to complain, but watching something you love and appreciate slowly go to waste is heartbreaking.
It’s like watching a homeless man, weak, broken, with all hope drained out of him, limping along the pavement, falling and slowly picking himself up, only to fall again and again, each time struggling a little more to rise.
People pass by, seeing him but offering no help, doing nothing, carrying on with their own lives, improving, getting ahead. At the same time, his face is etched with wrinkles and scars from the countless bad decisions he has made over the years, for himself and for the family he once had and has now lost. That is Brazil.
More and more people are leaving, looking for opportunities in other countries. Although they love their country, and Brazil is a special place, they know that if they stay, they will only survive, not flourish, remaining vote-feed for the greedy, corrupt elite in Brasilia.
I have always believed that a country is only as good as its people. Taxpayers are like shoppers: each country is a shop offering its goods, and you choose whether to stay and buy.
The world is increasingly becoming a global village, thanks to modern communication and the endless supply of almost anything available in real time. So it is increasingly possible to browse a country’s wares and choose what is best for you.
Obviously, it’s not as simple as I’m making it sound. Still, a government has to be aware that if it fails to provide the stable conditions its people need to live and survive, they will eventually leave, just as happened in Portugal and Ireland in the not-so-distant past, and as is happening now in Venezuela, and increasingly in Brazil.
Mobility is power. A nomadic life, unbound by any regime, is the ultimate state of being. Or you resign yourself to becoming vote-feed for the dishonest.
You choose!
Be kind and be happy. If you cannot be happy, still be kind, but never be naïve.
In bed by 9 p.m.
Thank you
Thank you for reading. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments.
Richard
