John Chuckman
COMMENT POSTED TO AN ARTICLE BY JIM EPSTEIN IN CHECKPOINT ASIA
“Libertarians Forged an Alliance With Brasil’s Bolsonaro. Will They Come to Regret It?
“Bolsonaro has nominally put them in charge of the economy, but he's shaping out to be too beholden to special interests to authorize deep reform”
Bolsonaro certainly is not a libertarian.
He's actually a rather poisonous concoction of loyalties and prejudices.
And, remember, he's only in office owing to CIA cooperation with truly big-money interests in Brazil, manipulating the country’s laws and courts. He is, effectively, a political crook, much like, but on a grander scale, Juan Guaidó in Venezuela.
There was just plain foul treatment of former President Luiz Lula, whatever you may think of his of his political views.
Bolsonaro’s attitude towards human rights and dissidents is troubling, too, anything but libertarian, anything but liberal, in the best classical sense of the word.
Brazil's Trump?
Perhaps, remembering Trump is anything but a libertarian, being, again, a man just chock full of odd loyalties and prejudices and displaying not a sign of clear thinking about major issues.
Trump embraces tariffs and (illegal) sanctions as though they were a boy’s set of toy soldiers. Ignorant and dangerous.
And Trump’s constant recourse to them reveals a huge streak of authoritarianism and economic ignorance. As does his penchant for extreme nepotism in the White House.
Trump embraces a bizarre form of Patriotism which involves hugging flags and periodically donning custom-made bomber jackets for harangues to the troops, all while working at a record pace for the benefit of a rather devious and dangerous foreign state, Israel, one often working against the long-term interests of the United States.
Of course, Trump’s background of discovering heel spurs in 1968, just as he was about to be inducted, prevented him from doing what he now commands so many others to do.
That entire episode reeks since the man was playing college basketball, and heel spurs are an easily corrected condition by minor surgery. As well, they are a condition that millions of people simply adjust to having in a couple of months or less without any treatment.
It should be an embarrassment, but nothing is an embarrassment to this true and shining narcissist.
Basically, both men represent the establishment and its privileges in their respective countries and lack any consistent philosophy or creed. Trump started out suggesting some divergence from America’s establishment, but, in power, he close-to-instantly fell into line and now is their most bellowing representative in all that he does.
I’m not aware that Bolsonaro ever took the same route, although Brazil’s well-known and immense bureaucratic inefficiency and corruption served as targets. That might be viewed as a version of “the swamp.” And it might be just as uncorrectable.
