|
 Brazil sure needed an urgent stool test.
By Arnaldo Jabor
The frogs, Osmar's mug, and the rape of the Congress electric scoreboard enlighten our
lives.
In his book Secretions, Excretions, and Madnesses, Rubem Fonseca introduced the
new science of copromancy aiming at reading fortunes by means of stool examinations.
Instead of reading hands, it reads poop. Our parasites show up in the tests of the
country's latest diarrhea of political scandals.
There is something new in the dung flood. We are finding out that there is one real
Brazil and an imaginary Brazil. The imaginary one is honest, given to dreaming, almost
non-existent. The other Brazil, the real one, is this conspiracy of lies and sordid deals,
flourishing under a mantle of decency. The real one is made up of quagmires, shit pits,
stinking sludge. The imaginary one is the shocked purity of the middle class. With all
these humiliations, we all feel as victims of a nationwide scam. Brazil sure needed a
stool test. And having it done is healthy because it brings to light our dirty reverse
side, crawling with bacteria and germs.
We see that, beyond the traditional contradictions, classes, underdevelopment, there is
an original mess, a primal layer of excrement that pushes our lives along. Corruption and
political falsehoods are not sins—they are a system. They are not
exceptions—they are the norm. Our historical process wades in shit. Actually, there
are no thieves in Brazil. There are many opportunities called Sudam, Sudene, Finor, and so
on, all built expressly to facilitate thieving. It has been proved that the State does not
need to fund entrepreneurs. It's enough that it "balances" the economy so that,
with low interest rates, private enterprise finances itself.
Shit is the raw material of our dreams. Public interest neither has plans not projects.
Our tortured progress is made up of crumbs from scams. Robbery is our fuel. It paints a
false landscape of unfinished overpasses, hospitals with no beds, a holocaust of frogs.
No political change has ever managed to clean up the original feces. Shit will always
prevail. Each time when the outer appearances of the system changed, in substance
everything remained the same. We had developmentism with Kubitschek, national populism
with Goulart, the authoritarianism of the military, the redemocratization—but
everything stayed in place, the intact original poop, the fecal matter left by the
forefathers. Cardoso even tried to use shit as a way of doing away with it, in a truly
homeopathic style—"shit is cured by shit.". The Realpolitik of shit. But
the accursed fecal pile is bigger than he figured. It grows and grows and now it threatens
to engulf him.
A hope survives, however. The failure of the State is helpful. There isn't much more to
be stolen. Conclusion: morality is a matter of low cash flow.
The stool test shows that our malefactors are daring and trusting. They leave obvious
prints, not because they are incompetent. No! They have faith in a protective judicial
system guaranteeing as their impunity. It was not a coincidence that the judges granted
habeas corpus to the 27 thieves of Sudam, who were already packed to take the powder.
The examination of the feces tells us that, more important than to denounce poverty,
which is déjà vu, is to expand the mechanics of the elites_the true causes of pauperism.
The bogus invoices, the forged checks, the frogs and barbalhos, the false vouchers,
the blank personal notes explain everything. We have learned a great deal, as much as we
were taught by the great P.C. Farias, the crowned monarch of corruption, who once
explained "10 percent is for waiters…" Excrement is useful because it shows
why, during the Collor era, it was easy to impeach him, as if he were the only cheat
artist. Now we see that the infection is widespread. We thought that by impeaching Collor
we were absolved. Now we know that Collor was the whole Brazil.
Shit teaches us that there is no point in holding our noses and dreaming of purity. You
can only fight shit by entering the sewer. Our problems are not the big evils. It's the
frogs, the forged checks, the disguised petty thieves who are really harmful, more noxious
than the great globalization crises.
Shit teaches us that there is no future, only the present. Utopias set us apart.
There is no such a thing as a Brazilian project. There must be Brazilian projects, by
the clock, clean as a whistle. Great political action is not one of heroic gestures, it
has to be one of open and detailed management, in its most minute details. A Fiscal
Accountability Act is more important than a thousand ideological speeches.
Shit unmasks us the language of corruption. Words mean precisely the contrary: "my
unblemished past" actually means "undiscovered crimes." "My
honor" equals chutzpah. "Social sensitivity" = "fear of the
cops."
Thus we learn that truth is a lie and that lies are the truth. When Arruda, ACM or
Jader lie, there is more truth in them than when they blow their chests and voice their
"truths." Shit is illustrative. The unforgettable face of José Osmar Borges,
cynically boring and calm, is the synthesis of Brazilian morality.
Oligarchies don't want Brazil as an organized country. Respect for the public res is
bad news for those who feed on State prostitution areas, those who profit from the
country's chaotic swamp. The oligarchies great project is a lawless nation where democracy
is a screen for predators and the corrupted. It would be much easier to handle.
Corrupts and oligarchs wish that any project introduced could be torpedoed as soon as
possible. The systemic shit, the fecal machinery, the excrement-fueled locomotive is
lucrative as it was lucrative, in the nineteenth century, to hamper to the utmost the
abolition of slavery, as it was lucrative for the big shots a delay unanimously
pre-planned.
The nationwide stool test helps us see that we should rejoice with its results—not
to be depressed with them. If we fall into disenchantment and pessimism we will be
encouraging the frogs and the hyenas. The only thing they want is our despair. Cheer Up!
Brazil is having a bath. Shit is our salvation.
Translated by Wilson Velloso
This article was originally published in Rio's daily O Globo.
Send
your
comments to
Brazzil
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed