[matheusmoreira]

> If everything is known to the great Court

The great court isn't even made up of actual judges, by the way.

In Brazil, actual judges are selected by rigorous testing of law knowledge in a process known as concurso which roughly means contest. It's extremely competitive, applicants tend to be disciplined people who study many hours every day. People generally don't make it to a judge position without knowing their shit.

Supreme court judges aren't like that. They're just people appointed by politicians. The censorship-friendly judge who's ordering words into Telegram's mouth? He used to be the lawyer of one of Brazil's biggest drug trafficking gangs, PCC. Incidentally, that criminal organization supported the current president in last year's elections and was involved in a plot to torture and assassinate the judge who imprisoned him for corruption earlier this year. Supreme court ordered most of them released while many Brasília protesters are locked up to this day. It's surreal.

[admsmz]

I'm glad the western media talked about this situation extensively before during and after the Brasilian election that ousted Bolsanero.

[sofixa]

I suppose this is sarcasm, but it was talked about. Not in detailed depth, but the picture I got, many times over, was a far-right fascist wannabe that badly mismanaged the country, stole a lot, was disastrous for the environment, actually killed a lot of people through negligence, glorified military dictatorships, etc. was facing against a left-wing person that was literally in prison for corruption, and whose party has had a few other corruption scandals since that time.

Nobody was saying Lula is the good guy - he was the drastically less bad option than Bolsonaro.

[matheusmoreira]

Many journalists writing english language articles about Brazil are themselves brazilians. It's highly likely they're leftists too, so it's not surprising they presented that picture to you. I remember one instance of an american journalist reporting on brazilian affairs on live television: when Biden's CIA officials told our president not to question the voting machines. He was surprised that CIA people think they can openly tell the president of a sovereign country not to question his own elections. To me this was reason to suspect the CIA had compromised our voting machines.

I'd like to offer my own point of view as a counterpoint to the image painted by those journalists.

Bolsonaro is a loudmouth who needlessly offended a huge number of people by making light of COVID-19 deaths. He could have just shut up and allowed other people handle the matter but he just had to put his foot in his mouth. He's got this "myth" thing going on where he says needlessly outrageous things in public and everyone is awed by the sheer balls it takes to say such things in today's politically correct world. When he mocked COVID victims though it caused massive damage to his reputation. It was extremely disrespectful and accomplished nothing. In terms of actual death toll I don't think Brazil is any worse off than other countries but people still say he "genocided" the brazilian population. For that "crime" they wanted to try him like a nazi in Nuremberg. It's ridiculous.

I don't think he mismanaged the country. Considering the world wide economic meltdown caused by the war and the pandemic, he did alright. By the end of his mandate I had high hopes for the future. Now the current government is essentially undoing everything good he did out of spite and increasing taxes for good measure. I criticized his government and his ignorant handling of the pandemic but those problems seem so small now that we have literal communists in power.

By disastrous for the environment you must mean the amazon. It's not something I personally care about. I'd burn that entire jungle down if it brought us prosperity and development. Still I'd like to note the amazon was in much better shape under him than it is right now. Deforestation is a lot higher now, dunno why. Maybe Lula doesn't actually care either. His "solution" apparently consists of begging the king of england for money during his coronation while spending ridiculous amounts of taxpayer money on luxuries.