Today was a Fasting Day.
After yesterday's post on the long term trend towards Freedom I see that Brazil the fifth largest country in the world voted 46% for a an extreme right candidate who has repeatedly called for military rule and is consistently racist and misogynistic. It reminded of a conversation I had with Sasha last time she was in Paris, where she was saying how she felt there was more freedom in South America than there is in Europe. She was referring to the fact that there are a lot more rules and laws in Europe and that in general these are upheld rather then ignored. I see her point, but sometimes the absence of clear accepted regulation can descend into extreme violence. Although the response is ultimately wrong, I can understand why if you live in Brazil or the Philippines where violence, corruption and crime have reached unbearable levels, voting for "law and order" can probably feel like voting for freedom. Its easy to condemn the Brazilian result from the comfort of a rich liberal society with historically low levels of crime. Over 60,000 people were murdered in Brazil last year and over 12,000 in the Philippines that compares to less than a 5,000 in Europe which has a population of 500M. Freedom from violence must be seen as a fundamental right which cannot be ignored. Whatever I may think of Duterte and Bolsonaro (and Trump to a lesser extent) I cannot ignore the fact that their electoral success is legitimate even if it is misguided.
After yesterday's post on the long term trend towards Freedom I see that Brazil the fifth largest country in the world voted 46% for a an extreme right candidate who has repeatedly called for military rule and is consistently racist and misogynistic. It reminded of a conversation I had with Sasha last time she was in Paris, where she was saying how she felt there was more freedom in South America than there is in Europe. She was referring to the fact that there are a lot more rules and laws in Europe and that in general these are upheld rather then ignored. I see her point, but sometimes the absence of clear accepted regulation can descend into extreme violence. Although the response is ultimately wrong, I can understand why if you live in Brazil or the Philippines where violence, corruption and crime have reached unbearable levels, voting for "law and order" can probably feel like voting for freedom. Its easy to condemn the Brazilian result from the comfort of a rich liberal society with historically low levels of crime. Over 60,000 people were murdered in Brazil last year and over 12,000 in the Philippines that compares to less than a 5,000 in Europe which has a population of 500M. Freedom from violence must be seen as a fundamental right which cannot be ignored. Whatever I may think of Duterte and Bolsonaro (and Trump to a lesser extent) I cannot ignore the fact that their electoral success is legitimate even if it is misguided.
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