Brazil offers America a lesson in democratic maturity
economist.com
economist.com
So lots of people still alive today remember those days and understand the danger of politicians like Bolsonaro. People like the current president Lula, who was imprisoned during the dictatorship.
The USA on the other hand, has never had a dictatorship in living memory. It's even debatable whether pre-independence it was a dictatorship, and in any case it is so far removed from the present that it has no impact on everyday life.
Maybe for this reason there is a feeling of "it can't happen here". An exceptional ism that is not unwarranted given the incredible social and economic progress made.
But this attitude is perhaps the most dangerous one can have towards fascism.
Fact is for most of the population, especially the poorest, the dictatorship was not as oppressive directly against them. The secret police was going after intellectuals and universities. And censoring media of course. The average person only cared because the dictatorship was running the country economy into the ground.
My parents were in their early-to-mid 20s when the dictatorship ended here, and my mom speaks fondly of our dictator Salazar. She lost 2 out of 12 brothers and sisters — 3 months and 4 years old, respectively — to perfectly curable diseases, and 2 others are crippled because of health complications when they were children. None of the 10 that made it to adulthood studied past the 6th grade. My dad was sent to a Catholic boarding school 300 km away from his mom when he was 10, because she couldn't feed him; he only studied until the 4th grade and started working when he was 11 years old.
My mom votes for Chega, the far-right party, and my wife is an immigrant (and I'm an ex-emigrant). She resents her life, and Chega rides on that resentment. It's very painful to see loved ones drift into this hate.
Before the economic recession and hyperinflation, Brazil enjoyed an economic boom: the so called "brazilian miracle". Many brazilian industries became successful during those times. Including the steel industry my city is built around.
Today Brazil is just the world's soy farm. To put it mildly. The country of wasted potential.
It's also a well worn play book at this point to have people vote against their interests when given some enemy: religious or ethnic minorities, atheists, immigrants, a foreign power, etc...
In any case I completely agree with all your points. Just that the situation is even more dangerous when the society has no experience dealing with dictators.
It's a dictatorship today. Has been since at least 2019. The unelected supreme court is ruling the country.
> The kind that "disappears" and tortures journalists and political opponents.
Nothing's changed, that's still the case today. Plenty of journalists, opponents, judges dead in mysterious circumstances. Including the judge who mysteriously died and made room for Alexandre de Moraes, who the USA would go on to sanction via Magnitsky. Even Bolsonaro himself suffered an assassination attempt.
> People like the current president Lula, who was imprisoned during the dictatorship.
Yeah, because he's a socialist who openly schemes to install socialism in Brazil. You know, the exact thing the military dictatorship wanted to prevent.
He was also imprisoned during our democracy for record breaking corruption, before the supreme court threw out all the evidence and set him free to take out Bolsonaro.
> The USA on the other hand, has never had a dictatorship in living memory.
They've never had presidents that openly admit to plotting to install socialism in their country either. Good thing they have the CIA to get rid of such subversives. Socialism should be criminalized, just like nazism.
Not to mention nobody in Brazilian politics is lily white and a mature democracy would not be lead by Lula.
Trump bullied the republican party and purged anyone who is not loyal to him, and through his party he got a good chunk of the congress to be subservient to him.
Brazil has multiple parties and therefor Bolsonaro couldn't worm his way into having major legislative and judiciary power as well.
One big thing in Brazil is that the voting process is conducted in two phases: Phase 1 all candidates get votes, if no one got >50% of the votes then there is a Phase 2 where only the top 2 candidates can be voted on. So voting for a 3rd party on Phase 1 is not detrimental and the main parties need to make coalitions.
So it works a bit like you see in parliamentary systems, but once in power it is quite common for the coalitions to fade away or congress-people to vote against the coalition stalemating the legislative and reforms. It is also why there is so much corruption in Brazil's congress, vote-buying can be achieved on an individual-level instead of a party-level.
Also please don't praise the current Brazilian president, he is part of the problem and making the country politics even more like the US (increasing polarization through populist movements). He is just doing it from the left side of the political spectrum. He is just not insane wannabe-dictator like Bolsonaro.
The Trump playbook didn't work in Brazil because of the way the systems and institutions are set up. But these differences have both upsides and downsides.
And after elections, yes, it just turns into negotiation with center parties that will sell off their support for vote-buying projects.
Like you said, PSDB is a dead party today. PT has had only 20 years of presidential power, interrupted by a far right party. PL seems likely to split up in the next few years due to Bolsonaro.
There's no such thing as 60 years of two parties having mostly the same views and locked in one against the other, in every region of the country, like the US. That is incredibly harmful to democracy.
I’m old enough to have seen changes in our political system. The center parties, while mostly not center and corrupt, give our system a sort of chaotic nature where compromises and alliances are necessary. That in itself has value in a democracy.
Yes, well put. This is what I meant that the current president is not making things better. But it is still fundamentally different from how the US works, centrist parties get a decent amount of votes. You almost never see elections where there is not a 2nd round of votes because no one got >50% on the first one.
Side note, the individual-level vote buying also happens in the US system unfortunately.
In Brazil vote-buying happens through suit-cases full of dollars, in the US it happens through lobbying and promises of cushy jobs after you leave congress. Both are bad but suit-cases are much worse.
This is also why it is so hard to actually enact reforms in Brazil, literally impossible to pass any big reforms without bribing a lot of people. Some politicians will actively vote against passing bills just because they didn't get a kickback.
IMHO the state of things in the US seems unique dysfunctional. None of the major institutions really work as were intended. The constitution is so hard to change that it's effectively ossified, which results in the Supreme Court deciding on huge swaths of life. In a healthy democratic system, many of these should be decided by democratic vote and not a tea-leaf reading of a vague 250-year old sentence.
He's worse.
He openly plots the installation of socialism in this country, literally said he wanted to do it on national television. He suffered zero consequences.
The communist venezuelan dictator who Trump is on the verge of nuking? He rolled out the red carpet for him and pretty much gifted him billions of our taxpayer money. No doubt he's up to his nose in Iran's nuclear business as well.
It's not enough for him to covertly rob people of their hard earned money through his corrupt champagne socialist nonsense, he actually feels the need to minimize and normalize literal armed robbery as well. He's been filmed making shoddy excuses for literal violent crime. "I'm tired of seeing people die just because they stole a phone", he says. "It's just to make a little money and buy beer at the bar".
I'd take Bolsonaro over this guy any day. At least with Bolsonaro there's a chance for my country as a whole to prosper, if not me personally. Lula being president actually makes me want to turn to crime.
Imagine what it must feel like being a normal person living in a shithole ruled by organized crime. Imagine getting married and trying to raise a family, only to wake up one day and read on the news that 26% of your country's vast territory is dominated by violent drug trafficking borderline terrorist organized crime gangs so powerful they are essentially parallel governments. At this point it's possible they've even literally infiltrated the official government as well.
All because of crime abiding politicians like Lula and his communists.
Both countries do it:
a. trump trying to ban burning of american flags
b. brazil banning elon musk tweets
The difference is a. will not stand up in court and is protected free speech, while b. will never be overturned.
The Americans impeached this president once and nothing happened, and then also didn't they find him guilty of a ton of other crimes, and nothing happened?
Do Americans have optimism that Trump won't be their first dictator for life and will actually face consequences for his crimes? As for me I'm so confident that Trump is America's last president that I'm trying to find ways to put money on it.
Twice; there have been four impeachments of US Presidents, two of which were of Donald Trump during his previous term.
> Do Americans have optimism that Trump won't be their first dictator for life and will actually face consequences for his crimes?
I'm pretty confident that he WILL be a somewhat [0] dictatorial leader for life, but I think there are pretty good odds that this does not involve exceeding the maximum term limit set by the 22nd Amendment.
[0] somewhat only in that I don't think the total destruction of institutions that would make it an absolute dictatorship rather than an aspirational one that still struggles against things like courts that, while mostly tame, still give some effect to Constitutional rights and limits is likely to be completed before Trump is, though not for lack of trying.
I'm also just not sure where faith comes from that the constitution won't at this point just be interpreted per the needs of the administration, or simply ignored with no consequence.
I think the sentence in which I express that is pretty clear on why (emphasis added): “I'm pretty confident that he WILL be a somewhat dictatorial leader for life, but I think there are pretty good odds that this does not involve exceeding the maximum term limit set by the 22nd Amendment.”
NYT op-ed from 8/14 agreeing: "Abolish the Senate. End the Electoral College. Pack the Court. Why the left can’t win without a new Constitution."
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/14/opinion/trump-democracy-t... https://archive.is/uNIPL
With two acquittals in the Senate.
> Do Americans have optimism that Trump won't be their first dictator for life
Yes! It's a very real and very big concern, and preventing it from happening is my primary political commitment for the next four years, but I'm pretty confident we'll succeed. I really want people to understand that when you declare he's already the dictator and nothing can change that, you are taking Trump's side, even if you shake your head sadly while you say it.
I've heard people say this before but I don't understand how it's not just sticking one's head in the sand.
However I'm not suggesting it's unavoidable, I'm just not seeing how avoiding the situation is possible given the strategies currently being used to prevent it (impeaching him, charging him with crimes, protesting, having your democrat governors make funny tweets).
But, you say you have a political commitment to try and prevent it, so I defer to your knowledge - what's the game plan?
Also Alexandre de Moraes is crossing the line of his role responsibility (and power) a lot to go after everyone in Bolsonaro's gang.
So it is not quite a democracy, is just that Bolsonaro has stronger enemies than Trump.
And this brings the question if to fight someone who does not care about the rules, you must become them and break the rules as well.
That's a serious understatement.
The supreme court has usurped the functions of the entire government. These unelected judge-kings regularly walk all over our elected representatives in the legislative and executive branches of the government with absolute impunity. They relativize the constitution, make up laws as they go along and generally rule the country however they see fit. They are so brazen as to raise taxes. The only people who can impeach them are politicians who can't afford to make enemies out of the guys with the power to judge them for corruption.
Watching some journalist preach about "democratic maturity" in the context of Brazil is just disgusting and reprehensible. Whatever people think of Trump, he's the only one who ever did a thing about this depressing situation so I'll forever thank him for it.
https://x.com/mortony13/status/1960261642014339524?s=46&t=36...