It Can't Happen Here. (Could it?)

What's happening in Brazil is actually very important for the future of freedom and democracy across the world - and in the United States.

What's happening in Brazil is actually very important for understanding our own idiot elite (.1%) who would like you to refer to them as "job creators".

What's happening in Brazil is actually very important for understanding the forces behind what our "free press" repeatedly refer to as "free trade" agreements.

Sometimes it seems that the only freedoms and rights that matter (to journalists and opinion makers) are the freedoms and rights of those who control investments. (Corporate brainwashing and poor education tempt me to write "investor class", but that would imply these people invest their own money when just as often - if not more often - they are actually investing our money.)

We love to congratulate ourselves about our "free press".

But we blame ourselves when we feel uniformed about the workings of our politics and our real economy.

We are taught to think of capitalism as freedom of opportunity and the pursuit of happiness.

And we blame ourselves for not sacrificing and focusing enough in our pursuit of success.

Maybe you know people who think what's going on in Brazil has nothing to do with us?

Maybe you (like a good citizen of the world) follow the news, and have heard that an unpopular president of Brazil (a latinized version of Horrible Hillary) is being impeached in for corruption?

Maybe you know a little something about the history of Latin America and wonder if the US could be involved in some way. You might even know something about what happened in Brazil in 1964.

Well, back then the US government supported a military coup with all the fascist trappings of murder and torture.* (You can Google for yourself about similar US interventions in Guatemala in 1954, The Dominican Republic in 1965, El Salvador in the 1970s and 80s, or Honduras in 1903, 1907, 1911, 1912, 1919, 1924, 1963, 1925, and 2009 . . . Barry! Hillary!! Say it ain't so!!!)

What's happening (right now) in Brazil is not called a military coup. It's called a "corporate coup". But the people controlling the resources and protecting "their" investments in Brazil (right now!) are the same people who we are taught to idolize here in the US as "job creators".

Do you think this might explain anything about dysfunction in our own politics and economy in the last generation or two?





*It's important to note that Brazil's impeached president, Dilma Rousseff, was a victim of horrible torture by the US backed military dictatorship in the 1970s.