One of the things that used to irk American policy makers
was the fact that their Asian bugbear at the time, was Japan, which had a
talent of copying everything that the Americans invented and making them
cheaper and, in many cases, better. The most noticeable was in the automobile
industry, where the likes of Toyota, Honda and Mitsubishi ended up bruising the
Detroit Big Three (GM, Ford and Chrysler) in their domestic market.
What the Japanese demonstrated was called “Second Mover” advantage
and rather than inventing brand-new things, they found a way of improving on
what existed. As is often said in the area of work place efficiency, there’s no
need to reinvent the wheel when you can use what you already have.
There are lots of examples of how the second mover has gone
onto surpass the original.
Unfortunately, for many people at risk of getting
coronavirus or being suffocated by burning forest, the most prominent second
mover is Mr. Jair Bolsonaro, a proud Trump imitator who revels in the name of “Trump
of the Tropics,” and has a secondary job of being President of Brazil.
While Mr. Bolsonaro has not made the headlines that the original
Trump sitting in the North of the Rio Grande has, he’s had a way of surpassing
the original in the things he says and does. It should also be said that while Brazil
isn’t the world power that the US is, it is a country that counts. Brazil is
the “B” in the “BRICS,” and with an area of 8,515,767 square kilometres, it is
the fifth largest country in the world and its population of 210,147,125 it is
the sixth most populous nation on the planet. Brazil’s nominal economy is
estimated at 1.86 trillion US dollars, making it the ninth largest economy. It
is by far and away the country that counts in South America. In the pre-Bolsonaro
days, Brazil was regarded as the most benign of the BRICS. Here was a large
market with lots of resources. However, unlike China, Brazil is democracy that values
human life, unlike South Africa had something other than natural resources and
unlike India, it was comparatively free of communal strife.
Mr. Bolsonaro has decided that these things were a crock of
shit and that ordinary Brazilians were being screwed for being nice to the rest
of the world. It helped that his predecessors had legal issues (euphemism for
being corrupt) and Mr. Bolsonaro, like his idol in the North of the Rio Grande
was swept into power on the promise to make things right for Brazil’s poor.
His first decision of helping Brazil’s poor was to allow the
Amazon Forrest. Mr. Bolsonaro used to line that we’ve grown very used to in
Southeast Asia – economic development takes priority over preserving the
environment. In other words, we’re going to get rich whether the lefties in the
West like it or not. The result has devastated much of South America, covering
neighbours in a smog like haze, which many of us in Southeast Asia are familiar
with and potential natural resources provided by the forest have been squandered.
When French President, Emanuel Macron called him out on this,
Mr. Bolsonaro publicly announced that the French President was merely jealous
because his wife was better looking, which had nothing to do with the issue at
hand but seemed to satisfy a certain sense of lost masculinity in Bolsonaro
voters.
Mr. Bolsonaro, like Mr. Trump had the good fortune to
preside over an improving economy and so the masses forgave him. The covid-19
struck and the truth of Mr. Bolsonaro’s tough guy with a heart for the people
was revealed.
While the Original in the North tried to downplay the seriousness
of the virus and then started looking for scapegoats and then prescribed
unproven cures, Mr. Bolsonaro has been remarkably constant in his handling of
covid 19. That is, he’s been remarkably consistent about disregarding the
reality of the devastation brought about by the virus. Despite losing his
health minister and justice minister, Mr. Bolsonaro has decided that it is
perfectly acceptable to trash the advice of his own healthcare officials. Mr.
Bolsonaro refuses to stay in orders, attends rallies and likes his big crowds. As
with his hero in the North, Mr. Bolsonaro’s supporters blame the “left win”
media for trying to tarnish their hero.
Where Mr. Bolsonaro outdoes the original Mr. Trump is in his
belief that the virus is no big deal. The Trump and his supporters when down
playing deaths caused by the virus at least make the effort in giving their nonchalance
a little bit of context, such as “more people are killed by the flue” etc.
Mr. Bolsonaro is quite open about the fact that he really
doesn’t care about the deaths caused by covid-19 and the potential risk to national
health. As Brazil’s death toll reached past 5,000 – his only thoughts were “So
What?” More can be found at:
Another area in which Mr. Bolsonaro trumps the Trump is in
the way in which he encourages the public to undermine stay at home orders.
While Mr. Trump tweets his encouragement for protestors against stay home
orders, Mr. Bolsonaro, a former army officer, has lead from the front and gone
as far as to call for the military to intervene (though, as President, one
wonders why he’s calling from the military to intervene, when as President, he could
order the military to do so). More can be seen at:
Unlike the US, which was born as a democracy and had 200-years
to build its institutions, Brazil has on the scale of things only just achieved
things that make society prosperous like a government for the people and rule
of law. Mr. Bolsonaro is working to undermine these things, which cannot be
good for Brazil, South America or even the wider world.
At the time of writing, Brazil has 102 thousand cases and
over seven thousand people have died. It
looks like Mr. Bolsonaro is trying to catch up and perhaps surpass his hero in
the North of the Rio Grande. This cannot be good news for Brazil’s poor in the overcrowded
favellas.
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