RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – (Opinion) Watching the Brazilian flag with its stirring positivistic motto ‘Ordem e Progresso’ flapping in the wind and reflecting on ‘E pluribus unum’ framing the great seal of the United States got this gringo wondering just how and why these inspiring mottos, the splendid stuff of our schooldays, have become so devalued.
Their authors might certainly have second thoughts and some difficulty if they were crafting them anew today. Words do matter even if their meanings change with time. Is national ‘order’ fueling progress here or has the US managed to forge a unified nation out of its disparate parts?
Readers may remember Brazil’s many unheralded wonders described in my previous post. Without wishing to diminish any of them, I’m afraid I can hardly point to Brazil as a world-class example of order and progress.
The number of Covid-19 infected Brazilians has exceeded 3 million with more than 100,000 deaths so far – and no end in sight. Even having contracted Covid-19 himself, President Jair Bolsonaro has been a denier that the virus is truly serious.
He has actively promoted the antimalarial drug hydroxychloroquine as a cure, has tried to smother honest reporting of the extent of infections and deaths, has thwarted social distancing guidelines put in place by Brazilian state governors, attacked the press and called for its control. Order-defying, bikini-clad and beach-loving natives are cavorting without masks or social distancing, blatantly ignoring government guidelines to encourage safety.
Reported the ‘NYTimes’: “thousands of social media accounts, many of them fakes linked to supporters of the president or far-right bloggers, posted threats against the Supreme Court justices. They called for the court to be abolished or for a return to a military dictatorship…This toxic environment has been fomented by what Brazilians call the ‘office of hate’, an operation run by advisers to the president, who support a network of pro-Bolsonaro blogs and social media accounts that spread fake news and attack journalists, politicians, artists and media outlets that are critical of the president.” Nothing here is likely to generate much progress, something of a vanishing conceit.
Brazil’s GDP has shown significant regular declines during the past five years and this year, battered by the force of the full pandemic, is estimated to drop 5.77 percent. Labeled “an environmental pariah on the global stage” by Suely Araújo, a veteran environmental policy expert, dismissed as the head of the country’s main environmental protection agency soon after Mr. Bolsonaro took office, Bolsonaro and his ruling party wish to plunder the Amazon’s mineral riches.
Instead of protecting the Amazon and its indigenous people, more fires to clear lands have burned so far this year than even the record number in 2019. Not all is lost, however. Responding to increasing pressure from foreign governments and investors, Bolsonaro recently announced a four-month ban on fires. Whether this is simply fly swatting and window dressing that will go on beyond the dry season, is an open question.
Surprisingly, the President’s approval ratings have, according to Reuters, been inching up and recently rose two percentage points to 30 percent – hardly spectacular, but heading upwards.
The current and seemingly growing chaos is hardly the foundation on which progress is built: So much for old mottos. Perhaps instead of ‘order and progress’, Brazil needs a warning: without order, no progress.
Much as the US has loudly proclaimed its ‘exceptionalism’, the illusory ‘Shining city on a Hill’, is wracked by racial tension playing out nightly across America in Black Lives Matter street demonstrations. The deeply divided US cannot be said to have even begun to live up to its motto of a society of ‘one out of many’. Perhaps subconsciously reflecting this reality, in 1956 it changed the original 1782 de facto national motto to ‘In God We Trust’, arguably somewhat closer to the truth if my countrymen could agree on which God they trusted.
As Fintan O’Toole wrote in ‘The Irish Times’, “The world has loved, hated and envied the United States. But never before has it pitied us. Until now.”
The pity is deserved with more than 165,000 Covid-19 deaths so far, and only three months remain before what is being billed, rightly, as perhaps the most important election in US history. Billions of dollars of advertising money, that might much better be used to mitigate the ravages of the pandemic, are being spent to spread positive images and the mangled words of Donald Trump into the consciousness of enough voters to give him another four-year term in the White House.
Many, hopefully an overwhelming majority including this columnist, wish to see a landslide victory by his opponent, former VP Joe Biden. How we would cheer a banner headline after November 3rd Election Day, proclaiming, as Trump used to arrogantly yell at contestants on his ‘Apprentice’ reality show: “You’re Fired!”.
“We’ve learned to accept the word salad – rambling, digressive, inarticulate, salted with evasions, distortions and lies – we’re served whenever Trump comes to the table,” said the progressive young Democratic Congresswoman from New York, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a speech to Congress. “We become progressively immune and find it impossible to rise to each outrage.” Worryingly, both Trump and Bolsonaro feast on ‘word salad’ and are the living antitheses to the clear and simple statements of purpose emblazoned on the Brazilian flag and in the original US motto.
If words matter, if they are the banners under which we march and display our allegiances, both Brazil and the US are at crossroads. It is about time to fashion new directions and adopt new mottos to capture them.