1. On Sunday, the somewhat macabre coincidence. I read the comment of someone saying something like “the country will only improve after the left is exterminated”. I almost vomit, but I contain the disgust and turn to my wife to say something about this urge to end everything that is against us. She patiently listens to my digression and, without speaking, shows me her cell phone. That’s when I learn of the death of the PT treasurer during his own birthday party.
2. At first, the information is few and confusing. This does not prevent the crowd from reaching hasty and very categorical conclusions. Countless politicians and celebrities of varying sizes immediately repudiated the crime, blaming their favorite scapegoat, Jair Bolsonaro. I read that the PT is under attack.
3. I’m not understanding anything. Even living in chaotic 21st century Brazil, the idea of someone randomly walking into a party and shooting people just because the party’s theme is Lula strikes me as too fantastic. Tragically fantastic. But then I remember that I am a chronicler and that I need to react quickly to events. What if it’s a common crime that the left is appropriating? What if it really is a political crime? What are the consequences of this? Help!
4. Doubts accumulate. Does the fact that Lula exalted a militant who threw a gentleman against the bumper of a truck have something to do with it? Or is it the beating of a butterfly’s wings in China that caused the shooting in Foz do Iguaçu? Will petecide, that is, the murder of a PT militant, become an aggravating factor in our Penal Code? Will it be? Will it be? Will it?
5. Whenever someone dies for politics, whether in large protests, attacks or discussions like the one in Foz do Iguaçu, I wonder what the deceased’s reckoning is like when he arrives in Heaven. And no, I’m not mocking you. I can even imagine how a person explains to his own soul or to Saint Peter that he left this world because he believed that communism was superior to capitalism or that leader A was better than leader B. It must be at least embarrassing.
6. In these cases, I also always wonder what the person’s last thoughts would have been. Although many do not have time for all the reflections they failed to do in life.
7. Cynicism is a disgrace to which, unfortunately, I am not immune. The next thing I know, I find myself writing about the party that would have motivated the murder. The birthday boy wearing a t-shirt with Lula’s ugly face. The poster also with a photo of Lula and the words “for Brazil to smile again”. Squid on the table. Red heart shaped cookies. It was not my intention to ridicule the victim. I just can’t understand how someone can reach the 50 years of idolizing a politician to that point.
8. My editor has more sense than I do and asks me to keep the text in the drawer for 24 hours, reread it and only then decide whether or not to publish it. But I need just one more rereading to realize that he is right (something rare).
9. I have some considerations to make about the manifestations of idolatry of Bolsonaro and the comment of the “exterminator of leftists” mentioned in the first item of this text. But, just for today, I won’t elaborate on these caveats.
10. The good old Fernando Pessoa talked about the pleasant feeling of not understanding some things. A typical childhood feeling. Who has never been fascinated in front of a cotton candy machine thinking “how is it possible?!”. Like the child I was, I try to remain ignorant on some subjects. Not to lose the fascination. Ah, unhappy is he who understands everything – or thinks he understands. Life is a mystery and what drives people to kill or be killed for politics is beyond my ability to comprehend. And, as far as it depends on me, it will remain so.
11. I also don’t understand how dark clouds hover in stormy skies. And there is no explanation about updrafts capable of clarifying this phenomenon for me. Leave me.
12. As much as PT members irritate and offend me and even make veiled threats against me, and as much as the left has a dark history of retail and wholesale violence, these violent aspects of politics are still like cotton candy and clouds that, heavy with rain, defy the logic of gravity.
13. Nor do I understand what makes someone throw a politically themed birthday party. I suppose, without looking for any theories to prove my hypothesis for nothing, that it has to do with spiritual emptiness and with the failure of the imaginary that my friend Francisco Escorsim talks about so much. But it is a reality so far from mine that, honestly, I prefer to continue in my healthy ignorance.
14. As this text was left with 13 items, which maybe gave rise to weird interpretations, I created this item that allows me to vent: I don’t like the number 14 . I never liked. If you think about it, the 14 is one of those absolutely innocuous numbers, with no hidden messages or great esoteric symbolism. And yet, it is indispensable there between the 13 and the 15. Without 14, the world would be more chaos than it is.
