Brazil's president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Lula‘s) administration is actively rounding up and imprisoning his predecessor Jair Bolsonaro's administration on corruption charges.
Lula is an avowed Marxist, and Jair Bolsonaro was known in the media as the Brazilian Trump.
Much like Trump, the lefties of Brazil want to see him locked away or dead. During the election, Bolsonaro only saw three options in his future: Prison, death, or victory.
Since victory wasn't in the cards, Bolsonaro has taken to spending a lot of time in the Hungarian embassy. Lula‘s administration says it's because he cannot be arrested there according to an international treaty.
Bolsonaro said:
I won't deny that I was in the embassy … I won't say where else I've been. I have a circle of friends with some heads of state around the world. They are worried. I talk to them about matters in our country's interest. Full stop. The rest is speculation.
As bad as this is, let's not pretend Bolsonaro walks on roses here. During his administration, Lula, who was president from 2003 to 2010, as well as much of Lula's administration were all in prison on corruption charges, which made the popular leader ineligible to run in 2018 in opposition to Bolsanaro.
Those charges and convictions have not been overturned, mind you. If it were any other country, Lula would still be in prison. But just before the election, the Brazilian Supreme Court ruled that no one can be imprisoned until all their appeals are exhausted.
That ruling was applied pretty narrowly, so that Lula and his cronies got out just in time to win the election and pardon themselves.
Now, Lula's looking to turn the tables.
This sounds so familiar.
Is this where the United States is heading?
Substitute the names Lula and Bolsonaro with Biden and Trump and tell me that you don't see this exact scenario starting to steamroll in our country.
And before we're tempted to say, "Oh, Brazil's a third-world country, a banana republic; that's not the same," consider that Brazil has the world's 9th largest GDP per capita, and the 8th largest purchasing parity, to the tune of $12 trillion annually.
That's not a third world country … by far.
But it is definitely a corrupt country, and if our constant cycle of impeachments and indictments of political figures is any indication, so are we.
Will all our elections from this point forward be run by one person sitting in office and the other in a prison cell, with them just trading places until one person becomes as powerful as a Putin or Xi and grows tired of the legal process?
And how do you stop this mad march to authoritarianism?
It starts with you and me.
It starts with a real belief in our pledge of allegiance's declaration and what our flag represents.
One Nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.
If we delete, minimize, or discount any part of those words, how can we hope to avoid the situation playing out in Brazil?
