Sad for Brasil :-(

Brazil elected a new president today and it was a really difficult choice, people were between "a rock and a hard place" with the two most hated candidates running against each another in the second round, but in min, and a lot of other people's opinion, one of the options was way worse than the other.

The former president, Dilma Rousseff, was impeached two years ago and the former two term president Lula (Luís Inácio "Lula" da Silva) is currently in jail. Their party, PT, Partido dos Trabalhadores (the Worker's Party) has been caught in a serious corruption scheme and a brave judge in my home state of Paraná, Sérgio Moro, has been prosecuting, charging, and putting the guilty ones in jail. If you want to understand the background of the investigation, you can watch the Netflix series The Mechanism. It's so depressing I haven't been able to watch it all, just the first episode. The runner up to today's second round of the election was Fernando Haddad who was appointed the candidate for PT after Lula was unable to run and he lost mostly because of the people's hatred for the party.

The winner, sigh... I don't like to say his name, the same way I avoid saying #NotMyPresident's name like the plague, so I'll just link to him. This man  (#AlsoNotMyPresident) is a former Army Captain and he was a congressman for 27 years and did basically NOTHING. He is pretty outspoken like the U.S. president and has made many outrageous statement which were racist, homophobic, misogynistic, really bad stuff. He's also in favor of allowing people to have guns (guns aren't freely allowed in Brazil), torture, the death penalty, the police having free agency to kill criminals (which it kind of already does in Brasil), and many other controversial things. He says he is a Christian and has the support of most evangelicals. Poor people and minorities, particularly Black and gay Brazilians are really upset by all the hatred unleashed by his candidacy. Some of his statements show fascist tendencies too. Hatred was running so high that he was actually stabbed with a knife when campaigning back in September.

He won partly because of the rampant fake news campaigns in social media. Brazilians are apparently the most gullible people in the planet, who most believe in fake news. I cannot find any articles about this in English, but there were a few in Portuguese. The main reason he won, though, is everyone's desire to get rid of the worker's party. Many people didn't like him, but voted against the other party. Others actually literally say that he's "a myth" and that he's going to save Brazil from PT and make it succeed.

This election destroyed lifelong friendships and pitted family members against each other.This whole thing is just too sad and upsetting. I just pray that the situation gets better in Brazil. :-(

NOOOOO!!!! Net Neutrality was Killed!!

A small victory one day (Doug Jones wins) and large setbacks the next day. How are we going to survive this horrible administration?

They are beginning to interfere with our lives in very tangible ways!!

Sigh... I don't even know what else to say, except that I feel powerless and that how can we effectively RESIST if big corporations and their profits are given more and more power over our lives?

I'm so angry! This anger and stress and daily worries will take its toll on all of us, seriously!

I have to go find more things to read, but this commentary is good.

P.S. it's like Brad, Jo's friend said, after Doug Jones's Alabama victory on Tuesday, we had to get a bad thing happen before the end of the week. We couldn't get both. :-(

Doing a small thing/ Despair/ What can we do?

this promises to be long, and rambling, and... but... I have to write tonight, I just do, so please bear with me if you're so inclined. (written on Wednesday night 1/25)
 
I just created two new labels now: RESIST! (can't have exclamation marks on labels) and Unprecedented Times, to go with my older and vaguely feminist "Political and Personal" label.

You know... I have a pretty charmed life, perfect really. Apart from the tough mega commute, some tensions at work, and my heart's desire to be a "real academic" somehow, I need to recognize that I have a really good job when so many people bad ones or none at all. [meta-blogging comment:] I also feel sad that I lost the precious community I had with/through this blog for several years and now I thirstily follow people's updates on facebook (which I hate with a passion) because I miss reading their blogs so much! (sigh... I will never get over this, NEVER. It's an ongoing frustration that I enjoy sharing here, but people who used to read and care about what I have to say don't anymore. Except for Jamie! Thank you so much, my friend!

Anyway... other than that (and some other issues that have more to do with my "fragmented" life), everything is good. Lovely family, husband, kids, extended family.

But I cannot be happy just for myself, and my family. I feel the need to protect the environment, to fight for social justice, to stand up for those who are oppressed, to listen with compassion to people who are different from me, to humbly recognize my privilege (even though I am also part of several minority groups), and do my part to make the world a better place. A place with more equality, less poverty and disenfranchisement, more acceptance and understanding and less racial strife and sexual discrimination (among many other things).

I am having a really really hard time living in this country now. Where millions of people are just APATHETIC because doing nothing, ignoring politics, not voting has no serious consequences for their privileged little lives (or so they think!). Instead of being upset at those who voted, I am upset at those who didn't because they didn't CARE. Because they think politics is corrupt and useless or because they were upset with the choices at hand. I am really angry at those people.

Sigh...

I am getting bitter and bitterer each moment I spend reading what my outraged friends are posting to facebook. So many bizarre things happening all at once. It's been CRAZY since last Friday -- it's hard to take it all in and not despair.

There is one small thing that is making me feel a teeny, tiny bit better right now. It's really small, but it's something.

I mentioned briefly that the network of "house churches" we are involved with sponsored three Syrian refugee families this past December (and it's giving them ongoing support). A couple of weeks ago we decided to stretch ourselves to the limit and sponsor one more family who arrived yesterday. My husband and I were co-signers on their lease.

It's a really small thing, but it's something.

I cannot think that refugees will not be coming anymore, that hard working people (whose jobs NO ONE ELSE WANTS!) will probably be sent back to their countries -- maybe with their American citizen kids (who knows?), and, perhaps saddest of all, thinking of all the people, children, elderly, who will die without health insurance.

I have to keep myself from thinking about any of these things lest I burst into tears multiple times a day.

What can we do?