From the capital of the US, where I learned the ins and outs of the political scheme in the US, to Brasilia, where its election year this year, and I am learning the ins and outs of the political schemes here.
For example, the Brazilian version of democracy is, I believe, democracy by coercion. All people over age 18 are forced to vote. There is no free will in it. If you don’t you better give a good reason, or be ready to pay a hefty fine.
People who don’t care so much about politics in the US just don’t vote. People here who don’t care, have to vote anyway. Then who do they vote for?
On the night before elections, the political campaigners throw fliers all over the ground of the parking lot of the polling places. Think a carpet of 1/4 sheet cutsheets with various politicians on them. Hopefully someone will see them and vote for that! As I walked through the parking lot of the polling place, the guy walking in front of us was looking at the ground, stopped, moved some fliers with his feet, seriously contemplating who to vote for by looking at fliers thrown on the ground!
Then, as I was sitting in my house, enjoying a quiet afternoon, as I believe my noisy neighbors moved out yesterday or are on vacation, the political campaign trucks come rolling by. The music is blaring, shaking my house, with the campaign jingle which might as well be “the song that never ends” with what it says, over and over, a form of brainwashing.
“I want Agnelo for governor, I want Agnelo for governor, I want Agnelo for governor” is the song. The whole song. Some political campaign songs that get blared out of trucks are more creative and have whole verses to them about what the candidate hopes to do and their history, but this was pure brainwashing. Made me want to sing “Agnelo would steal as governor”. (the last governor of the DF stole so much money that he actually got impeached, and the DF was without a governor for almost a month because everyone else who would take over was involved in the corruption).
So we have brainwashing. Then we have “house-building buying votes”. A particular person in office will build sub-par houses in an area outside the city, essentially creating a slum. But the people now have houses and running water and electricity (which they pay the government for), and then when said politician is up for re-election, their campaign in those government-made slums is like this “We built your houses, so vote for us. We made your neighborhood, we can destroy it too. So vote for us.”
Corruption has no limits.
