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Notes -
Time to check up on our Lusotropicalism enjoyers.
The Brazilian Presidential election ended yesterday, featuring a run-off between Lula da Silva and Flavio Bolsonaro. Bolsonaro, the son of jailed former President Jair Bolsonaro, had won the previous round. Prediction markets placed his odds of winning at roughly 80%.
But Lula ended up winning, and not without controversy.
Apparently, a Supreme Court justice, and a former personal attorney of Lula's, added two extra hours to the voting period in a last second decision. There have been claims that voting in Bolsonaro-friendly areas had already been finalized and could not been restarted. One person on X claimed "it's as if voting restarted, but only in Philadelphia, Detroit, and Baltimore". I am not sure how accurate this claim is.
Bolsonaro is not accepting the results of the election. There are calls for the election results to be annulled, especially if it turns out the extra voting period was decisive. The situation is perhaps mitigated by the fact that conservatives now control a large majority of the legislature and may be able to immediately impeach Lula and, more importantly, his judges.
Perhaps someone who understands the situation can weigh in. From my outsider's view it seems that, in Brazil, individual Supreme Court justices wield nearly unchecked power and can make last second Banana Republic type decisions like opening the polls for an extra two hours. Brazilian politics feel like American ones, just more so.
The Brazilian stock market is down by 25% overnight.
Nobody in S America could ever convince me that Democracy is better than Fascism. You see huge swaths of Brazil vote on ethnic lines. Brazil at this point probably at a minimum needs to be broken into different countries. I don’t see why White Europeans should be governed by a corrupt commie because a bunch of negros voted for it.
In trading sometimes you are better lucky than good. I bought some Brazilian stuff after prediction markets were good for Bolsonaro but before the first round and I’m quite happy today that I dumped them on the big rip after the first round. Now everything I bought is 10% lower than my first buy and I’m wandering if Brazil is cheap enough to buy even with Lulu.
What you seem to mean by this sentence is "Nobody in S America could ever convince me that democracy is better than fascism that favors my group".
You wouldn't be happy with fascism that favors your opponents.
This is an imprecise description of the situation. White Brazilians are not even close to a monolithic political block. Whites do lean Bolsonaro over Lula, but it's more like a 60-40 split, not something like 90-10.
Anyway, I think that fascism is the inferior solution to the problem. The superior solution is some kind of secession. Solves the problem, without creating the new problem of living in a fascist shithole.
I'm pretty sure I'd be better off under fascism that favors East-Asians over current European democracy.
The closest thing we've had to East-Asian supremacist fascism didn't go too well for those under its boot.
How's that "the closest thing"?
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Are East Asians your opponents?
They're not "my group", so at the very least your first statement is proven false, yes?
In the sense that you believe you'd be better off, yes.
I actually kind of doubt you'd be better off under fascism that favors East Asians than under current European democracy, but whether you would or would not be really depends on the degree of fascist favoritism.
You can kind of doubt whatever you want, political disagreements are perfectly fine, but your claim that actually what any fascist must actually be arguing for is favoritism for their group is just flatly wrong. There's also a hidden assumption in what you're saying that democracy prevents favoritism, which is also just flat out wrong.
I suppose there are fascists who care more about the principle of fascism than about ensuring that their own group is on top, but to me that seems kind of pointless. I guess I don't see any appeal to fascism unless it's to get my own group on top. But some people have different preferences and genuinely like other things about fascism. I suppose many of those would be people who for whatever reasons genuinely like the idea of collectivism.
Democracy definitely does not prevent favoritism. Almost by definition. But so-called "liberal" democracy does limit the degree to which favoritism causes problems by limiting the power of the majority to change things just because they are a majority. Of course when enough voters want to do things that are prevented by "liberal" democracy, then "liberal" democracy does tend to go away.
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