I remember almost nostalgically the times when the ambassadors of the United States went to the presidential houses of Latin American or African countries to give sermons on democracy. That they should hold fair elections, respect the peaceful transfer of power and such. They had some credibility.
But today, before the elections taking place across the United States on Tuesday, the Latin American or African ambassadors in Washington are the ones who should go to the White House, or perhaps better to the Republican sector of Congress, to beg them to behave with democratic maturity. The Brazilian ambassador could be one of them.
We thought that President Jair Messias Bolsonaro, a retired military far-right, was the Brazilian Trump. We suspected that if he lost the election a week ago, he would be inspired by the example of the orange cow to reject the result, claim there was fraud and incite his faithful to invade government institutions. But we were wrong.
It turns out that the shamelessly racist, misogynist and anti-homosexual Bolsonaro has a greater sense of national responsibility than the former – and perhaps future – president of the United States. Last Sunday he lost to Lula da Silva by a much narrower margin than Trump did to Joseph Biden in the 2020 election, but he reluctantly conceded his defeat. He gave instructions to prepare for the transition to Lula's government team. Jair Messias, who professes to be a devout Christian, did as God intended.
In the political world of the United States the formula seems to be that the more Christian one claims to be, the more likely one is to disregard the most elementary rules of democratic decency. For most of the Republican electoral candidates and their voters, the Gospel whose words they believe the most is that of Donald the antichrist. One faith replaces the other, and they fight for it with the same certainty of possessing the Truth as those who participated in the crusades of the middle ages, or as the jihadists today. Well almost.
Look at the case of David DePape, the Trump fundamentalist who attacked the husband of the Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, third in succession to the presidency, Nancy Pelosi. The police know what happened. DePape, 42, corroborated the version of his victim, Paul Pelosi, 82.
On October 28, around two in the morning, DePape entered the Pelosi house in San Francisco after breaking a window with a hammer and woke up the husband of the famous Democratic leader. "Where's Nancy?" Where is Nancy?, he asked her, echoing the macabre question that the Trump faithful had asked when they invaded the Capitol on January 6, 2021. Much to the intruder's chagrin, Nancy was 4,400 kilometers away, in Washington. Paul Pelosi managed to escape to the bathroom and call the police. When law enforcement officers arrived, DePape hit Paul Pelosi with the hammer, fracturing his skull.
DePape later explained at the police station that he did not flee when his victim called the police because "like the founders of the country with the British" his cause was just: "Fight against tyranny." He added that his plan had been to ask Nancy Pelosi to tell "the truth." If not, she would break his knees. The truth, according to DePape, was the Trumpian article of faith that the Democrats stole the 2020 presidential election.
In a normal democracy, like the one championed by American ambassadors of yore, the entire political world would have condemned the attack. That his "thoughts and prayers" etc. were with the hospitalized Mr. Pelosi. The Democrats of course did. Some Republicans, those who have not sold their souls to Trump, too. Republicans in Tuesday's election who got their nominations thanks to Trump's blessing either said nothing, made jokes about it, or hinted at the truth of the hoax sweeping the social media sewers that DePape and Paul Pelosi were lovers caught red-handed by the police. Donald Trump junior and the new owner of Twitter, Elon Musk, were among those who spread the slander.
Trump himself not only said nothing against DePape, just as he said nothing in his day against the invaders of the Capitol, but also added his grimaces to the lie about the homosexual encounter. Not to mention, of course, the number of commentators sympathetic to Trump who consecrated DePape as a hero. Charlie Kirk, with millions of followers on social networks, proposed that "the patriots" donate money to pay the bail of the aforementioned.
One of the many curiosities of American politics today is that, unlike, say, the 1960s, the forces that most vehemently oppose the establishment are not from the left but from the right. Those who defended the status quo of “the land of the free and the home of the brave” during the cold war and most fiercely opposed Soviet communism are today the ones who are doing the work of former KGB agent Vladimir Putin in his war cold – or in Ukraine's case, its hot war – against Western democracy.
Let's keep an eye on the results of Tuesday's elections. The governors of 36 of the 50 states and control of Congress will be decided. If the Republicans win majorities in the Senate and the House of Representatives, President Biden will not only see his ability to govern within the United States drastically reduced, but the continuity of military aid to Ukraine will be jeopardized.
There is a lot at stake, mainly if the aberration that Trump represents will end up definitively becoming the new American normality, to the joy of Putin, the Chinese leader, Xi Jinping, the Saudi leader, Mohamed bin Salman, and other members of the authoritarian axis that identifies democracy as world enemy number one. And one other thing: Trump declared on Thursday that he would “very, very likely” run for president in 2024. If the bunch of ignorant, cynical and lunatic he backs win on Tuesday, he will run for sure.
