A Sad Day
Today is a sad day for me. Not necessarily because it is a special date with some specific memory in mind, but because what I saw on the street stayed with me, leaving me with a lot to reflect on. I am Brazilian, and today, October 25th, marked the second round of the presidential elections.
There are countless reasons for sadness when dealing with national politics. There are also political analysts far better equipped than I am to debate the intricate maneuvers that happen every day within the national scene, and therefore I am not going to waste my time—and consequently yours—debating my point of view on things.
What struck me most today was a situation I witnessed at my polling place. In our national political landscape, it is very common for citizens who sympathize with the right to wear the colors of the national flag (such as green and yellow), or even the national soccer team's jersey, as a marker of their political stance. Keeping that in mind, as I approached my designated polling station, I noticed a family on a nearby corner—likely a right-leaning family, consisting of a father, mother, and two teenage children (or so I gathered). They were taking photos, perhaps to record a post-voting moment that seemed to fill both the father and mother with pride.
Up to that point, nothing out of the ordinary. The dynamic shifted when a driver passed by the family and, in a provocative tone, shouted from his car: "It's thirteen!", making an allusion to the left-wing party. With a resounding "Go fuck yourself," the father in question brought a swift end to the dynamic and to the brief exchange of "pleasantries" between the two citizens. The son even tried to join the discussion and stretch it out a bit longer by shouting the numbers of the rival party: "It's twenty-two!", until the mother intervened and shut everyone up right there.
Such exchanges of "affection" (sarcasm intended) are increasingly present on the national stage. And although I am relatively used to it by now, I found myself deep in thought as I walked toward my voting section. For years, I have felt a profound frustration over the absence of genuine debate across various spheres of public opinion. The recent presidential debate itself is the ultimate representation of all this: two candidates using disrespect as a tactic for public persuasion, showing how much each one’s project is driven by self-interest rather than the country's well-being. Not a single government plan was presented there, and if there was, I apologize, but the sheer lack of respect distracted me too much to listen to either side. And if even authorities of the highest rank don't know how to use proper language or address relevant issues while using a platform of national reach (such as television), wasting the audience's time with such a circus, why should I cede my vote of confidence to them? The brief argument I witnessed outside my polling station was nothing more than a mirror, on a smaller scale, of what is seen among the representative authorities of this country.
And so the question remains: what about the child who watched and participated right there? What will become of them? They look at politics and see disrespect, shouting, and personal attacks, simply repeating what they see from their father without even knowing exactly why. Disrespect and politics become synonyms. There is no search for representation, national interests, none of that. There is "me" and the rest who don't agree with me, so "Go fuck yourself" is the answer. How will this citizen grow up, and how will they behave on the national stage? How will they behave among people who do not share their worldview?
Or furthermore: is the attitude of the man in the car yet another symptom of a society that has the courage to provoke and hoot all sorts of vulgarities from the safe space of an automobile—or better yet, from the safe space of social media, algorithmically designed to show nothing to them that they don't already agree with?
I have many questions and few answers right now. But there is the provocation to think about.