Strangely happy...

It’s weird to be writing this note, but I am strangely happy. First of all I want to say that I am not someone that doesn’t like soccer or that doesn’t love my country. I truly do. But, in this world cup, for me, it was somehow much more than about just soccer.

Our coach is a new guy. He was a brave “warrior” in the cups that he participated. He was always someone that pushed the team and raised their energies and etc. That must be credited to him, of course. But, as a coach of our team… for me he was a completely disaster.

Talking about soccer, and only soccer, he decided to choose the “most committed” players. There was a reason for that. Last world cup, the whole country was disappointed with the attitude of our players. They didn’t show any commitment and energy to win that world cup.

However, the decision that our coach took was at least, infantile. He selected just the “fully committed” players. And what about the talent? What about the so admired Brazilian soccer and soccer players? Why to do not chose a talented substitute for Kaka, our best player when everything pointed for him to do not be 100% for this cup? Summing up, choosing people like: Felipe Melo, Michel Bastos, Kleberson, Josué, Donni… was at least, very controversial.

But I am not strangely happy because of this. I am strangely happy because of the completely unacceptable attitude and posture of our coach. He a bunch of things that couldn’t be accepted by anyone: he said bad words about journalists in a press conference, he started a war with all the media channels, he was aggressive and was incoherent with his own decision in many times.

So, why am I strangely happy? It’s somehow simple. During my whole life I was criticized to have the same attitudes that was questioned and pointed about our coach. Many people, so many times, asked me to chance my behavior and to be a friendly person and to consider more the others opinions and etc. I worked hard many years to be shaped more in this sense. Nowadays, I feel like I am much more like this than I was 5 years ago. So, why should we support such a stupid behavior in a true Brazilian leader? Someone that in this season is one of the most important people in the country – even more than our president.

Therefore, somehow I am happy. Of course I would be happy to see my team to win this championship. But more than that I would like those lessons to be learned in our country and to be taken for the most important world cup in our history, 2014! There, with any coach, any selection of players, in any city… I will be fully supporting our team. Because, today, I think we have learned the hard lesson.

Sick0

Few days ago I was seeing an old documentary that made me conclude some thought that I was having on the past weeks. I am back to Brazil and since I came back I was again surprised with the violence wave of violence that is hitting my country. There were 2 episodes that really shocked me: first, the guy that collects money on a city bus was killed without reacting to anything – the internal camera showed the exactly moment when he was hit on his head. Almost same week, there was a girl in a restaurant that was also murdered without reacting to the robbery that was happening at her place of work.

Those episodes are relatively common in my country but I still have the capability of being completely stunned by it. Maybe it’s just because I came back after a while abroad – not in a much safer country – but away from a constant touch with the news. Anyway, I was wondering, “what could I actually do to change this situation?” Since a long time ago, it was clear for me that the main problem about Brazil was impunity. We don’t keep people in jail, they don’t go to jail, our penitentiaries are terrible, the sentences are smaller even when the crime is horrendous, and so many other factors.

Some years ago, after a huge scandal with the politicians in our country – a huge scheme to control deputies and senators to buy their votes and impose the will of the government under the country – it was released a survey done by an important magazine, asking the population: “if you were in their place, would you do the same to get the money?” more than half said yes.

That’s something that mixes with my mind. I always remember one of my professors saying: “we need to stop with this thing in Brazil of always try to take advantage of any situation.” It doesn’t seem to be something easy to conquer. The conclusion is: even when the politicians are doing bad things, there would be a battalion of many other people, eager to do the same. That’s a non-ending cycle that must go wrong.

So it takes me to the documentary. It’s called “Sicko”. It’s a bit old now and it’s from the acclaimed and also super hated director Michael Moore. I know that some of his things are manipulative – and so are all the other sources of information. The documentary is about the health system in US and a comparison of it with some other countries in the world. There you can learn a lot about how to manipulate the people, how to change their opinion, how to silence some others. Incredible.

But there was one specific sentence that made me reflect for a long while during this documentary – and it came from a person on it and not from the director: “In France government fears the people. In US people fears the government.” It has everything to deal with our reality here in Brazil.

Something that surprises me incredibly about Brazil is the single fact that we NEVER had any general strike in our history. There were some important strikes on important economic centers in São Paulo on the beginning of our democracy and some other important manifestations, but never a general strike. One teacher used to say: “if they increase the price of the bread in France, there is a general strike installed.” A bit exaggerated, but still close to the truth.

And then I was making a parallel. Even in US the democracy is not very strong. If you see, there is a difference between the representativeness of each state, tons of people doesn’t vote, and yes, people fears the government. When you look at countries in Western Europe, they actually had a millenary construction of a strong democracy. Due to that, now, they can have their governments under their control. It’s not perfect. It will never be. But it is still much better than we have in Latin America.

After a reflection, still thinking about what we could actually do, I got to my partial and for-now conclusion that we will need to… wait. It will be very hard to change the country in so many ways that is needed for us to reach a true and inclusiveness democracy. We would need decent politicians, decent pensions, a fair health system, decent educational systems and above all, people thinking more about their society than about themselves.