My practice is to avoid commenting about countries or states of the Union in which I’ve never lived and about which I know little. My philosophy is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and remove all doubt.
In that light I think the best comment of the day is from Glenn Greenwald at X:
There are a bunch of ignorant American liberal pundits pontificating this week about Brazil even though they don’t know the first thing about any of the relevant facts or dynamics (Naomi Klein with Mehdi Hasan was so confused as to be comical).
Mr. Greenwald has lived in Brazil for the last ten years.
I don’t know enough about Brazilian politics to comment intelligently.
I also think it’s at least incautious to side with a “left-wing” or “right-wing” political party in another country because you, yourself, consider yourself “left-wing” or “right-wing”. Those labels don’t travel well. I’m reminded of the line from the satirical sketch comedy Beyond the Fringe comparing British and American politics:
Well, let’s see, you have the Republican Party, you see, which is the equivalent of our Conservative party. And then you have the Democratic Party which is the equivalent of our Conservative Party.
