When it comes to New Year’s resolutions, the general populace can be divided into three camps. Some take the turning of the calendar as an impetus to start something new, while others make change whenever is necessary instead of waiting for the next year. The third group is unfortunately dedicated to never making any sort of change, and much to the world’s dismay, two card-carrying members of that third group joined forces on Tuesday.
Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) penned an op-ed focused on the election of Jair Bolsonaro as the new president of Brazil, championing the new regime as an opportunity for improved relations between the two most populous countries in the western hemisphere. CNN happily ran the piece, and now both Rubio and CNN have been exposed as the same bought politician and frazzled news network they have always been.
Jonah Baker | Argonaut
Rubio’s piece is nearly 900 words long, but its message is deciphered before the end of the first paragraph. Rubio indicts former Brazilian presidents as “anti-American” while pointing to the new government’s willingness to cooperate with the U.S. as more than enough cause for action.
Anyone as involved in politics as Rubio (or even just those with a basic internet connection) should be well aware of just how disquieting Bolsonaro’s rise to power has been. A former military captain, Bolsonaro was never a power player in Brazil’s political scene until 2014, when he became a member of the chorus responding to the country’s economic downturn.
Since then, he’s been painted as a wannabe dictator in far-right clothing, a loose cannon and a leader whose policies seem to be too much pledge without enough possibility. Oh yeah, and one of his most famous campaign planks was to militarize policing throughout the country and he has a track record of misogyny, racism and general callousness that almost make him fit for American office. Bolsonaro willingly embraced the “Trump of the Tropics” moniker bestowed upon him.
Regardless, this is apparently the kind of leadership that at least one senior member of our government wants us to jump into bed with. Nevermind the two decades of corruption that still have no policy fix in place or the fact that policies similar to Bolsonaro’s heavy-handed stances consistently exacerbated crime, this is apparently where an already-beleaguered American administration should invest itself. Whether it be bilateral security, energy investment or even space exploration, there is some way in which a completely unproven Brazil government could help us, according to Rubio.
This brings us back to the platform upon which Rubio’s musings were published in the first place. CNN has taken a beating in the past couple of years for misleading headlines and overtly anti-Trump rhetoric, but providing a platform for something like this is just plain stupid.
Rubio’s stances ignore the ethical issues of dealing with someone like Bolsonaro who has succeeded only in condemning the old with an alarming plan for the future.
That much can be gleaned from the most basic of read-throughs, so why publish something transparently damaging to Rubio? News agencies are constantly scrutinized for biased approaches, and publishing a misguided attempt at soft policy from an opponent will reek of an attack on the Republican Party from miles away. Surely someone else would have been happy to run Rubio’s piece and an intern could rebut it for CNN, and it would just be business-as-usual quarreling between the network and right-wing pundits.
Brazil’s new president appears to be a carbon copy of Trump with actual military service and fewer resources, but that does not make him our next great ally. Corruption is still rampant, crime and ignorance are on the rise and Rubio knew all of this but wrote a piece that ignored all of those issues anyway. For what feels like the umpteenth time in this already exhausting year, we have a political debacle in which no one is right. We the people will have to be the ones learning from the squabbles of our leaders and media, because Lord knows they seem incapable of accomplishing such a simple task.
Jonah Baker can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @jonahpbaker