The tragedy of contemporary Brazil lies not only in political radicalization. It lies in the transformation of ignorance into collective identity, verbal violence into moral virtue, and ridicule into an ideological platform. The most radical wing of Bolsonarism has ceased to be merely a political movement, it has become a cultural phenomenon marked by the aestheticization of brutality and the glorification of stupidity.

Contemporary democracy faces a fundamental paradox: it preserves its institutional forms, yet its normative content is progressively hollowed out. The weakening of dialogue, the delegitimization of opponents, and the instrumentalization of institutions create a scenario of internal erosion that cannot be ignored. Hatred cannot replace political dialogue.

Contemporary geopolitics often seems to orbit around the statements and impulses of figures such as Donald Trump, whose relationship with institutional predictability has always been, at best, fragile. When decisions with global impact are made without coordination, without consultation, or even in contradiction with specialists — such as his former counterterrorism chief — the international system ceases to operate on rules and begins to react to impulses.

The escalation in the Middle East reveals not only a regional conflict, but a structural crisis of the international system, marked by internal fractures in the United States, strategic divergences in Europe, economic contradictions, and the weakening of International Law, demonstrating that power and interests prevail over norms and traditional alliances.

The escalation of tensions in the Middle East has once again brought to light a reality that is often overlooked in simplified narratives about international politics: the global system functions less like a tribunal and more like a permanent arena of competition among interests, capabilities, and the structural limits of power. The recent increase in the intensity of the conflict in the region already involves, directly or indirectly, more than eleven countries, transforming

In today’s global landscape, human tragedies are often narrated selectively. Lives from “distant” countries are usually left out of media and political focus, as philosopher Judith Butler pointed out when reflecting on the unequal attribution of “grievability” to victims. Only those who fit the dominant framework—“Western,” Christian, or strategically useful lives—are presented as worthy of compassion, while other deaths remain silenced.