Floods, Madonnas and Demons

 Crucifixion and Last Judgement (detail), by Jan van Eyck

If you're reading this and you're not Brazilian, first, a little context might be needed. In the beginning of May of this year, Madonna made the last performance of her world tour in Copacabana beach. Copacabana is a district within the city of Rio de Janeiro, which is the capital of the Brazilian state of Rio de Janeiro. It was transmitted live by Rede Globo, Brazil's main TV network. The concert brought millions of tourists to the city. Almost a thousand miles further south, there's another Brazilian state called Rio Grande do Sul. A few days before Madonna's performance, major rainstorms caused floods that displaced tens of thousands and killed hundreds of people in that state.

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The material conditions don't matter at all when the ideal, that which is in the minds of people, is capable of transforming them in puppets. It's frightening, but there are millions who prefer going hungry as long as they see those who they believe to represent their ideals in positions of power. The individual is hungry, he sees his whole life destroyed, but keeps following his executioners, his leaders, until the very end. He rather die than accept the possibility that his ideals brought him to ruin.

For him, it wasn't the lack of public policy and the absence of the state that ruined him. It was Madonna or the satanic Rede Globo, together with “billionaire communists” such as George Soros. They're the ones that cause natural disasters around the world using HAARP technology. If this sounds ridiculous to you, that's because it is. Pablo Marçal, a famous Brazilian evangelical coach, said in one of his videos that Madonna's concert was a satanic ritual made with the bodies of those who drowned during the floods in Rio Grande do Sul. Another Christian influencer stated that the tragedy happened due to the large number of practitioners of African religions in that state. African religions are associated with Devil worship by Brazilian Christians, especially evangelicals. But the same was said by a conservative Catholic priest during mass. And however crazy that might sound, there are thousands who believe in this nonsense.

For those who can't get out of bed without magical thinking, this kind of conspiratorial stupidity is attractive. It unites moral crusades with disaster and death. It's the same as years ago, when Datena, a major Brazilian TV presenter, said that most crimes are committed by atheists. People believed him, but this is demonstrably false. The vast majority of criminals in Brazil are Christians. There are plenty of examples of slums ruled by violent organized crime where followers of African religions are faced with the choice of converting to evangelical Christianity or dying. By the same token, there are plenty who go about their days certain that a pop music concert is metaphysically connected to a tragedy that happened thousands of kilometers away.

Adding to that, there's the commentary of the so called economic intelligentsia who naively believe that economic power is antagonistic to the state or, worse yet, that economic power is capable of existing without the guarantees provided by the state — I speak here of the “classic liberals”, libertarians, and fiscal conservatives, of course. To them, the city and state governments of Rio de Janeiro are to blame because they used public resources in order to bring Madonna to Copacabana instead of using those same resources helping Rio Grande do Sul. It doesn't matter to them that consecutive state and city governments in Rio Grande do Sul dismantled the state apparatus and prevented maintenance of infrastructure capable of dealing with floods, or at least mitigate their impact.

It also doesn't matter to them that Rio de Janeiro's city hall financed the least part of Madonna's concert, and that most of the money came from private businesses and banks — and more: the concert brought a record amount of profit to the city businesses for the month of May. Even so, the economic intelligentsia hate that the federal government, now headed by a center-left president, made 50 billion reais available to the state of Rio Grande do Sul and forgave the state's debt for the next 3 years. To them, Elon Musk is the hero for donating a few crappy internet receivers, not a “socialist” president. Or worse yet, they praise AI generated images showing Brazilian billionaires helping flood victims.

What is real, that which is open for everyone to see, doesn't matter to many. And to remind everyone of the facts is considered by idiots as trying to “politicize the tragedy”. Yet, those who politicize the tragedy that occurred in Rio Grande do Sul are the religious fanatics and the free market fetishists, because they deny the obvious: Madonna's performance and African religions have nothing to do with what happened in Rio Grande do Sul, and free market friendly governments in Rio Grande do Sul are responsible for dismantling flood prevention measures.