Christmas in the time of Herod

Christmas this year will be different from other Christmases. Generally, it is the feast of fraternization for families. For Christians, it is the celebration of the Divine Child came to take our humanity and make it better.

In the present context, however, the terrible figure of Herod the Great (73 BC – 4 BC) linked to the killing of innocents appeared in his place. Jealous of his power, he heard that a child-king was born in his kingdom, Judea. And he ordered the slaughter of all children less than two years old. Then, some of the most suffering words of the whole Bible were heard: ” In Ramah a voice, moaning and much weeping was heard: it is Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they no longer exist ” (Mt 2 18).

This story of the murder of innocents continues otherwise. The ultra-capitalist policies imposed by the current government, taking away rights, lowering wages, cutting social benefits such as health, education, security, pensions, and freezing for the next 20 years the possibilities for development have resulted in a perverse and slow killing of innocent of the great poor majority of our country.

Lawmakers know the lethal consequences of the decision to consider the market more important than people. Within a few years we will have a class of super-rich (according to IPEA, now they are 1,440 thus 0.05% of the population), a middleclass with fear of losing their status and millions of poor and outcasts that went from poverty to misery. This also means hunger in children, who die from malnutrition and completely preventable diseases, older people who cannot get their remedies or access to public health, condemned to die prematurely. This massacre has its responsible actors: many of the current legislators of the “PEC death” can not absolve themselves of the guilt of being the current Herod of the Brazilian people.

The elites of money and privileges managed to return. Supported by corrupt parliamentarians, turning their backs on the people and playing deaf to the cries of the street, through a coalition of forces formed by vigilante judges, the Public Ministry, the Military Police and the Judicial and the corporate and reactionary communication media, backed by the imperial power interested in our wealth, they forged the resignation of president Rousseff. The actual engine of the coup d’état were the financial capital, banks and rent-seekers (not affected by the policies of fiscal adjustment).

The political scientist Jesse Souza Rightly denounces: Brazil is the stage of a dispute between two projects: the dream of a large and thriving country for the majority and the reality of a preying elite that despoils everybody’s work and loots the riches of the country for the benefit of half a dozen pockets. Money elite commands; just for the simple fact of being able to “buy” all the other elites (FSP 16/04/2016).

Sadness is to realize that this process of pillaging is a consequence of the policy of reconciling former money-owners among themselves and with the governments, which dates from the time of the Colony and Independence. Lula-Dilma failed or did not know how to overcome the shrewd art of this ruling minority which under the pretext of governance seeks reconciliation among each other and with the rulers, granting some benefits to people but at the price of keeping untouched the nature of their process of wealth accumulation at exceptionally high levels.

Historian Jose Honorio Rodrigues, who thoroughly studied the reconciliation of classes always turning their back to the people, rightly says: national leadership, in its successive generations, was always reformist, elitist, and personalistic … The art of stealing is noble and ancient, practiced by those minorities and not by the people. People does not steal, it is stolen … People are friendly, the oligarchy is cruel and merciless …; the big success of Brazil’s history is its people and the great disappointment are its leaders (conciliação e Reforma no Brasil , 1965. pp.114 119).

We are living a repeat of this evil tradition, from which we will never free ourselves without strengthening an anti-power, coming from below, able to topple these corrupt elite and establish another type of State, with other type of republican politics, where the common good is superimposed on the particular and corporate good.

Christmas this year is a Christmas under the sign of Herod. However, we believe that the Divine Child is the liberating Messiah and the Star is generous to show us better ways.

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