Excessive vanity can be problematic. People leave traces on social media because they can’t help themselves. They are addicted to exposure, they cannot see themselves a single day without sharing on social media whatever they are doing.
They tell their whereabouts, what they were doing, who they were connected to and when any event in their lives happened. They do it everyday. They have their diary opened for everyone on social media.
If you research Instagram, Twitter or Facebook pages of people extremely active on social media, you can read stories they are telling you for a period of time. However, some stories are not so obvious.
This is a quick story that happened in September 2018 and no one from the Brazilian media seems to have noticed. Eduardo Bolsonaro was not worried about the stabbing of his father, then presidential candidate, Jair Bolsonaro.
Eduardo Bolsonaro, less than 24 hours after the stabbing, was 500 km away from his father who was attacked in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais State. Eduardo was smiley, happily campaigning for his re-election for the National Congress. Eduardo posted on Instagram that in the morning of September 7 he was doing “panfletagem” (leafleting). His father Jair had been stabbed in the afternoon of the day before, the 6th, and had arrived at 15:40h at the emergency room of the local hospital, where he was operated on after 17:00h. The surgery lasted 2 hours. Jair, according to the medical report, had had his intestine perforated and lost two liters of blood. After the surgery he was taken to intensive care. In the following morning, he was transferred by airplane to a large hospital in Sao Paulo city. He stayed hospitalized for 23 days and was discharged on September 29.
Despite the stabbing, Eduardo Bolsonaro kept his agenda the next morning and visited two cities, Arujá and Mogi das Cruzes, in the neighbouring State of Sao Paulo.
In his post from September 7, he didn’t even mention the stabbing of his father. He wrote “Arujá and Mogi. Leafleting this morning in Arujá. Better reception is impossible. Now I am here in Mogi das Cruzes doing my campaign as well”.
Let’s zoom the image and try to find some worry or unhappiness in the Eduardo’s face:
Eduardo Bolsonaro travelled from Mogi das Cruzes to Juiz de Fora after leafleting in the morning of September 7. Interestingly, his father had already left the hospital in Juiz de Fora at 8:25am. Therefore, it seems that Eduardo Bolsonaro only travelled to Juiz de Fora to keep up his campaign, this time with supporters in front of the hospital. It can be heard a bunch of Neanderthals calling him “mito”. He reposted from someone who confirmed that he was in Mogi das Cruzes on September 7.
With the stabbing, Jair’s popularity soared. Just before the stabbing, at the end of August 2018, the polls showed that Jair Bolsonaro would likely receive 19% of the vote. He had only attended one television debate and had failed miserably. 10 days after being discharged from the hospital, and away from all debates, on October 9, he got 46% of the votes in the first turn of the elections. Eduardo Bolsonaro was re-elected for the National Congress and his brother Flavio was elected for the Senate.
Perhaps Eduardo may have left a clue of why he was not worried at all about his father’s health condition. In his Instagram the day before the stabbing, he interacted with the NRA (National Rifle Association) observing his fellow Brazilian NRA member (and possibly the organization’s spokesperson in Brazil, Royce Gracie–as per Eduardo’s own words). Gracie was with Bene Barbosa, the Bolsonaro’s gun guru at Clube de Tiro. 38, coincidently the place where the stabber Adelio Bispo had visited two months before the stabbing.
The NRA was in Brazil, through the eyes of Royce Gracie, closely watching the stabbing of Jair Bolsonaro. Some would say that everything was under control.
