Bolsonaro and the peril of permanent outrage

Another week, another institutional crisis in Brazil, once again unlikely to result in the impeachment of Jair Bolsonaro. The latest scandal was triggered by footage of an April cabinet meeting that reportedly shows Mr. Bolsonaro promising to change the heads of the Federal Police before the force could “f*** [his] family over.” According to people who watched the video, cabinet members also joined in, voicing their violent fantasies of imprisoning Supreme Court justices and governors who are critical of the Bolsonaro administration.

Despite this latest crisis and the 30-plus impeachment requests sitting on the desk of House Speaker Rodrigo Maia, it is highly unlikely that Mr. Bolsonaro will be forced out of office anytime soon.

As I wrote for The Brazilian Report last week, Brazil’s recurring absurdist crises have led to a news cycle that is part ‘Groundhog Day’, part ‘Friday the 13th’: a cheap slasher flick stuck in the same perpetual time loop. Recent polls confirm this. Despite Brazil passing 13,000 deaths and registering over 10,000 new cases per day, only 42 percent of Brazilians believe the government is doing a bad job handling the pandemic— and around 52 percent figure that the administration is actually doing O.K. Over 1,000 of Brazil’s 5,570 cities have recorded deaths as a result of the virus. Due to a lack of testing, the true number of cases in the country is believed to be up to 15 times higher than official figures.

Even if Mr. Bolsonaro’s approval figures are dwindling, his core base is still firmly behind him. Rather than a sense of collective outrage against...