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Brazil Stood Up for Its Democracy. Why Didn’t the U.S.?

The Atlantic
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Julian Zelizer : Brazil 's far-right former President Jair Bolsonaro is charged with a coup d'état.

Zelizer says the charges against Bolsonara sound familiar to Americans , but he says it's not a coincidence.

He says Brazil 's institutions seemed to understand early on that they faced an existential threat from the former president.

The U.S. might have done the same thing.

As recently as 2014 , one would have been hard-pressed to forecast that Brazil ’s institutions would prove more effective than those of the U.S. at protecting democracy.

Maybe Brazilians are just more comfortable with, and accustomed to, holding national leaders to account.

But dictatorship is a much more real menace in Brazil , a country that democratized only in the 1980s .