Disney for Dictators

Today on TAP: Bolsonaro flees Brazil for Florida.

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“Former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro Hunkers Down in Orlando as Successor Takes Office” —News item

Bem-vindo a Orlando, Presidente Bolsonaro!

We are delighted that you have chosen our theme park, Magic Kingdom for Lapsed Latino Dictators, for your initial exile. We hope that your stay here is a pleasant one, pending your extradition back to Brazil.

Here you will find informative exhibitions, fun adventure rides, and other fantasies evocative of South American ditaduras. The centerpiece of our theme park is an artificial lake, the Lago Fantástico, where you can take a short boat ride and visit all the “countries” of Latin America, enjoy their cuisine, and reminisce about your own regime and other strongmen.

At each port of call, you will find congenial exhibits, valorizing the regimes of Augusto Pinochet in Chile, Alberto Fujimori in Peru, and the Argentine junta, among others, and of course the 21 years of military dictatorship in your own Brazil. We also offer a unique museum on Nazi exiles in South America and the regimes that helped them avoid detection.

There is a separate center documenting the economic benefits of free-market corruption. Be sure to view the Milton Friedman Room.

Our premier adventure ride is a trip up the “Amazon,” where you will find friendly native peoples saluting your support for clear-cutting and tribal removals. And if you like chills and spills, you will love the Runaway COVID Train roller coaster.

Here in Orlando, you will meet other alumni of friendly regimes. Currently, we have in residence more than 100 former generals, ex-senior officials of the secret police, and other top officials in exile here in friendly Florida, as well as some of their CIA handlers.

We anticipate a visit from fellow Floridian Donald Trump. If he ever loses Mar-a-Lago, he is welcome to reside here, as an honorary failed caudillo.

We hope that someday, we will add a monument to your own regime, including its COVID fiasco, rising unemployment, widening inequality, extensive corruption, attempts to rig the vote, and the military’s failure to support a coup to keep you in office.

In the meantime, please enjoy all the fantasies, and imagine how much more you might have accomplished if you hadn’t lost your nerve, accepted the election results, and fled.

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