My favorite commenter is the most intelligent, most educated one: Brazilian Mutt from South America. He has helped me more than he knows. I’d like to spend a post going over what I’ve gleaned of his political leanings; where he’s wrong, and where he’s right, and why.
The Brazilian Mutt is an internet writer by day who crafts fodder for the masses. By night he does his own thing, writing deeply dense posts that quote many of the deepest thinkers on the planet. Everything he does by day is corporate, official, approved. By night he is a renegade, charting his own path. I like the renegade Brazilian Mutt better.
To the Brazilian Mutt, the common man is important and must not be abused. Social justice is not just a phrase, it is something to live by. War is terrible and corporations and the profit motive suspect. Do you see where this is going?
To understand the man, it helps to contrast him to me, Greg Nikolic. I have no problem with war. Rape and the destruction of villages don’t bother me in the slightest. I love the mighty transnational corporation and its iron stranglehold on the world economy. Social justice is a bullshit term for weak minds to run their gabbling hearts to. The common man is worthless; only the elite counts.
If all this is true, you ask, then why do you like the Brazilian Mutt so much?
There are many reasons for me to groove on him. For one, he has an integrated worldview that makes sense. Most people pick bits and pieces from here and there in what they believe. Like a smart medieval cardinal in the Church — say Cardinal Richelieu of France — Brazilian Mutt’s views all tie together and reinforce one another. His opinion castle is an impenetrable edifice. I could never convince him, for example, that there’s nothing wrong with war. He would recoil with horror at the rape of innocent females. But he values my opinion. Between the two of us, I am the realist, he is the dreamer. I am grounded in the basics of life; he soars for the sky.
Other reasons to appreciate him: he is strong, very strong. I am an admirer and lover of strength in many forms. One of the reasons I despite the Leftist control of society in the West is that they’re fundamentally weak men and women, using television and the media as an artificial prop to get their way. Brazilian Mutt is different. He has an exhausting mental job, and yet he forces himself to write long, detailed posts on the most highly erudite of subjects by sheer willpower. Most people are not like him and would not appreciate his goodness, but he brushes that off and surges onward.
Another reason I like him is that he listens to me and takes my positions very seriously. He doesn’t just dismiss me as a useless right-winger (which I am not) but instead absorbs some of my vibe and lets it reflect in his website. This means he is flexible. We had a fight once where he almost banned me, because we got off to a rocky start. We were being too negative and harshly dismissive of one another (something women never do; the female inferiors love to get along at all costs and kiss ass — I call it pussy patting) and something broke. We took intellectual disagreement as a sign to hate one another. Now we get along. It helped that I apologized to him in a long post and pushed him to continue engaging with me. I didn’t give up on him. Everyone wants to be valued in some sense, and it is wonderful to be needed. Mutt sensed that from me and forgave me my past transgressions. Since then, when we have disagreed, we have done so without hellfire and damnation from the other. And our disagreements have taken on more profound aspects.
Perhaps the final reason I like him is that he is a true writer. True writers are incredibly rare. There are paid writers walking the world who are not true writers. Stephen King is a true, born writer. Stephanie Meyer of Twilight fame is not. The Brazilian Mutt is a genuine user of words and lover of the form, with so much of his life going to its production.
When one looks at the Mutt’s progressive ideology, one finds that it has holes in it. It doesn’t explain exactly what will replace the capitalism that he hates so much. An objective observer would conclude that nothing in the world, economically, has really worked except capitalism. Capitalism allows the best to access the tools of technology in society and to make something of them. This is done out of greed, and a desire to better oneself, but it has widespread social benefits. Yes, some people are left out of the circle of goodness, the weak, the aged, the unskilled, but for the majority in regions like North America and Europe capitalism works wonders.
The key point about capitalism is that all manner of cooperative work has been tried to replace the greed motive and all have failed miserably. The best simply will not work unless it benefits them. Some thinkers try to harness the best and the capitalist regime and make it serve their purposes. They are foolish. The farthest you can go is to have an equitable tax system that plows corporate and personal wealth partially into social programs like education and the social safety net, not to mention infrastructure construction.
The other thing The Brazilian Mutt doesn’t get is that he is not really “one of the people.” This was true of the Communists of Russia too. Lenin was frustrated that the peasants didn’t fall under the sway of his ideological banner. They were motionless like a sack of potatoes. Brazilian Mutt has a post about “the pen and the hoe” where the lawyer’s tool and the farmer’s tool have a dialogue with one another. Mutt supports the farmer’s tool. But why? The fact is the farmer would categorize him as one of the pen, now and forever. The farmer would be suspicious of and bewildered by his long, educated posts referencing Nietzsche and Marshall McLuhan. He would not invite him to his table. When the poor workers sang their songs and had their festivals in their groups, he would be excluded. And yet he continues to devote his powers to their cause.
The Brazilian Mutt is also wrong about the intrinsic value of people. The fact is, most people are disposable. There are nihilists who argue that we all are disposable. I don’t think this is true. I think the elite exists in a status of importance and should be sheltered and protected. The elite is drawn from a high stature of the mind. To save one university professor it is worth it to sacrifice one hundred minimum wage retail workers behind the counter, or more. The Brazilian Mutt would never agree with this calculus, but it is manifestly true.
The Brazilian Mutt’s biggest crime is his failure to see himself as a genius and to act accordingly. For some bizarre reason, he doesn’t believe in bearers of high genetic quality. I, Greg Nikolic, am the offspring of two highly intelligent parents of European descent. My father was a nuclear engineer and my mother started her own business. The Brazilian Mutt is the same. He pretends that he’s just a guy, but that is a form of blinkered glasses shielding him from the greatly positive reality that he is the winner of life.
You can read more about the Brazilian Mutt at thebrazilianmutt.wordpress.com and he would appreciate it if you left comments.
Dark Sport 
Hello, Greg.
I read your article about me on the bus, coming back from a swim, and I have to say, it made me laugh and think. It’s funny that you see me as a winner because you don’t know the full story. There are a lot of details about me that you don’t know.
For starters, I’m 1.80m tall and weigh over 100 kilos. I’m missing three teeth, two of them right in the front, so I avoid a full smile. I’m 31 years old and have never completed a university degree, even though I started five times, including once by distance learning.
I come from a relatively successful family, people who genuinely “won” at life. My father is a labor and social security lawyer who made a lot of money and has a large estate. My mother was a career public servant. But my story isn’t theirs.
I never finished college because I got involved with the student movement and also started using drugs, especially alcohol and marijuana. My family institutionalized me twice in two years, once in 2015 and again in 2016. The first time, I went in manic after a physical fight with my dad and came out completely depressed, planning to end it all with a gun at my father’s house. It was thanks to my brother that I reconnected with myself.
The second time I was institutionalized, in 2016, it was because I had delusions that I was building an app that would change the world and make me a billionaire. That was during the Rio Olympics. I wanted to be in Rio, but I was committed. That time was more tense. My father couldn’t live with me. I tried to escape the clinic setting fire to a blanket in the bathroom, right under the showerhead. The plan obviously failed, and I was pinned down by group of eight, given injections, and transferred to another clinic.
All of that was almost 10 years ago. I’ve been stable ever since. I started another degree (journalism this time), but I didn’t finish it either. However, I found a job where I met my wife. I’m very happy with her and in that sense, I guess you could call me a winner. Today, I work as a commercial writer. I live in my own house (which I got with my father’s help, not through my own hard work) and am trying to find a way to make money from my writing.
You found it interesting that I don’t write “commercial things.” That’s the exact same criticism my parents, especially my father, had for me. It’s one of the reasons we had so much conflict. My father chose, and still chooses every day, ignorance. He says it’s better to be ignorant and happy than intelligent and sad. This stems from a trauma he had with his own father, my grandfather, from whom I owe my middle and last name (Alfons Steuck). Today, he is ignorant and miserable, but he can’t see it because of all the money and prosperity surrounding him.
I’m not like him. I never was. He couldn’t understand me and was afraid of losing me to the world, so he had me institutionalized. I understand it was an act of love, but that only serves to show me that love can be a violent thing. Very violent indeed.
Your article was funny because despite having a job, my own house, and earning more than a good part of the Brazilian population, I’m not a winner. I have all the physical flaws I mentioned, I’ve never completed a degree, and I was committed twice. I’m a loser. A failure. But I’m going to change that. There’s a short story of mine on my blog called “It All Begins With a Fall”. I printed 50 copies of it in A5 format, like a newspaper gazette, and distributed them in my neighborhood. The pulbication is called “O Último Folhetim” (The Last Serial). My plan is to print another 500, maybe even 1000 copies, and hand them out all over the city. I’m going to follow the lead of my heroes like Paulo Leminski, Chacal, and Ferrez and the entire “marginal literature” and “marginal poetry” movement. I’m going to dare to act (Agere Aude).
So, finally, I want to say to you: Thank you!
Your comments and your article made me see that my writing has value. Not a commercial value, but a real one. One that my parents can’t see, and one the market could see, but that I refuse to be scammed by. I had an offer to publish my horror novel, “The Wrath of Amara,” but I turned it down because the publisher seemed like a fraud who makes authors pay for everything – I don’t have that kind of money to waste.
What you see as my weakness (my non-commercial nature) is actually my greatest strength. My past, my failures, my brokenness, all of it gives me the authenticity that you, by your own admission, lack. You say that true successful authors are jaded and cynical. I believe the opposite is true: the greatest writers are those who, despite everything, refuse to become jaded, who refuse to be indifferent. They retain their ability to connect, to feel, and to tell a story thats a genuine reflection and diffraction of life.
You described yourself as a “bad man” who will succeed, but I have to wonder if that’s an artistic choice, a persona you’ve adopted to face a brutal world. The honesty in your comments, the pure rawness with which you express yourself, suggests something else. I believe your real strength isn’t in playing a part, but in the parts of you that you’ve dared to show. My path is to find truth and dignity in what you and my father would call weakness. It’s a risk, but it’s the only way I know how to be. I laid all of this out not to offend you, but as an act of trust. I believe this conversation, even with our vast differences, is proving that a genuine connection is far more valuable than any performance we can put on.
My project, O Último Folhetim, is my going to be my answer to the “American Dream” that you defend and the commercial market that wants to control my work.
It’s an act of dare to act, a genuine, non-monetized attempt to connect with people and give them something of value. This is the only type of success that I’m interested in: not the success of money, but the success of meaning.
And in a way, Greg, our dialogue here is also a part of that success. Thank you again for pushing my buttons too. It helps me find my truth.
— Victor
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I delayed responding to this comment because I had other priorities. But I read it alright.
For some strange reason, you seem to be set on minimizing yourself and your accomplishments. Everyone has ups and downs in life, and it is the superior man who improves after the “downs,” as you have.
I’m glad you found a wife. Personally, I see women as vessels for serving men, not as marriage material. The closest I would ever come to getting married is if I could have sex on the side and if marriage
gave me legitimate sons. Otherwise, marriage is a woman’s ritual.
It IS a brutal world. In that we’re in full agreement. And I agree that many of my choices have been made in response to that salient fact. I have had a more difficult life than you — I think you only
have so many downs — and the main reason it’s been more difficult is that I refused to take the road most taken. In accepting a job in the corporate world, you have compromised yourself. If you were
a true artistic visionary, you would live in poverty without a wife and write your screeds and damn the future. That’s the kind of life I’m living, with the exception that I have the ability to write
highly commercial fiction that will sell well. I’m like an intellectual in poverty, but I aim for common success. You do not.
I wonder at your project, O Último Folhetim, because it’s being distributed in a common neighborhood. The average person will give your work a second’s glance and say “bah! literature!” and throw it away.
Until you accept that your appeal is to ELITE READERS ONLY, you are going to be fighting an uphill battle that you can never win. I urge you to reconsider appealing to the average person. He lacks the
intellectual equipment to fathom your depth and beauty. He will only shit on you and demand more Spider-Man and more oral sex pornography on his computer. Give it up. Write for the small minority who
can appreciate you. DON’T distribute to your neighborhood. With luck, one copy in a hundred will find a mildly receptive reader, and even that may not be possible.
Victor, we are not so different. Our politics may not overlap much, but AS MEN we are quite similar. We take risks. We are both true writers. We respect the arts. Just because I celebrate being rich and
selling fiction in large quantities doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate literature. Norman Mailer, John Updike, “Love in the Age of Cholera,” Latin American magical realism, “The Infinite Jest” — all these
and more are well worth imbibing and keeping in one’s home library. When I am more stable in my life, I will read more literature. I am capable of understanding and loving it, like you are.
BUT THERE IS THE POINT ABOUT THE WORLD. The world only appreciates vast success — the Twilight books, Harry Potter, Stephen King, John Grisham, the da Vinci Code. Even Michael Connelly isn’t popular enough.
You cannot fight the world, unless you have the raw power to tame it. You do not possess that power. Few individuals do. As such, you have to make allowances for the commercial nature of the world we live in.
I know you are a genius. Your IQ is off the charts. You communicate in English FAR BETTER than 99% of native-born English speakers. That alone is proof of your natural gifts. It is time you start saying to
yourself, “I am Victor, I am a genius, I am superior to the average scumbag Brazilian, I will reach out to an international audience of like-minded MALE intellectuals (females have no gift for literature;
they’re garbage), I will tailor my approach so that the best of men can see that I have something to say.”
THINK ABOUT IT, Vic. Don’t give up.
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Greg,
I delayed responding, because your comment forces a real reckoning.
First, regarding your difficult life: I don’t doubt it for a second. When I read about your struggles, I don’t automatically assume you’ve lived an easy life simply because you’re in the First World. I can only imagine the kind of difficulties you’ve faced, and I truly regret that your path has been so hard. I hope you can tell more of your story.
My entire journey of failure and recovery, on the other hand, is predicated on a truth you seem to overlook: privilege. I was afforded the luxury of failure because I was born into a financially secure family. Had my circumstances been different, had my family lacked resources, or had I been perceived as a Black man in this city, my “downs” likely would’ve led to a far more definitive, darker outcome. I might not even be alive, much less writing complex posts in English. My recovery isn’t a testament to my supposed superiority, vut a testament to my social safety net.
Second, regarding women: I have to push back hard on misogyny. Dismissing 50% of the population as “garbage” with “no gift for literature” is poor strategy, even by your own capitalist standards. You prioritize commercial success, yet you preach alienating half of your potential global audience. If your contempt for women is just a performance, it’s a tired one. If it’s genuine, it simply proves that prejudice is fundamentally unintelligent and self-defeating.
Finally, the “O Último Folhetim” project. You dismiss it, urging me to write for the elite, but you entirely miss the point of the act. You claim my work will be thrown away, yet I’ve already distributed the first 100 copies. People in my neighborhood engaged with the story, they talked to me, and they liked it. Because the story speaks directly to our city. It’s about and araucária (a Southern pine), the symbol of Curitiba (the name “Curitiba” means “Many Pines”), with references to local culture, the pavement designs, and even Jaime Lerner. It’s a subversive document, yes, but fundamentally, it’s a declaration of love for the city.
This is not a fool’s errand. This is not me “hoping” for success. I know this will work. It won’t be the kind of success measured in royalty checks, but in meaning, connection, and historical resonance. I will find my audience. I will make my history. As soon as I get paid next month, I’m printing 500 more copies and getting them out there.
You’re right, Greg, the world is brutal. But you choose cynicism as armor; I choose vulnerability and connection as my weapon. It might not tame the world, but it makes the world worth fighting for.
Thank you again for your relentless pushback. It forces me to define my truth.
— Victor
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Putin was an abused child recruited and trained by the KGB. He likes war and destruction. He wants to control what he couldn’t as a child. The revenge never stops but it is displaced. Most of those under the rubble had nothing to do with his childhood. Revenge is his food. He is in danger of becoming obese in evil. Most systems need to be balanced with feedback. Otherwise they collapse.
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