The article, published on a blog with the title "Opiniões não perdem eleições!" (Opinions don't lose elections!), addresses a curious political theory in São Vicente, according to which an opinion should only exist after passing the electoral filter. The author questions whether whoever loses an election also loses the right to analyze public life, or whether whoever wins thereby receives an infallibility certificate. The central thesis is that elections confer legitimacy to hold office, but not exclusive ownership over opinion.
The article particularly criticizes the phenomenon in which political criticism abandons the subject itself and starts inspecting the private life of the speaker. Income, employment, car, residence, and marital status suddenly become political arguments, in a method that disqualifies the author instead of refuting the idea. The author designates this practice as a "pocket moral inspection."
The text alerts to a fundamental contradiction: if the quality of a proposal depended on the salary of whoever presents it, we would have invented the "salary meritocracy." A healthy public opinion should evaluate arguments by content, coherence, and evidence, not by the economic or family situation of whoever presents them. Transforming economic precarity into proof of intellectual incompetence is described as an escape from debate.
The article concludes that democracy allows everyone to speak without questioning their status, allowing others to then respond and demonstrate the error. When one cannot tear down an idea, one tries to tear down whoever wrote it, but opinions, unlike candidates, do not lose elections.
