The corruption of intelligence

In The Corruption of Intelligence , a work that goes against the grain of conventional political analysis, Flávio Gordon engages in an in-depth investigation to explain, with clarity and precision, the current Brazilian crisis.

Over the past decade, Brazilians have been subjected to an unprecedented process of endemic and institutionalized corruption. Between mensalão and petrolão scandals, the nation watched in amazement as corrupt individuals and those who corrupted them described, in banal tones, some of the schemes that enabled the embezzlement of billions of dollars from public coffers and, more than that, the transformation of the state and its institutions into instruments useful to the most sordid partisan interests.

The Brazil that the Workers' Party (PT) created is dangerous, ugly, miserable, and unsustainable. But what made all this possible? What enabled figures like Lula and Dilma Rousseff to come to power? What so profoundly numbed the soul of Brazilian society that it allowed itself to be represented by such crude and malformed figures? What are the deeper roots of the crisis afflicting the nation? And what was the role of Brazilian intellectuals in all of this?

These are some of the questions anthropologist Flávio Gordon seeks to answer with enviable courage and brilliance in this vigorous investigation. Among the many books that seek to explain the current Brazilian crisis, none has the clarity, precision, and explanatory power found in *The Corruption of Intelligence*.