The crazed, rabid left is back again, this time stabbing and seriously wounding the leading presidential candidate in Brazil, just weeks before the Oct. 7 first round of the election.

According to Reuters:

JUIZ DE FORA, Brazil (Reuters) – The leading candidate in Brazil's presidential election is in serious but stable condition after being stabbed by an assailant at a campaign rally on Thursday, doctors said, pushing an already chaotic campaign into further disarray.

Far-right firebrand Congressman Jair Bolsonaro, a controversial figure who has enraged many Brazilians for years with divisive comments, but has a devout following among conservative voters, could take two months to fully recover and will spend at least a week in the hospital, said Dr. Luiz Henrique Borsato, who operated on the candidate.

"His internal wounds were grave and put the patient's life at risk," Borsato said, adding that a serious challenge now would be preventing an infection that could be caused by the perforation of Bolsonaro's intestines.

Yes, it was a leftist.

And yes, the candidate, Jair Bolsonaro, 63, pretty well parallels President Trump in his rise to power.

Brazil, it turns out, had its equivalent of Barack Obama, in the persona of Luiz Inácio "Lula" da Silva, who, like Obama, came in as someone never before elected – a dark-skinned working man in his case, holding far-left views the press never acknowledged, and disguised as hipsterliness, who shoveled pork to the poor, got rich on the side, and left the broader economy in shambles.  The corruption scandal in Brazil known as the "car wash" (centered on contracts to Brazil's state oil company and a construction company called Odebrecht) hit Brazilians hard and left them disillusioned.  The fall in oil prices (great when times were good and President Obama was asking to be their best customer, but awful when times were bad) hit Brazilians hard, too, given that it gave Brazilians what the Economist called their worst ever recession.  The failure of the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics (remember the green diving pools?) was a psychological blow, as was the recent burning of the national museum in Rio.  There's also the failure of public transport, the rising violence in the streets, the arrogance of the elites, and the monster refugee crisis rolling in from Venezuela, so it's not surprising that the country was in the market for something new and the left was screaming.

It's also important to know that Brazil, isolated from much of Latin America by both its Portuguese language and the vast Amazon jungle, has always felt kind of different, often in good ways.  It is, after all, a country whose jets, the Embraers, are seen on U.S. airline runways.  Its car operations are world-class.  It's also a leader in design and has a vibrant tech sector.  Its health care can be first-rate, curing as it did several Latin American presidents of their cancer.  Had Hugo Chávez taken up Brazil's instead of Cuba's offer of a cure, he would still be alive.  Up until recently, it's been a powerful innovator in deepwater drilling.  The country does have a sense of being special, similar to the U.S., and with the shambles described above, it saw that specialness eclipsed and smothered by the rule of the left.

It's obvious that the country was looking for an outsider – and it found one, in Bolsonaro, whose slogan was "guns up" and who has vowed to wipe out drug-dealers the way President Trump has vowed to halt illegal immigration.  He's also defended the Brazilian military junta of the 1970s and 1980s, which, up until now, with the aid of the Castro propaganda machine, has been painted as completely evil, when in remembered reality, it was a mixed bag.  Bolsonaro's been the frontrunner in Brazil's polls since Aug. 9, and he's very much an outsider, given that he can't even get state money for televised campaign ads and has to do all his campaigning by social media and in person. 

Sound familiar? Check out the social media presence of Bolsonaro on this Economist chart, and note that Trump's social media presence was just as prominent.  Note also that Trump did high-energy in-person rallies during his campaigns as his rival, Hillary Clinton, stumbled around with health problems and ignored warnings from her own successful husband Bill that she had to get to rallies in Wisconsin.

Meanwhile, the left screamed about how unacceptable it all was, and what a clown these rightward populist outsiders were and assumed its rice bowl was safe.  The press, meanwhile, billed the populist candidate as "far right" to create the impression that his views had no currency with sane people.

Sure enough, at its fringes was the equivalent of a Bernie Bro who was ready to kill.  We've seen these people in the U.S., as the little-remarked-upon shooting of leading House rep. Steve Scalise showed.  Somehow, as the leftist press continually warns about the dangers of the "far right," the violence always shows up on the left.  In both the U.S. and Brazilian cases, the violence-perpetrator has been excused from the responsibility of the left, because he was supposedly "insane."

Yet violence is pretty much what the left is about, especially if one can go back to the left's origins, in the French and Russian revolutions.  Couple a will to rule and a belief that all power comes from the state, throw in a "by any means necessary" street attitude, and the crazies come out.

I can't say for sure how the election will come out now.  Will the inability of the badly wounded Bolsonaro to campaign with Trump-style rallies affect the election outcome?  Will it lead to a sympathy vote, which up until now Lula, running for president from jail, has held a monopoly on?  Or will it lead to a stronger response from Brazil's angry voters?

There is one non-parallel worth noting, which may make the outcome of the Brazilian election different from America's: Lula got punished for his crimes.  No one in the Obama administration ever did.  So it could be that the anger will dissipate more easily in Brazil.  On the other hand, the scandals, trauma, and bad economy were far greater than in the U.S.  Also, the trend is our friend these days, and nearly all of Latin America (save Mexico, which nevertheless elected an outsider from the left) has pretty well absorbed the Venezuelan horror and swung rightward.  The winds seem to be blowing in Bolsonaro's direction, but nothing is certain except that this is an election to watch.

What it does show for us in the states is that President Trump is far from physically safe.  Every effort from citizens and law enforcement agencies alike should be mobilized against the crazies who would do him harm, because we know they are out there – especially because (as the Bolsonaro and Scalise cases show) they are on the left.