Chavão opens a big door

• Budget 2026: Congress approves 61 billion reais for parliamentary amendments and minimum wage of 1,621 reais

We usually just let our guard down and…there he is, looking graceful and showing the light at the end of the tunnel of what seemed like a dead end or rock bottom. It comes as a quick fix, so you don’t need to hit yourself with a knife, wipe ice, or cry over spilled milk.

• End of 6×1 scale: Topic will ‘definitely’ be on House agenda in 2026, says Motta

I do not want to start a witch hunt or tighten the rope to stop the bleeding of commonplaces which is plaguing the press. You also can’t shoot a rotary machine gun and put the house in order. I don’t have a broad back and I would become a punching bag digging my own grave. But it hurts my soul to open the newspaper, the news site, and read that Centrão is making deals, that the American president was the last card of Bolsonarism, that the government does not want to reach out, that the minister is going to cut the budget and that a certain candidacy could change the situation. It is such a dose of clichés that the reader needs to roll up his sleeves, sweat and, with great difficulty, in fits and starts, try to pass over this low blow of language in silence.

Yes, clichés are a double-edged sword. If we repeat them so much, it’s because they had firepower and, at one point, they were a great goal, a qualitative leap, a masterful touch. But, for Bachelard, they are the inactivity of thought. Flaubert goes so far as to create with them a “collection of banality, mediocrity and pretentious ignorance”. Cláudio Tognolli devoted an entire book to them (“The Society of Clichés”). And MPB philosopher Itamar Assumpção hit the nail on the head when he said that “a buzzword opens big doors.”

It opens up, but it is a thorn in the side of those who write a weekly column, without the time spent in the drawers that real literature deserves. And then there is a politician trying to save his skin, gangs are breaking up, suspicions are gaining ground. Solid evidence appears, there are meteoric rises, many layers and – even García Márquez has not escaped the law of the jungle of trivialization – the announced death of this and that.

Fighting cliché is a big dog fight. Those who have never made a mistake or taken the bait and ended up pushing this commitment to error with their stomach should cast the first stone.

It’s a good idea to stop here before you lose your mind – after all, I have a canopy. No matter how hard I try, my writing is not surgically precise, and stirring up this hornet’s nest won’t stop me from being caught in the act, talking about narrative, knowledge, curation, performance – or the crossovers and intersectionalities that magically throw a wrench into the readability of any text.

Despite the difficulties, giving oneself body and soul to writing is the decisive test for any writer. And it is up to him to defend tooth and nail his right to take up challenges, to break paradigms and not to flee the lines. Even if appealing to the icing on the cake is your coup de grace.