America, beacon of anti-democracy It only took two years. A copycat coup was virtually inevitable (Associated Press): Supporters of former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro who refuse to accept his election defeat stormed Congress, the Supreme Court and presidential palace Sunday, a week after the inauguration of his leftist rival, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Thousands of demonstrators bypassed security barricades, climbed on roofs, smashed windows and invaded all three buildings, which were believed to be largely vacant on the weekend. Some of the demonstrators called for a military intervention to either restore the far-right Bolsonaro to power or oust Lula from the presidency. Regional leaders reacted angrily, one calling the insurrection a “cowardly and vile attack on democracy.” Where did Brazilian extremists get such ideas? The events in the Southern Hemisphere left a feeling in the pit of my stomach hauntingly familiar from two years ago on Jan. 6. Strongmen fanboys are a plague. What’s more unsettling is that the plague is spreading. And it’s not as if no one saw this coming in Brazil. Ruth Ben-Ghiat (“Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present“) warned that coups “travel internationally” less than a month ago: Jan. 6 has been studied by authoritarians abroad who see it as a blueprint for armed actions. [Steve] Bannon, an advisor to Jair Bolsonaro, hoped that Brazil (where a 1964 coup led to two decades of military dictatorship) would experience its own Jan. 6 after Bolsonaro’s loss to Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. Ben-Ghiat warned that “hard-core Bolsonaro…