Aaron M. Fortkamp

It’s been very difficult for me to write, lately. I don’t have anything I want to say. I feel as though I said it to you already, or I tried to say it. Maybe I didn’t say it correctly. Maybe you didn’t hear me correctly.  Maybe no one was listening. 

If you can’t trust the people around you, even one out of two of the people around you, to make the most obvious choice, then what is left to be said.  

The women’s march was a good thing, until it wasn’t, until I saw posts about white feminism. Like bragging about there being no arrests in Washington during the protest was white feminism, and I just can’t, like yes I know the privilege inherent in being able to march unmolested and unarrested but I’ve met a lot of women and a lot of them white and counting among the small hundreds I’ve met quite frankly I’m surprised not one of the women whom I personally know got arrested, because I’ve met several with a fuck-all temperament whom I’d easily believe might succumb to groupthink and join a bunch of other women wanting to see if they could flip a car or not. 

But you can’t be proud of the overall peacefullness and the restraint I’m certain it took some people to remain peaceful. You can’t be proud of the cops who not only kept peace but encouraged it, or at least you’re not supposed to say it, but I will say it, I am proud and frankly staggered that no cop on the beat that day felt personally threatened enough in his own beliefs and politics not to provoke a protestor into getting themselves handcuffed. Like I can’t believe it so much that I don’t believe it, I feel like this has to be a case of internet hearsay, surely someone got arrested somewhere, it’s fucking D.C. ater all. Never mind that this never would have happened with a more black oriented protest. I know that. I am aware of that. But perhaps if a collection of police can figure out a way to keep and encourage peace once, they can learn from thisexperience  and apply some of these lessons to the protests they haven’t kept so in control of, in control during, so that maybe during the next Black Lives Matter event they can do it again.

Can I please celebrate a profound and inspiring moment amongst all this shitshow please. 

Unlike a lot of people I know who are pledging never to quit fighting against facism and tyranny, I remain unconvinced that we deserve much better. We chose this. I mean the majority of American voters did not, but in a way, we chose this. Sure, some of us who saw what was coming spoke up, some volunteered, some tried to persuade, some even canvassed, but most of us did not do enough.  

I saw a reference to the first seven days of the presidency being a “worst case scenario,” but it’s not, it’s only what was bound to happen. So far it’s only been the inevitable. When he sees, when his people see, how much of this initial thrust into fascism they get away with, then the real horrors may begin. Because it’s not really him, you realize, so much as it is a collection of the most cutthroat, backstabbing, power-hungry parasites, using each other like a swarm of rats in a well, placing each other here and there in an attempt to construct themselves a better pathway to the top. 

The problem with this is that it results in a sort of weakest link in the chain scenario. Except, what’s the opposite of that? What I’m talking about is the most heinous and hideous things that even one of them may bring to the table must infect them all. Like for instance I don’t think Trump is racist. Not really. I think he looks down his nose at blacks more than whites, probably, but he doesn’t bear them any bonus ill will, like he doesn’t hate them any more than he hates anyone else who isn’t him. I mean, he definitely hates himself, only not nearly so much as he hates everyone else. He hates his wife, he hates his kids, he hates blacks and whites and Asians and everyone, just everyone. He’s the most miserable human I’ve ever seen. The only things he loves are money and himself and we’ve already covered the fact he also hates himself, so that sum total doesn’t work out too well for him. And he’s long ago realized that money doesn’t bring happiness but he can’t stop himself from lusting for its acquisition, its pointless acquisition, so he’s just a miserable fuck and he really was hoping to lose to have some faith in the future of the country at all, that perhaps he was wrong about life, perhaps money and a loud mouth isn’t all that matters, but he didn’t lose, which means he was right, it IS all that matters, and now he’s going to punish us as best he can for revealing that his revulsion was appropriate and he’ll try his damnedest to get impeached and meanwhile make life hell for everyone who let him down which is everyone, and he doesn’t give enough of a shit to…

Wait, I had a better point, here. The racism thing, yes. There is at least one substantive racist on his staff, some piece of trash he owed a favor to, and now the whole White House has to be racist, too, and so on and so on, like DeVos hates public schools so the administration now hates public schools, that’s what happens when the alliances you make with people are based on business principals and not human principals. Like, even John Boehner and Obama got along and they made deals because they treated each other like humans, but if you treat another person like a business, when you deal with them it’s either a merger or an acquisition and either way you tend to give up some of your own identity in the compromise. 

So, addendum, Trump wasn’t racist, but now he is, because of the deals he’s made, the people he’s dealt with.  

Anyway. I don’t care. Even if something magical should happen now, like the Supreme Court decides Hillary actually won and they ship Trump off to Antarctica to spend the rest of his days comfortable in the knowledge that he was right that the climate isn’t changing, see, because look how cold I am — I don’t care anymore.

It was so easy, America, and you got the question wrong, and I have no pity for you now. Go ahead, push through the pipeline, set fire to the river, nuke Canada, whatever colostomy bomb comes next, it doesn’t matter. Because I believe in evolution, and in humanity I don’t see a species evolved enough to deserve a future.