Aaron M. Fortkamp

I draw the line at Duterte. 

The Atlantic says Trump is overlooking “humanitarian violations” to “further long-term U.S. interests” by reaching out to this demented dictator. There are multiple inaccuracies with that characterization. What Duterte has done is create a systematic means of executing of the poor. If you are a drug addict, or if someone accuses you of being a drug addict, the president of the Philippines has encouraged your neighbors to gather together and murder you. Calling that a humanitarian violation is like calling the Holocaust an inconvenient detainment. 

Second, confusing Trump’s interests with the interests of the U.S. is disgusting. At best you might say he represents the interests of the U.S. billionaire class, but that’s the thing about billionaires. They don’t give a shit about other billionaires. That’s not how you become a billionaire. That’s not how you remain a billionaire. There is not a billionaire on the planet looking to make things easier for other billionaires. Their interests are their own. Trump has no agenda but his own.

Third, please stop giving this man the credit of foresight. His in-the-moment reactions and decisions are nothing more than that. He doesn’t want to reach out to this evil fuck because of any sort of strategy. He has no plan. He ran for president for over a year without knowing what being president meant, without knowing what you have to do, without knowing it might be difficult, without understanding he might be criticized or questioned, or that his ridiculous suggestions regarding spending and policy might be met with any sort of opposition. I doubt he even understands the term “extrajudicial killing.” What he did understand, when he heard about the man probably literally today, is that he complemented Trump. So he called him up. Duterte said “Poor people, am I right?” and Trump said “That’s what I’M saying!” and they hit it off. That’s all that happened. 

You don’t get to stand behind this man anymore. That’s it. You’re done. Your best argument is to agree with me, that he has no idea what Duterte has done, who he is and the murderous power sickness he is infected with. In which case he is UNFIT TO BE OUR PRESIDENT. 

If you don’t agree with me, if you believe he recognizes and understands what is happening to the dopesick impoverished on the other side of the planet, that they are being slaughtered, victims of a nationwide mob mentality, then you are saying that with his phone call today our president just endorsed genocide. Because even if Duterte is right, even if the drug addicts, the pushers, the dealers, are the sole cause of all of the Philippines’ problems, even if life would be all roses and orgies for every sober John Punctual and Sally Taxpayer if not for those lousy drug addicts, you still do not get to solve that problem by lynch mobs and public executions. They find the bodies in the street. Heads entombed in layers of packing tape, masking tape. Stabbed to death. Hastily scrawled cardboard signs left near the corpses, labeling the body as a drug dealer, a criminal. The warning phrase “Don’t be like him.”

Don’t be like him? What, dead? Suffocated, stabbed to death? Sure, okay, I’d like to avoid that if I could. Is it enough to simply stay off drugs? Can I voice a dissenting opinion? Can I vote for somebody else? What do you mean I’m ‘starting to sound a lot like a drug dealer’?

If you still support this man, unconditionally, which is seemingly the only way Trump supporters come. If you are still on his team. I hate to be binary but it really does come down to this. You are either A) as stupid as he is, or B) a GIANT piece of shit, and because my line has been crossed, if you insist on defending him to me, even after I point out to you these facts, I will call you, to your face, either A or B, and I will give you the finger as hard and as loud as I possibly can.

Well, not A. I won’t curse your soul if you’re only group A, I’ll just blame your genetics and your education and call it a wash. But if it’s B, or if it’s A and B, then fuck you. I’m serious. I’m done with it. I’m done pretending there are shades of gray, here. You don’t get to defend freelance murder squads, so just go gnaw on a pile of dicks in the corner for a while and let the people with eyes steer the ship for a while, okay?