THIS is not what I wanted to be doing for one of the first posts on this new website. I had something different in mind, had actually finished the first rough version of it, but waking up this morning and reading the horrific news out of Minneapolis made it seem rather petty. So much so, in fact, that instead of just setting it aside for a more appropriate time, as I usually do with such things, I discarded it entirely. I don’t think there will be an appropriate time.
For those of you who don’t know what I am talking about, for the second time in about a week, the Trump regime’s domestic terror organization known as Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) murdered a native-born US citizen in cold blood in the city of Minneapolis, where the regime is carrying out a campaign of violent repression aimed at crushing dissent against the Christofascist-Technocrat dictatorship.
The first victim’s name was Renee Good, a 37-year-old mother of three who had just dropped off one of her children at school, and was in the process of trying to get out of the way of the ICE thugs when she was shot inside her vehicle. The second victim’s name was Alex Pretti, a 37-year-old registered nurse employed by the Veterans’ Administration, who was attempting to help a woman being harassed by ICE and who had slipped on the icy street – absolutely no pun intended – as she tried to get out of their way.
There are multiple videos of both murders that completely refute the lies being peddled by the government about the incidents. I shared a couple of them on my Bluesky account this morning, in the interest of preserving the spreading the evidence so that it cannot be completely erased by the regime.
In both cases, the current Federal government has refused to investigate the crimes, and has blocked Minneapolis and Minnesota state authorities from doing so. This is what actually provoked me into writing this piece. In the Pretti case, the Minnesota authorities, knowing that the Feds would try to prevent them from investigating the murder, asked for and obtained a warrant from a court ordering the federal agencies to cooperate, but to no avail. We all should have realized that by now that the rule of law means nothing to the regime, but this to me really put the last nail in that coffin. Law, or even the mere commonly accepted principles of civic order, will not help America now.
Somewhat coincidentally, my column today in The Manila Times addressed the willful abdication by the US of its world leadership, and the breaking, in just a year, of the eight-decade long American-led global order. I wrote it well before the news of the latest ICE atrocity, but it is still relevant. I think it’s a pretty good, but I am my own worst critic, so my opinion doesn’t count. However, a couple of people whose opinions I value very highly also told me it’s pretty good, so I’m willing to go with that. I will post it here in its entirety eventually, probably toward the end of the coming week, but if you would like an earlier read, you can find it here.
On another admittedly pedantic note, something that has been bugging me: I have been seeing a lot of references to ICE as “America’s (or Trump’s) Gestapo,” but, if you’re really going to lean into the Nazi analogies, that is not really accurate. The Gestapo was Hitler’s secret police. ICE is behaving more like the Sturmabteilung (SA), AKA the early Nazi-era Brownshirts, the massive force of political muscle that even Hitler eventually decided was too out-of-control to allow to exist. Calling them the Gestapo is giving them way too much credit. They are violent brutes, nothing more, nothing less. Shockingly and crudely effective brutes, at this point, but brutes nonetheless. If history truly rhymes, what comes after them will be truly frightening.
Anyway, back to the topic at hand.
What infuriates me the most is not the daily atrocities of Trump and his regime, but the utter fecklessness of those who claim to oppose him. You are all trying to play by a rulebook that does not apply to the regime anymore, and the regime is making fools of all of you. The “rule of law” and the courts are not going to help you. Congress is not going to help you. Elections – if there even are elections this year, which only a complete idiot would count on – are not going to help you. Peaceful protest is not going to help you. The fucking “Epstein Files” are not going to help you, and I swear to god, I am going to start blocking people who keep carrying on about that.
Trump, as I said in the aforementioned column, is just an avatar. Yes, he is the most horrible human ever to live and deserves an end like they gave to Mel Gibson at the end of Braveheart, but he is only the face of a sinister and dangerous regime that is the enemy of humanity. It is entirely up to the people of the US to stop it. If you don’t, the rest of the world will have to stop it, and that might mean the end of civilization as we know it.
Two simple words: Shoot back. Fuck your peaceful protests, your calls for general strikes, emailing your Congressman. These people understand one thing, and that’s brutality. They are bullies, and bullies always back down and run home crying to their mamas if you hit back. If you’re at all serious about ending this nightmare, that’s what you have to do.
“But, but…if we do that, Trump will use it as an excuse to invoke the Insurrection Act,” you cry. You cowardly pieces of shit, do you really think he – or rather, the people who pull his strings – even need that excuse at this point? Wake the fuck up. This is not a moment for discussion. This is a moment for Horatius at the Bridge, for the Minutemen on Lexington Green, for the Spartans at Thermopylae. The future of the world, not just the US, depends on what you do next.
Now, I do get a lot of criticism, which is not entirely unfair, which takes the general tone of, “You’re living outside the US, you’re safe from all of this, what do you care, and what right do you have to sound off about it?”
Fair enough. While I love the Philippines, warts and all, and will defend this country to my dying breath if necessary, America is the land of my birth. I believe in the ideals that America once held dear, the ideals that brought my ancestors out of poverty in Europe in the first place at the close of the 19th century. The belief they had, and the generations who came before me had in those ideals made me what I am today, wherever I am. And I will die to defend those, too. Yes, I am fortunate not to be on the front lines of the current war. But I will gladly fight for the side of right in it, in any way I can. If you are brave and willing to stand up against the inhumanity, the greed, the utter stupidity of the ruling dispensation, I am with you all the way. If you’re not, you are my enemy.
What I can do from here is to use my public platform to help to erode the support from outside the US that the murderous Trump regime is becoming increasingly more reliant on to prop itself up. Obviously, I will not go into details about how I will do that, but suffice to say if you are an American or Filipino Trump supporter in this country, or a Filipino supporter of Trump in the US, I have now taken a personal interest in exposing you to the world, and seeing you suffer. In the same vein, I can apply some pressure on this government to stop enabling the Trump regime, whether directly or through quiet acquiescence.
But when it comes right down to it, the heavy lifting has to be done by the Americans in America. Do you have it in you? Right now, I am not confident that you do. I would be happy to be wrong.
Shoot back.
