A President's Moral Collapse

I've reached a point where I can no longer stomach the kind of intellectual dishonesty that passes for political discourse in Brazil. When President Lula stood in Jakarta and declared that drug traffickers are "victims of users", he didn't just make a political gaffe or stumble over his words. He revealed something far more sinister: a complete moral collapse at the highest levels of Brazilian leadership, a willingness to excuse the inexcusable, and a contempt for the millions of Brazilians who live in terror of the criminals his words defend.

Let me be brutally clear about what we're dealing with here. Drug traffickers are not misunderstood entrepreneurs. They're not victims of circumstance forced into regrettable choices. They are predators who have chosen violence, chosen to destroy communities, chosen to profit from human misery. When Lula calls these monsters "victims," he spits in the face of every mother who has buried a child caught in crossfire, every shopkeeper forced to pay extortion, every resident of a favela who can't let their kids play outside because armed thugs control the streets.

The sheer audacity of this statement takes my breath away. We're talking about organizations that recruit children as young as ten to work as lookouts and soldiers. We're talking about criminals who torture and execute rivals, sometimes livestreaming the murders as warnings. We're talking about traffickers who have turned entire neighborhoods into war zones where ambulances won't enter and police only dare to go in armored vehicles. And Lula wants us to feel sorry for them? Because drug users exist? This isn't compassion, but moral insanity.

I'm tired of this endless coddling of criminals that has infected Brazilian politics like a disease. There's this perverse intellectual fashion among the leftist elite where every criminal is really just a victim of society, where personal responsibility doesn't exist, where the only real villain is "the system". It's comfortable thinking for people who live in gated communities with private security, who never have to worry about stray bullets or drug-dealing operations on their street corners. For the rest of us living in reality, this philosophical nonsense is a luxury we can't afford.

Let's talk about who the real victims are, shall we? The real victims are the thousands of Brazilians murdered every year in drug-related violence. The real victims are the children who grow up without fathers because traffickers killed them over territory disputes. The real victims are the honest workers who can't build businesses in their own neighborhoods because criminals demand protection money or simply take over commercial properties. The real victims are the young people who have their futures destroyed because traffickers deliberately got them addicted to poison for profit.

But according to our president, the guys orchestrating all this carnage are the real sufferers here. The poor cartel bosses, just trying to make a living, victimized by the terrible scourge of people wanting to buy drugs. Do you hear how absolutely deranged this sounds? This is the kind of backwards moral reasoning that would make George Orwell weep. War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Murderers are victims.

And before anyone tries the usual "he misspoke" defense, let me stop you right there. Lula tried to walk it back within hours, calling it a "poorly placed phrase." You know what that tells me? It tells me he said exactly what he believes, and only reversed himself when the political blowback hit. Politicians don't "poorly place phrases" about fundamental questions of right and wrong. Either you understand that traffickers bear responsibility for their actions, or you don't. There's no middle ground here, no room for nuance.

The context makes it even worse. Lula was criticizing Trump's anti-narcotics operations, arguing that the U.S. should focus on reducing consumption instead of fighting traffickers. Fine, you want to debate whether military operations are the right approach? Have that debate. But you don't need to transform organized criminals into martyrs to make an argument about policy. The fact that Lula apparently cannot separate these two things shows how deeply corrupted his thinking has become.

This is what decades of leftist apologetics for crime have produced: a president who genuinely seems to believe that the real problem isn't the guy pulling the trigger, but the social forces that put the gun in his hand. It's the same tired playbook that has failed everywhere it's been tried. Don't hold criminals accountable; instead, try to address "root causes". Don't lock up violent offenders; give them therapy and job training. Don't worry about victims' rights; focus on the humanity of perpetrators.

You know what happens with this approach? Exactly what we're seeing in Brazil right now. Crime rates that would horrify a war zone. Cities where certain areas are effectively under criminal control, not government authority. A homicide rate that has made Brazil one of the most violent countries on Earth. And through it all, our enlightened political class lectures us about the importance of understanding and compassion for the people literally murdering us.

I'm done with this. I'm done pretending that everyone deserves infinite second chances, that we need to understand the criminal's perspective, that harsh punishment is somehow the real injustice. The real injustice is what's being done to ordinary Brazilians who just want to live without fear, who want their kids to make it home from school safely, who want to run a business without being extorted or killed.

The "lock them up or take them out" approach that movements like MBL advocate for isn't extremism - it's common sense that has been pathologized by academics and politicians who don't live with the consequences of their soft-on-crime policies. When someone joins a drug trafficking organization, when they arm themselves, when they participate in violence and intimidation, they have made a choice to become enemies of civilized society. At that point, society has not just the right but the obligation to remove them from circulation, permanently if necessary.

Does this sound harsh? Good. It should. Because the alternative is what we have now: a country where criminals operate with impunity, where they know the worst they'll face is a few years in prison that probably won't even be served, where they can continue running operations from inside jail cells. The current system treats violent crime as a minor inconvenience rather than the existential threat it actually represents.

And let's address the elephant in the room: the people making excuses for criminals are never the ones suffering from crime. Lula lives surrounded by armed security. His family doesn't worry about traffickers controlling their neighborhood. When he wants to go somewhere, he doesn't have to calculate routes to avoid gang territories. The politicians, academics, and activists who endlessly defend criminals all share this same insulation from consequences.

Meanwhile, the working-class Brazilians who actually live in affected communities, who see the violence firsthand, who lose loved ones to this scourge - they overwhelmingly support tough-on-crime policies. They're the ones begging for more police presence, for harsher sentences, for politicians who will actually protect them instead of making excuses for their tormentors. But their voices get ignored because they don't fit the narrative, because acknowledging their suffering would require admitting that the soft-on-crime approach has been a catastrophic failure.

The drug trade isn't some abstract economic phenomenon driven by impersonal market forces. It's a choice made by individuals who decide that their profit matters more than other people's lives. The young man who joins a trafficking organization knows what he's signing up for. He knows he'll be terrorizing his own community. He knows he'll likely kill or be killed. He makes that choice anyway because the money is good and the risk of real consequences is low.

That's what needs to change. The risk-reward calculation has to shift dramatically. When joining a criminal organization means virtually certain death or life imprisonment with no possibility of release, suddenly the recruits dry up. When society demonstrates through action, not just words, that it values innocent lives infinitely more than criminal lives, the crime rate drops. We've seen this work in countries that take crime seriously. We've seen it fail in countries that treat criminals like wayward children who just need a stern talking-to.

Lula's statement reveals the bankruptcy not just of his personal moral compass, but of an entire political philosophy that has dominated Brazilian governance for too long. This philosophy says that society is always to blame, never the individual. That criminals are products of their environment, not moral agents making choices. That the real violence is poverty and inequality, not the actual murders happening in our streets.

I reject this completely. Yes, poverty and lack of opportunity are problems that need addressing. But you know what? Plenty of poor people don't become drug traffickers. Millions of Brazilians face hardship without deciding to profit from others' destruction. Poverty doesn't put a gun in someone's hand - they pick it up themselves. And when they do, when they choose to become predators, they forfeit their claim to society's compassion.

The proper response to organized crime isn't understanding and rehabilitation programs. It's overwhelming force. It's making the cost of criminal activity so high that rational people won't choose it. It's protecting innocent citizens even if that means putting criminals in the ground. This isn't bloodthirstiness - it's basic mathematics. Either criminals fear the state, or citizens fear the criminals. There's no third option where everyone holds hands and sings songs.

Every time a politician like Lula makes excuses for criminals, every time the justice system gives a light sentence to a violent offender, every time we prioritize the "rights" of predators over the safety of their prey, we're making a choice about what kind of society we want. We're saying that we value criminal lives more than law-abiding lives. We're telling violent thugs that we don't really have the stomach to stop them.

And they believe us. Why wouldn't they? They watch as career criminals rack up dozens of arrests and convictions without facing serious consequences. They see politicians bend over backwards to excuse and explain away their behavior. They understand, even if our political class doesn't, that there's no real deterrent operating here.

This has to end. The endless tolerance, the infinite second chances, the compassion for the guilty that somehow never extends to the innocent - it all has to stop. We need leaders who understand that the state's first duty is protecting citizens from violence, not protecting violent criminals from consequences. We need a justice system that treats violent crime as the ultimate betrayal of the social contract, deserving of ultimate punishment.

What we don't need is a president who calls traffickers victims while the bodies pile up in Brazilian streets. What we don't need is more hand-wringing about the socioeconomic factors that supposedly forced criminals into their lifestyle choices. What we don't need is another politician who thinks the real problem is that we're not understanding enough of the people actively destroying our country.

Lula's statement wasn't just offensive - it was a declaration of whose side he's on. And it's not the side of the millions of Brazilians living in fear. It's not the side of the victims of violence, past and present. It's the side of the perpetrators, the predators, the destroyers of communities and lives.

I'm tired of being told that my desire to see criminals face serious consequences makes me the extremist. I'm tired of watching politicians prioritize the welfare of murderers over the safety of citizens. I'm tired of a system that treats self-defense and harsh justice as greater evils than the crimes they respond to.

The truth is simple, even if it makes comfortable elites uncomfortable: some people choose to be evil, and when they do, society must choose between protecting them or protecting their victims. There's no world where we can do both. Every resource spent on rehabilitating unrepentant criminals is a resource not spent on protecting potential victims. Every light sentence for a violent offender is an invitation for more violence.

Lula had a choice in that moment in Jakarta. He could have condemned traffickers while arguing for smarter policy approaches. He could have maintained moral clarity while disagreeing with Trump's methods. Instead, he chose to defend the indefensible, to excuse the inexcusable, to call victims those who victimize.

That choice tells us everything we need to know about his priorities and his values. It tells us that when push comes to shove, his sympathies lie with criminals rather than their victims. It tells us that he sees drug lords not as enemies to be destroyed but as unfortunate souls to be pitied.

And that, more than any single policy failure, is why his leadership on this issue is not just inadequate but actively harmful. You cannot fight an enemy you secretly sympathize with. You cannot win a war you don't believe should be fought. And you cannot protect citizens if you're more worried about the wellbeing of the people preying on them.

Brazil needs leaders who understand that civilization requires the capacity for righteous violence against those who would destroy it. We need leaders who lose sleep over victims, not perpetrators. We need leaders who understand that some problems can't be solved with dialogue and understanding, but only with overwhelming force and the will to use it.

What we have instead is a president who thinks drug traffickers are victims.