Update II:
Referring to the Philippine’s presumptive president as “the Filipino Trump,” the Daily Beast reports that Rodrigo Duterte will encourage authorities “to ‘shoot to kill’ those who resist arrest.”
If you resist arrest… you offer a violent resistance, my order to the police or the military is to shoot to kill.” He added, “If there is no fear in the law or attached to the law… it’s useless.” The Philippines abolished capital punishment 10 years ago. “What I would do is urge Congress to restore the death penalty by hanging, especially if you use drugs,” Duterte said
Update I:
As those prone to read the original post have most likely already read it and those who are not inclined to do so will not do so now, it doesn’t hurt to update it with what could be called a “spoiler.” Thus, no alert necessary.
The update headline is “Filipinos Just Elected Rodrigo Duterte, Their Version of Trump, as President.”
According to the author, “While Duterte, like his American analogue Donald Trump, won his race in part because votes were split among a large field of candidates, his supporters are so dedicated that they were willing to overlook remarks about the rape of an Australian missionary that would have doomed another candidate.”
And the author, Robert Mackey, referring to Filipino website Rappler writers Evangelist and Curato, says, “The new tone, [Evangelist and Curato] added, ‘is indignant, often violent, but it is hopeful nonetheless, and it has energized a citizenry once resigned to politics as usual.’”
Now, read the rest (again) and see if the analogy is justified.
Original Post:
An article today at ForeignPolicy.com caught my attention.
It is about a man who wants to be president.
I’ll omit the more gory and vulgar descriptions of this man and of his proposals, but here are some excerpts of how Gina Apostol portrays the wannabe president:
This man jokes about wanting to gang-rape a woman. He vows to kill all drug addicts within six months of his election. If Congress opposes him, he will abolish it…When asked about actual policies, he says they are “secret, secret.”… [he] paints himself a populist, an outsider who will fix all ills… his most salient political platform today is that he will be tough on crime….But ask him about concrete plans for governance that don’t involve fighting crime, and he falls back on his bluster.
But, Apostol says, his “scant policies combined with bravado seem” to be enough for the voters, “with an especially strong showing among the country’s middle class.” “To his fans, his air of a corner drunk — brazen, vulgar, and happily shameless — makes him a truth-teller, not a disaster,” Apostol adds.
But what makes this “brazen, vulgar and happily shameless” man — “with all the grace of a priapic figure of the commedia dell’arte” so popular among the masses?
Apostol explains the phenomenon as being “symptomatic of a traumatized citizenry — an irrational response to a rational rage.”
The society Apostol refers to is the people of the Philippines and the “brazen, vulgar, and happily shameless” presidential candidate is Rodrigo Duterte, “the man likely to be the next president of the long-suffering Philippines.”
If, just for a fleeting moment, the reader thought Apostol’s piece was about another presidential candidate, closer to home, don’t feel bad.
We all make mistakes.
Even the author of “Meet Rodrigo Duterte: The Filipino Trump, Turned Up to 11” says:
[Duterte’s] meteoric rise, coupled with his fascist appeal and anti-establishment persona, bears similarities to the surprisingly successful candidacy of Donald Trump.
Maybe. But are we, the citizenry of these United States, really “a traumatized citizenry” with “an irrational response to a rational rage?”
Give me a break!
