The Philippines Shows Us What We 'Have To Lose' By Electing Trump

We don't have to imagine a Trump Administration, we can see it playing out in real time on the other side of the world.

In the Philippines, Duterte has the support of the left. Trump has the support of the right. Crazy is a swing voter.  (Photo by Jes Aznar/Getty Images)

In the Philippines, Duterte has the support of the left. Trump has the support of the right. Crazy is a swing voter. (Photo by Jes Aznar/Getty Images)

While Americans are merely considering electing Donald Trump, the Philippines just went ahead and did it. Rodrigo Duterte was elected on a “law and order,” “war on drugs”
kind of platform that makes Batman sound like a civil libertarian. He’s been president for about seven weeks and, well, people are dying.

The New York Times reports that nearly 1,800 people have been killed in Duterte’s “war on drugs.” In seven weeks! The killings have been carried out by police and vigilantes. That’s regular people just whipped up into a frenzy to go out and kill some drug dealers.

Were all the people killed actually involved in the drug trade? Who knows. Who cares? I’m sure many of them looked like drug dealers, and that’s enough when you have untrained civilians going out there to take back the streets:

Under Mr. Duterte, who campaigned on a pledge to rid the country of drug dealers, 712 suspects have been killed in police operations, National Police Chief Ronald dela Rosa said. Vigilante killings have totaled 1,067 during the same period, he said, although it was unclear how many were directly related to the illegal drug trade…

Mr. Duterte is said to have incited the wave of killings with his vow to eradicate crime. He has said the police should “shoot to kill” when they encounter members of organized crime or suspects who violently resist arrest.

In related news, Duterte’s popularity has soared.

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Human rights groups and the United Nations have expressed horror about the opening stages of Duterte’s regime. He’s brushed off those concerns with insults and cursing… which is apparently the way world leaders are supposed to handle criticisms to look “authentic” to their supporters in 2016. From Al Jazeera:

“I will prove to the world that you are a very stupid expert,” he said [about two U.N. human rights experts who reported on the violence], urging them to count not just the number of drug-related deaths but also the innocent lives lost to drugs…

“I do not want to insult you. But maybe we’ll just have to decide to separate from the United Nations,” he said.

“Why do you have to listen to this stupid?”…

Asked about the possible consequences of his comments, he said: “What is … repercussions? I don’t give a sh*t to them.”

He said that the UN should have acted according to protocol by sending someone such as a rapporteur to talk to him.

“You do not just go out and give a sh*tting statement against a country,” he said.

Does this guy remind you of anybody?

Duterte went on to criticize the U.N. for not speaking out against the U.S., a classic deflection maneuver he probably learned at Trump University:

And Duterte asked why police killings in the United States were not attracting the same kind of criticism as the Philippines.

“What do you think the Americans did to the black people there? Is that not rubbing off also? And (critics) say what?”

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The plight of African-Americans is the world’s counterargument to America’s moral authority.

The vigilantism is the thing that should worry American observers the most as we contemplate electing our own foul-mouthed strongman. Who knows what Mike Pence’s Donald Trump’s actual policies would be, on immigration or anything else. The nuts and bolts of it might not matter much. Duterte is showing the world what happens when your supporters feel justified in comitting extra-judicial acts of violence. The white supremacists who have brought Trump this far will take his election as a vindication of their worldview, and can be expected to act accordingly. (Related: racists will take his loss as a vindication of their worldview and act accordingly. There’s really no upside when political candidates rely on white grievances to win elections.) “Law and Order” candidates are supposed to respect both half-hours of the original show: the part where cops find the bad guy, and the part where the bad guy gets a fair trial with a proper defense lawyer. Trump and Duterte don’t have the patience that criminal justice requires.

And their supporters think that even waiting for the cops to show up is an act of weakness.

Could it happen here? Of course. I’ll prove it. Go on Facebook and tell a Trump supporter that his new campaign promise is to kill 1,800 “drug dealers” in his first 100 days. They’ll believe you (these people will believe anything so long as it is presented to them without scientific evidence or support). And I promise you, they’ll applaud. They’ll applaud and won’t even ask pertinent follow-up questions like “do we need a warrant for that?” or “is dealing drugs a capital offense?” Tell them they can even personally get in on the killing, and they’ll say “Second Amendment, baby” and then show you a picture of one of their guns.

We don’t have to imagine a Trump administration, we can see it playing out in real time on the other side of the world.

Of course, the people who will vote for Trump think that Manila is the name of a folder-making company, so this opportunity to learn from others’ mistakes will be missed.

Nearly 1,800 Killed in Philippine Drug War, Top Police Official Tells Senators [New York Times]
Duterte threatens to pull Philippines out of UN [Al Jazeera]


Elie Mystal is an editor for Above the Law and the Legal Editor of More Perfect. He can be reached @ElieNYC and believes you can learn a lot by watching Filipinos.