Dear America,
Yesterday it was announced that President Rodrigo Duterte of the Philippines has been invited to the White House to meet with our President Trump. Duterte has precipitated a campaign of extra-judicial punishment of drug users and dealers in the form of murders committed by the police and their surrogates in the province of Davao, of which he was Mayor before being elected president. During his campaign, Duterte even admitted having participated in kidnappings and murders as an affiliate of the organization that contracts with the police to commit, the DDS or Davao Death Squad. And now that he has assumed office, he has enlisted the national police, an organization renowned for its corruption and violence, to continue the old DDS campaign against drug users and dealers resulting in the murders of more than 3,000 people in the Philippines over the course of his first hundred days in office. Duterte is described as a "tough guy" and on that basis, he was elected by a majority similar in its political constitution to that which elected Donald Trump: fiercely nationalistic, unconcerned about the facts and socially conservative to the point that Duterte's campaign of extra-judicial killings has been implicitly endorsed by that constituency in the form of an 86% approval rating. He is narcissistic, foul-mouthed, disdainful of anyone who criticizes him, a womanizer. He is oriented toward business despite claiming to be a populist...even a socialist...and apparently feels that he is above the law because in his eyes, what he does is righteous by definition. Does any of that sound familiar?
Even down to the percentage of popular approval that both enjoy, Duterte in Davao and Trump among Republicans, they seem like they are cut from the same cloth. Duterte's father was a warlord-type politician in Davao while Trump's father was only a real estate tycoon, but both were described as aggressively self-seeking...what the rest of us might call bullies...and their sons have followed in their footsteps in that respect, though as far as we know, Donald Trump has never murdered anyone or ordered such a killing. But just as Duterte admitted to having participated in kidnappings and killings during his campaign, Trump admitted being the "king of debt" when he was running for president, implicitly confirming that he had used his bankruptcies to make money for himself at the expense of others. Without anymore in the way of detail, it seems like Duterte's visit to the Oval Office will be a meting of birds of a single feather, which explains the invitation in the first place. But what does that say about this country and our president?
The fact that someone with a proudly confessed criminal history merit's a phone call from our chief executive is deprecatory of our national character to say the least. But the fact that the call was made to invite that criminal to enjoy some American hospitality is odious. It can't be demonstrated that Trump is as nefarious as Duterte has been, but the fact that Trump admires the man enough to invite him to the American people's house does demonstrate that Mr. Trump's values leave a great deal to be desired, to be euphemistic about it. The question is, to what lengths is Donald Trump willing to go to get what he thinks is right, which as a phrase is almost an oxymoron in the lexicons of most Americans today--Trump's approval rating in the population at large is 41% according to the Gallop organization, down from the 45% he started his term with--despite his standing among his supporters. Coupled with Trump's waffling on the subject of both North Korea and Kim Jong-Un, whom Trump called a "smart cookie" last Sunday in an interview with CBS, and then added to Trump's overt admiration for Vladimir Putin, the continuing admiration of Trump by his loyalists defies reason. If Trump's xenophobia, his hypocrisy on the subject of healthcare and his overt desire to advance his own fortunes with a tax code revision that will enrich him and his fellow billionaires while it further burdens the working class aren't enough, this Duterte invitation surely should be if rationality has anything to do with Trump's popularity.
There is something akin to a herd mentality that keeps Trump afloat, albeit his clever acolytes in his cabinet and on his staff have a lot to do with it. Somehow, Trump is a preferred alternative to everyone else among them just because he isn't one of the other guys. Democrats continue to pule about changing their politics so as to make themselves more appealing to rural America and the pundits reinforce that misguided hand-wringing. But the question remains, what do we do about a country that supports a man like Trump who admires a man like Duterte. The professed rationalization for the invitation is to lure Duterte away from China, but it seems to me that if China wants him, we should let them have him.
Your friend,
Mike
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