On a collision course with disaster

Three months ago I made a distinct comparison between President Rodrigo Duterte and Republican candidate Donald Trump who was then running for President of the United States of America. Little did I know how similar their stories would turn out. An unlikely candidate with a fast mouth and a penchant for saying things that would get them in trouble, and the next thing we all know they both blow through the competition and emerge victorious. It’s crazy how their stories ended the exact same way.

The US elections are over, the world has been left in a state of shock over Trump’s win and saddened and scared about what his presidency might represent in terms of global political relations. There were many Filipinos who expressed their anger over our fellow countrymen being so involved in the US elections and saying things like we should not be affected, it’s not like we are American citizens anyway. I find that type of reaction quite disheartening and, quite frankly, ignorant. Of course we should be affected, we should all be affected by who runs one of the most powerful nations in the world.

After all, America plays a big part in global relations and as I have said so many times we are not alone in the world anymore. We are a big global community and we all play in the same sandbox. It should matter to us that the Americans have now put a bully in the playground. Just think about it and you’ll see why so many people are worried – and should be worried. This caricature of a man, this reality show star, with a big voice, crazy hair, who has been caught lying over and over, and has an extremely volatile temper is now not just president of the United States but will handle international relations and be in charge of the country’s entire nuclear arsenal. If that doesn’t seem like a cause for concern I don’t know what does.

It’s plainly obvious that anxiety over who America elects to lead them goes far beyond being intrusive in the affairs of another country. What happens there will affect us all. We are naïve to think otherwise. Whether it means making it that much harder for our kababayans who live and work in the US, or how it will affect the stock market (it is plummeting), or how American investment will change in the country we are going to feel the affects of a Trump presidency and it’s truly worrisome because up to this point, his rhetoric has been one of hate and intolerance.

Not to mention, Donald Trump has categorized the Philippines as a terrorist nation. He said so during his campaign period, and he vowed to make access to the US that much harder for countries deemed a threat in this way. He also said he planned to go down hard on immigrants in America and focus resources on deporting those who were there illegally. In a nutshell, it’s safe to assume that the already been tenuous relations between our two countries in the past few months is going to get even more complicated moving forward.

And we can’t blame president elect Trump for that completely. Our own President Duterte has said his share of bad things that have gotten us in hot water with the American ambassador and President Barack Obama. He is steering the Philippines toward stronger relations with China while it seems that Donald Trump is steering the US toward stronger relations with Russia. Either way, the world that many of us have known is going to change in the next year in ways that I don’t think anyone can truly predict at this point. It almost seems as if chess pieces are being moved around a big proverbial board.

Someone once said that if we aren’t cognizant of our history we are doomed to repeat it. And it certainly is happening now in so many big ways. The world is becoming divided once again, here in the Philippines we have chosen to sweep the atrocities of our past under the rug, and in the US the government is once again stealing land from the Native Americans and preaching about segregation. For goodness sake there have already been instances of “White’s Only” signs in public places and the president wants to build a high wall between the US and Mexico. We all know full well what building walls has done in the past and yet here we are once again.

How is the larger portion of the population not seeing this? Are we headed for the same bloody path history has taken before? It doesn’t seem far-fetched. Since Donald Trump was elected there have already been a sudden spike in hate crimes all over the United States. Muslim women are scared of going in public with their hijab, African Americans are yelled at, taunted, and even physically assaulted, and so many immigrants are being told to “get out” by those claiming “their president” is about to clean house. Hateful rhetoric and sentiment is spreading and I hate to say it but it really looks like the writing is on the wall.

Where can we go from here? Once intolerance spreads in such a big way, what is bound to follow? I know I am not the first to think about these so-called “doomsday” prophecies, but I can’t help but see the patterns emerging and I am rightfully scared, as we all should be. We all need to be able to understand what is happening in the world and stand up against it before it’s too late. I’d like to think we aren’t past the point of no return, but that’s only if we are still willing to question the path we are currently on. We need to search for a way to find unity in the chaos. This is the only way we’ll keep things from blowing up both figuratively and literally.