Been there, done that

I was trying my best to sound sober and diplomatic in last week’s column about Donald Trump’s impending return to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country in the world, the United States of America, due to happen next Monday. I was still vacationing with family in California then, and didn’t want to get into an argument with some Americans (and Fil-Ams) who would’ve sent me packing home the moment they heard me raising a stink about their Chosen One.

The fact is – whether out of deference to my liberalism or just because of fatigue – few people I spoke with, whether from the left or right, seemed eager to talk about Trump, and it’s something I fully understand, and even appreciate. You can only hear and make so much commentary, most or all of which, at day’s end, will amount to nothing, except for more bruised or broken friendships.

Typical was a friend’s reaction from San Francisco: “Shrinking my world in the next four years to just my family and like-minded friends. (Just text me when the war has started!)”

I remembered what it was like in 2022 when our presidential candidate – who seemed (and was) superior to the alternative on all counts except financial capability – lost, and how distraught and upset we were, convinced that, surely, massive fraud accounted for her defeat. Even then, I opined – unpopularly, for sure – that despite the ever-present likelihood as in all Philippine elections that some electoral sleight-of-hand had taken place, more Filipino voters preferred the winner for their own reasons, disinformation and all.

We’ve been living with and under that winner for almost three years now – and, perhaps surprisingly, we’ve all survived so far; the sky hasn’t fallen – yet. I did say then, like many other observers, that BBM was facing a fork in the road: to continue down the path to perdition that his parents took, or to boldly go up the hill of redemption. “Redemption” might not necessarily mean a full-blown admission of guilt in exchange for forgiveness of sins, or even the restitution of ill-gotten wealth, although all of the above would have been ideal if well-nigh impossible. I think most of us would have been pleasantly surprised if he simply led an honest, just and competent administration, which is what all of us have been praying for.

Almost halfway through his term, has any of that happened? Which path did BBM choose? Is it possible that he has been straddling both, or hopping from one to the other? Very interestingly, both in the US and here at home, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about BBM, and what I’ve told people is this:

He’s made some very popular decisions, which has raised his acceptance if not approval among many; but he continues to run free and loose with the way public money is used, seriously undermining whatever credibility he’s been building up. His positions on tokhang, China and POGOs have generally gone over well (although criticisms persist that extrajudicial killings and political imprisonment have continued). Perhaps above all, he has politically profited immensely from his war with the Dutertes, deftly positioning himself as sober and presidential versus the theatrics and the crudity of the Dutertes, who have done themselves no favors.

On the other hand, neither has the Marcos administration endeared itself to the people by brazenly abusing its fiscal authority with the problematic Maharlika Fund and its diversion of key departmental budgets into an election-year pork barrel for lawmakers. Just when you thought it had miraculously gotten its ethical notions right, the old wolf bares a greedy fang or two and reminds us that old habits die hard.

Which brings me back to America and its expectations of Trump 2.0. Unlike BBM who can at least claim a generation’s distance from his father, Donald Trump has only himself to be compared with, and anyone hoping to see a more sensible, more contemplative and more compassionate Trump to enter the White House after he won over the truly sensible, contemplative and compassionate Kamala Harris is in for a rude reminder of the man America spat out in 2020.

In the weeks before his second inauguration, the president-elect has already threatened to pressure Norway into selling Greenland to the US, punish its closest neighbors Canada and Mexico with crippling tariffs, rename the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America and repossess the Panama Canal. As a Fil-Am friend of mine in Georgia says, “It’s like hiring a CEO to turn our ailing and cash-strapped business around, and on his first week he tells us his strategy is to buy three companies and rename our firm.” An old Turkish proverb puts it more colorfully: “When a clown moves into the palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”

The lunacy of Trump’s ideas would be hilarious if he weren’t who he is, a man whose every fart is now taken as God’s own wisdom by his retinue of quaking sycophants. As a man incapable of accepting criticism and prone to doubling down on the certifiably wrong, President Trump will run his government as he is ruled by his ego, and for the sake of our relatives and friends in that country, we can only pray that America emerges whole and healthy enough in 2028 to find its way back to sanity and decency.

On Monday next, when the inmates officially take over the asylum in Washington, DC, we Pinoys will be watching with the smugness of people who’ve been there and done that. We have our own pot of troubles to worry about, our own idiots and idiocies to deal with – like our propensity to force people with the same surnames, grade-school diplomas and missing morals to become senators of the Republic. So help us God.

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Email me at [email protected] and visit my blog at www.penmanila.ph.