The War Goes On

People are "alarmed" about the recent uptick of killings in Duterte's drug war. It's a forever war, apparently, as the president has made clear he'll be fighting until the end of his term. Duterte promised during the presidential campaign to stamp out the drug menace within six months. It's doubtful anyone seriously believed this. The promise people did believe however, was that Duterte was going to kill all the "bad people" involved in drug crimes. A politician keeping his campaign promise to kill people...it's pretty funny. 

So why the alarm? Duterte made no secret about what he planned to do. Even now he still casually talks about having people shot as casually as one would talk about the weather.

As much as the priests and elites whine about the "sanctity of life" or whatever, they can't deny the fact that Filipinos elected Duterte as their president. He won! He won on a "just shoot 'em" platform. How can one reconcile their ideas about Philippine society with harsh reality? Perhaps it's time these people had a critical re-examination of the world we live in. They hold an image of Filipino society that's no longer true. The old idea was that Filipinos are spiritual, moral, deeply devout, good Christians, etc. If that's the case, why are Filipinos OK with all of this? In fact, why are we OK with a lot things that we shouldn't be OK with? 

Our society is rotten to the core. The election of Duterte was an admission of that. If government must be evil then we might as well put that evil to use. True to form, as was in morally bankrupt tyrannical governments of the past, the state conducts its grim business in a brutally utilitarian fashion. There's only numbers. How many people dead this week? We've given up on the niceties of due process and such.

I'm not sure how I feel about seeing Filipino society descend into total cynicism. I am indifferent but lately I've been troubled but I can't seem to organize my thoughts on this. 

Something deeper is going on here.