Thoughts on the Drug War

It's has been almost three years into the Duterte presidency and almost three years into his glorious war on drugs. Doesn't feel much different yet everything has changed.

Who We Are

It's a given that people have been killed in this war and we can only assume they were guilty. Good luck pinning this directly on the president. Nothing would ever be put to paper. 

Still, the president's critics and the usual vinegar-drinking scolds from the church wail about all the blood on his hands. It's all pointless and I don't know why they continue to do it. The president was upfront about what he was going to do. He ran his entire campaign promising to summarily execute the drug dealers and he won! What are we to make of that? We must accept that all of this has the approval of the majority of the Filipino people. You can't take the president down by pointing out that he's doing exactly the thing he said he was going to do.

Some harsh truths must be accepted. We cannot go on pretending that our greatest ideals are life, democracy and justice. The values espoused by the moralizers in the media are not as commonly shared as it is thought. It's all been tried. It's passe. It doesn't work. Everyone knows this so they went with the guy who said nuts to that and he'd do it his way. His critics crying about the death of democracy or whatever, don't really mean it anyway. They have their own agenda and championing old values and other lost causes is only good if it can get you elected. Who knew what would follow the EDSA era would be the cynical era? It's not so bad, for me anyway. I prefer people to be truthful. It's great that people have dropped their masks and shown their true colors. No more lectures about the rule of law or the preciousness of life. Anything and everything can be bargained away, any act can be rationalized. It's about raw power; realpolitik. Perhaps, it always had been.

You Seriously Don't Think We Can Win, Do You?

In three years when (or if) Duterte finally steps down, will the war continue? Can the troops fight without the great leader providing encouragement (and potential pardons)? I doubt it. One glaring flaw of Philippine democracy, and perhaps democracies in general, is that leaders change often and it can be hard to sustain long term projects since a new set of rulers brings in a new set of power players and cronies to infest the government. It's even worse here since politics is so personality driven and reliant on personal loyalties and not loyalties to institutions.

What if the next idiot who comes along decides that his big deal is going to be green energy or whatever, and decides to put the drug war on the back-burner, then what? Well the drug lords are going to come back, of course. What nobody realizes, least of all the dutertards, is that you cannot literally kill the problem of drug addiction and narcopolitics. I'd argue that the problem of drugs is just as much a spiritual and cultural problem as it is an economic one. Duterte's solution is the crudest solution of all and is not in any way sustainable. Cut the branches and even the trunk but the roots are still there. Other than killing, he has nothing else. Desperate people still want their fix and pushing that garbage is easy money.

What does victory even look like? Do people sincerely believe Duterte can solve the drug problem by killing every single drug dealer in the Philippines? The government can't even put down any of the communist/Muslim rebellions in the countryside for more than fifty years but we believe it completely eradicate drugs once and for all?

When the new kid in town comes along, the druggies will roll back in and it'll be as if nothing happened. Without El Jefe constantly rambling about drugs on the airwaves, people will forget about the problem. Always forget.

However, the word is that the president's daughter is considering a run for the highest office in the land. Now there's a very interesting topic: "political dynasties as a means to guarantee continuity in a cyclical form of government". If his daughter wins, the war could continue and I would be wrong. Alas, political dynasties vs. democratic elections is a topic for another day.

What I Feel

What do I think of the drug war, personally? To be honest, I don't care. I have already disabused myself of any notion that the country is some progressive heaven and its people saints.

I don't mind. It's just the world I live in.Do you blame the rain cloud when you get wet?

All I can do is hope nothing bad happens to me or people I care about.

MARS

One of the benefits of my job is that it allows me to observe the legal system closer than most people. One thing I have observed is this strange phenomenon that seems to happen whenever a particular criminal case has a lot of media attention focused on it. For academic purposes, let's call this the "Media Attention-Retardation Syndrome".

Media Attention-Retardation Syndrome (MARS) is a disease wherein people involved in a criminal case, from the public officials to the concerned parties, inexplicably drop thirty (30) points of IQ whenever the case is under intense media scrutiny or "goes viral", to borrow modern slang. It is theorized that the attention of the media produces among its victims a strong psychological response that causes forgetfulness, lack of focus, lapses in judgment, and other mental problems similar to those caused by extreme sleep deprivation. It may be thought of as a form of performance anxiety.

MARS is difficult to detect as it does not always affect people in all ways and at all times. It is possible it may not occur in some people at all. It is certain, however, that the likelihood of MARS is proportional to the intensity of the media attention. If the criminal case is featured on the national news or if a prominent politician is involved, sudden onset retardation is practically guaranteed.

For example, sufferers of MARS in the police force will inevitably and spectacularly bungle their investigation of the high profile crime. Whether or not the police always bungle their investigations and that we're only noticing it in that particular instance is a fair question, however. The police, in an effort to maintain the appearance of competence, begin to inform the media of their "findings", including their fantastical theories based on shady sources, lists of suspects who they may or may not be planning to question, and all the evidence they have collected so far. The wisdom of telling the public, and possibly the perpetrators, of your every move is not an issue. The importance of looking busy is paramount. It has been observed that the imposition of any time limit by a superior or politician dramatically increases the chance of MARS. Occasionally, the police may lock up the wrong person but they're only human.

MARS also affects suspects of the alleged crime. Suspects will exhibit erratic behavior and/or theatrical outbursts. Suspects may call for a radio interview or even a press conference to loudly proclaim that they're are innocent and that they have absolutely nothing to hide, no sir. They will then proclaim that "only God can judge them", "the truth will set you free", or any other such tedious platitudes. In severe cases the suspect may voluntarily "surrender" to the police despite still maintaining innocence and surrender being technically impossible since a case has not been filed yet.

A prosecutor suffering from MARS may suddenly forget the difference between preliminary investigation and inquest. Judges affected by MARS may come to realize or hallucinate biases against the party and inhibit themselves from the case. The lawyers file longer pleadings that read more like a madman's rambling manifesto. MARS may even cause delusions of grandeur as lawyers inexplicably begin to do their best impressions of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

It's a nuthouse.