<
https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/trumps-bloody-campaign-promises>
"Recently, I was talking with Patricia Evangelista, a journalist from the
Philippines, who is about to publish an astonishing book, called “Some People
Need Killing.” Evangelista, a fearless reporter in her late thirties, covered
the regime of Rodrigo Duterte, a provincial mayor who won the Presidency
promising to execute, without trial or even arrest, drug users or anyone else
whom he deemed threatening to public order. Evangelista is not a pundit. She
was a police reporter working for
Rappler, an independent Web site co-founded
by Maria Ressa, who was a co-winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, in 2021. Every
night, Evangelista went into the streets and alleyways of Manila to see the
wreckage of Duterte’s state-sanctioned violence, the bullet-riddled bodies
cooling in the gutter, the bored cops muttering uselessly into their radios.
She wrote down the names, the histories, taking care to get the details
right—her way of honoring the dead and their families. In her news reports, and
in her longer investigations, Evangelista was, in essence, recording the
“achievements” of an elected tyrant who had fulfilled his campaign promises.
His was an honesty written in blood. A Duterte-era vigilante gave Evangelista
her title: “I’m really not a bad guy,” he said. “Some people need killing.”
According to human-rights organizations, Duterte’s extralegal rampage killed
more than ten thousand people.
Over time, Donald Trump has been no less truthful about his intentions than
Rodrigo Duterte. (In fact, Trump is an admirer; in 2017, he congratulated
Duterte for “the unbelievable job” he was doing “on the drug problem.” Trump
was also undoubtedly delighted that Duterte had referred to Barack Obama as
“the son of a whore.”) In recent weeks, Trump has made it plain that his plans
for a second term are no less unbelievable than Duterte’s, no less vengeful or
unhinged. We should listen. These are campaign promises. For many years, Trump
has hidden in plain sight—he makes no effort to conceal his bigotries, his
lawlessness, his will to authoritarian power; to the contrary, he advertises
it, and, most disturbing of all, this deepens his appeal. What’s more, there is
no question that Trump has so normalized calls to violence as an instrument of
politics that it has inflamed countless people to perverse action. Trump has
always delighted in the way he could arouse a crowd with implicit or explicit
calls to vengeance, from his admonition to “Lock her up!” to his smirking at a
protester at one of his rallies, “I’d like to punch him in the face.” He was
the inspiration for Charlottesville. The insurrection of January 6th was a
direct response to his callout to his supporters: “Be there, will be wild!”
During the protests that followed the murder of George Floyd, Trump asked his
advisers, according to the former Defense Secretary Mark Esper, “Can’t you just
shoot them? Just shoot them in the legs or something?” According to a recent
report in the Times, since the legal search of Mar-a-Lago last year and the
subsequent confiscation of confidential documents there, which caused Trump to
vent his rage against federal authorities, threats against F.B.I. personnel and
facilities have skyrocketed by more than three hundred per cent."
Via Steven Vaughan-Nichols, who wrote "When a presidential candidate promises
you violence if he wins, believe him, and if you give a damn about America,
vote against him."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
