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Even more frightening is how widely supported Duterte and his death squads are in the Philippines. He has strong ties to the Davao Death Squad which operated wh

• prawn 10y ago
  I think that's the most concerning part of this (and other concerning but slightly less insane potential leaders around the world) - that the public can be so easily convinced that this is a reasonable choice. Is it that the craziest plans standout against the two regular options? Or that the regular options hedge their bets and don't appear to adequately address issues concerning the masses?
  • dragonwriter 10y ago
    Very often, the "conventional" options in a democratic republic end up representing competing visions of how to address the issues that matter most to elites (not necessarily the upper class alone, but the upper and middle classes -- which together are still usually a minority of the population -- and maybe the upper end of the working class), who in normal times are often the vast majority of participation in the political system. They often have less contact with the bulk of the working class (including the nonworking poor) and their concerns, which when things get especially intolerable for that class, and their immediate interests get most divergent from the elites, opens up a big opportunity for unconventional populist alternatives (often including exploitive totalitarian demagogues, though positive reform-oriented uplifting populism also happens at times, sometimes competing with the other kind.)