It sucks that a bigwig Korean businessman had to die before something was finally done about President Duterte’s bullshit War on Drugs, but it’s finally happened.
The PNP is halting all anti-drug operations, and it looks like it’s legit: all Anti-Illegal Drugs Groups are being dissolved across the nation as they focus on weeding out the corrupt cops. Of course, this move paints PNP chief Ronald “Bato” (heh) dela Rosa as reckless more than malicious, but we guess he gotta do what he gotta do, even if it’s all ironic.
Now that we’re getting this out of the way for now, here are a few things we—that is, the powers that be—need to formally declare war on.
- Fake news — We’ve been fighting this war for the longest time now, and we need some legit back up. The Senyora Santibañez Facebook page has been taken down as a result of what seems to be mass reporting on the fake news these pro-administration fanpages (emphasis on the “fan” part) love to put out. There’s a lot of hullaballoo that went around over the weekend on whether what they do falls under free speech—the answer, really, is that Facebook can do whatever it wants because it’s not the government, and free speech has its own limits. If you’re out there trying to undermine by misinforming, then you don’t deserve your right to free speech in that case.
- Sexual harassment, misogyny, and sexism — We’ve been dealing with this ever since our president became popular across the country; in 2017, the war is both easier and harder. It’s easier because more and more people are becoming aware of this problematic behavior, but harder because others insist on it even though it’s already 2017. It’s much worse when higher institutions insist on systemic sexism, liiiike, oh, UST, which imposes the patriarchy the hard way on women in our very own Brock Turner cases.
- Xenophobia, racism, and bigotry — US President Donald Trump finally enforced his promised Muslim ban, and no matter what he says it is, it was an intended Muslim ban. Technically, it’s a ban on travelers from seven predominantly Muslim countries for 90 days, but it ended up covering everyone who came from those countries, even if they were legal American residents.Needless to say, this wouldn’t even be a problem if people weren’t bigoted against other people just on the basis of their ethnicity, and whatnot. While we’re talking about the US, Filipinos need to do a better job of being empathetic, too, considering we’re some of the most racist people in the world, struck by colonial mentality.
- Political apathy — This year’s Screen Actors Guild awards, which happened the same day as Miss Universe, was full of Hollywood celebrities making important political statements. Same thing happened at the Golden Globes with Meryl Streep. Celebrities in the US aren’t afraid at all to make their opinions known, but over here only a relative few—and not even those with the most influence—aren’t afraid to speak up. Either they really don’t have opinions, they’ve got the wrong ones, or they’re afraid of damaging their career by doing so; no matter what it is, this has got to stop if we want everything to get better around here. We know some of you don’t agree with all of this. Y’all need to speak up.
- Poverty — Now that you’ve actually stopped killing them (for now, we guess), why not help them have better lives?
Photo from the Philippine Daily Inquirer
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