Rhetoric matters
AFTER the hate killing of Srinivas Kuchibhota, an immigrant from India (a white man screamed, “Get out of my country” before shooting him and compatriot Alok Madasai), the White House through Press Secretary Sean Spicer asserted that the hate crime had nothing to do with President Donald Trump’s rhetoric. I disagree.
In his campaign, Donald Trump had bluntly accused undocumented immigrants of being “rapists and murderers” and promised to build a “beautiful wall” to keep them out. He even said he would consider a deportation force to swiftly round up 11 million undocumented immigrants. And it looked like he was keeping his promise because in his first 100 days, Trump ordered the construction of a wall along the southern border, issued executive orders to accelerate deportation, suspended refugee programs, and banned travel from countries he considered to be terrorist threats.
In his tweets, Trump has manifested his extreme views on immigration – “We MUST have strong borders and stop illegal immigration. Without that, we do not have a country.” And, “My grandparents didn’t come to America all the way from Germany to see it get taken over by immigrants. Not on my watch.”
I have been told of an incident of a Filipino family (parents and child) in a mall being shouted at by an American lady, “Go back to your country!” Fortunately she was not carrying a gun. Trump’s rhetoric has unleashed the inner prejudices of some Americans and has charged the American air with hate and kill sentiments.
Regrettably, what is happening in the United States is becoming the norm in the Philippines. The all-out drive against drugs has not only resulted in what many see as “extra-judicial killings” but has fostered the mind-set that one can take the law in his own hands or that acting on one’s deep-seated emotions and prejudices is allright. The thinking seems to be, “If the police can do it with the President declaring support for them, why can’t I?”
We are seeing too many road rage crimes. Altercations lead to deaths. We grieve not just with the weeping mothers of killed drug addicts who supposedly resisted arrest or fought back but we also condole with kin who have lost son, brother, and a future husband (the recent fatal shooting of Anthony Mendoza) in road incidents.
In the schools, I am told that the children sketch more of killings and deaths than of uplifting scenes. Their daily banter is full of “patayin ko ikaw (I will kill you)” and the games they play are not “hide and seek” but “cops and addicts.”
In the home, when the family talks about these killings, parents are shocked that their children who have gone through a “good” Christian education are quick to defend the deaths of addicts with the argument that they can never be rehabilitated and it is better for them to die than to remain as addicts. Even the idea of a “strong man” leading the country with no qualms as to ignore human rights and the rule of law is being advanced by some whom I had considered as right-thinking individuals.
Social media has become another battle ground with civility forgotten. It is so depressing to read vicious exchanges rather than the inspiring messages that clogged social media before the 2016 campaign. I know many who have activated the privacy mode in their accounts and have unfriended many so as to preserve their equanimity if not sanity in these the worst of times.
It is time to being back the rhetoric that inspires and unites. US President Trump in his first speech to the joint session of the US Congress tried to strike such a tone with statements like, “From now on America will be empowered by our aspirations, not burdened by our fears, inspired by the future, not bound by failures of the past, and guided by a vision not blinded by our doubts.”
But many reacted that speeches are not as effective and influencing as the daily tirades of a president. Both Presidents Donald Trump and Rodrigo Roa Duterte should ponder on that.