Reasons to be an optimist disappear
Over ceviche and margaritas at a family lunch last Saturday, the conversation turning, as conversations will, to the rise of authoritarian leaders around the world, and thus to to the rebirth of the Ferdinand Marcos dynasty in the Philippines, my cousin reminded me that Marcos’ lover Dovie Breams Villagran used to live across the street from her.
“Wait — not the shoe one,” was my highly informed riposte.
“No, cousin,
Mr. know-it-all journalist — the shoe one was
Imelda,
“Oh — right.”
Rather than a fetish for collecting hundreds of pairs of shoes, “Lovey Dovie,” as she was known in the tabloid press back then, collected Southern California real estate, including Woodrow Wilson’s former Western White House in Pasadena, allegedly originally financed by the Philippine dictator himself.
They split after Dovie released audiotapes of their lovemaking, and she fled the Philippines before her boyfriend found the opportunity to, as he had promised her he would, declare martial law in his country in 1972, along with releasing nude pictures of Dovie.
I love how the Wikipedia entry for Ferdinand Emmanuel Edralin Marcos Sr., who ruled from 1965 to 1986, describes him as a “politician, lawyer, dictator, and kleptocrat” whose regime was “infamous for its corruption, extravagance and brutality.” It’s estimated that the Marcoses stole something north of $5 billion from the people of their impoverished land.
In 1986, after decades of our government helping prop him up, our very own Air Force helped Marcos and his entourage flee Manila for Honolulu, along with 22 crates of cash.
The Sr. part of the dictator’s name is important. Because this month, Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — Bongbong to his intimates — was elected president of the Philippines after running on a platform of historical revisionism about his parents’ crimes along with smearing of his rivals. His vice-president? Sara Duterte, daughter of the current dictator, Rodrigo.
This world of ours, which had some issues as it was, is becoming a terrible place to justify for us nominal believers in progress. Gluttons for punishment, humans apparently are. A planet that seemed to be moving toward political freedom and the strengthening of human rights everywhere after the fall of the Berlin Wall now scampers fast in the other direction. A liberalizing China has reversed course. Russia has a warlord czar in charge. Here in our own hemisphere, our State Department is quite rightly bridling at the idea of inviting the dictators of Cuba, Venezuela and Nicaragua to the Ninth Summit of the Americas in Los Angeles next month, which sensible policy now has loopy President Manuel Lopez Obrador of Mexico and Bolivia’s young firebrand President Luis Arce saying they might not come, either, if the leftist authoritarians are excluded.
Brazil’s right-wing authoritarian President Jair Messias Bolsonaro won’t attend for anti-democratic reasons of his own.
It sadly goes without saying that some Americans are not immune from the despotic disease. CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, is holding its annual meeting this week in Hungary, of all garden spots, precisely because its leaders admire the White ethno-nationalist authoritarian politics of Prime Minister Viktor Orban, Putin’s good pal.
“All of the international democracy rating agencies agree that Hungary is no longer a democracy,” an expert on Hungarian politics says.
Once a source of amusement to my friends as a sunny perpetual optimist, I regret to inform them that I am no longer a resident of Pollyannalandia.