In their image

The Economist reported that “just prior to the vote, 80 percent of Americans called for “substantial change” or “complete and total upheaval” in how America is run. “Voters,” The Economist observed, “demanded that politicians put the nation’s prosperity above the grubby pursuit of power.”

Back here in the Philippines, we can only watch with awe and envy as the blue wave delivered an angry electorate’s sharp rebuke to President Trump in last week’s mid-term election. Many of us are wondering if we are capable of chastising our own officials in similar fashion.

Up until last Tuesday, we doubted the inclination of Americans to save their democracy after they twice elected someone like Trump as president. The cult-like devotion of Trump’s MAGA loyalists has allowed him to run roughshod over democratic institutions.

We have been worried about democracy slowly dying in America. It was unnerving to watch video reports of masked immigration agents bullying, shooting and killing people off the streets at will. And there was no accountability or law enforcement transparency in using tactics reminiscent of Nazi Germany and typical of dictatorial despots in third world countries.

The institutional guardrails for a democratic system we so admired were being torn down systematically with the cooperation of their Supreme Court. And Trump’s MAGA cult was saying pretty much what our Duterte cult has been saying to justify death and violence supposedly for peace and order.

Pollsters say Trump’s MAGA base has broad support from non-college educated whites, Latinos and yes, some Filipino-Americans too. They blindly support Trump even at the expense of their personal interests.

For instance, to give billionaires and big business massive tax cuts in the July 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” Trump eviscerated funding for social safety nets.

Imagine Elon Musk’s Tesla reported $5.7 billion in US income in 2025 with zero current federal income tax, avoiding roughly $1.2 billion compared to the standard 21 percent statutory rate, according to the Institute on Taxation and Economic policy.

The broader working-class base lost funding for public infrastructure, food/medical assistance programs and localized social services.

The tolerance for these losses reached a breaking point last Tuesday. Trump’s job approval among white evangelicals dropped by 11 points, and support collapsed by 40 points among non-college-educated white men — the absolute bedrock of the MAGA movement.

Vice President JD Vance conceded, their base explicitly flipped their support to Democrats because the economic reality of the war and the cost-of-living crisis finally woke them up from a Trump-induced stupor.

Wow! Can that happen here? It did once during the waning years of the Marcos dictatorship. But we are more patient than Americans. Our threshold for pain is greater. It seems our economy must crash further into the pit before people pour out into the streets.

It doesn’t matter if our system of government has been patterned by the Americans after their own. What we ended with is a deeply flawed, distorted mutation of what American colonial planners might have intended.

This reminds me of Stanley Karnow’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book “In Our Image: America’s Empire in the Philippines.”

Karnow wrote about how the US attempted to recreate itself in Asia, transplanting its democratic institutions, laws and educational systems onto its only formal colony. We are America’s failed experiment.

The experiment failed because American colonialism merely modernized and entrenched feudalism.

Instead of breaking up large estates to empower the peasantry (as the US later did successfully in post-WWII Japan), the Americans gave our elite families formal political power via the newly created Philippine Congress. The US essentially gave a pre-existing oligarchy a permanent, democratic stamp of legitimacy.

The elections the Americans introduced here failed to entrench true democracy. Elections simply allowed rival dynasties to rotate power. The “image” was American democratic pluralism; the reality was a collection of regional fiefdoms controlled by guns, goons and gold.

Still, unlike many post-colonial nations in Southeast Asia that succumbed to single-party rule or military juntas (like Myanmar, Thailand or Vietnam), we managed to retain a deep, American-instilled belief in the ballot.

Even strongmen like Marcos Sr. and Duterte felt compelled to stage elections to legitimize their rule.

An important guardrail in the US is Congress. This guardrail was dismantled after Trump captured the Republican Party’s base, forcing legislators to capitulate out of fear of primary challenges.

In our case, we have shifting coalitions of regional dynasties. The primary cultural norm here is political accommodation and patronage. Our Congress rarely acts as a guardrail against a sitting strongman; it actively enables them.

Whoever wins the presidency instantly commands a “supermajority” because lawmakers immediately switch parties (turncoatism or balimbing) to secure pork barrel allocations.

The other significant institution in the US is its judiciary. While Federal judges are doing a heroic job of stopping Trump, the US Supreme Court has repeatedly allowed Trump to dismantle some institutional guardrails.

For instance, the Court has ruled that Trump can fire the heads of independent regulatory agencies — such as the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) — at will, for any reason or no reason at all. This decision effectively ends the era of politically insulated, bipartisan watchdogs, allowing the president to enforce total partisan control over previously independent bodies.

In our case, our judiciary easily bowed to political pressure during the martial law years. During the Duterte administration, Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno was removed via a quo warranto petition rather than traditional impeachment. That showed how easily formal legal mechanisms can be turned against the institutional guardrails themselves.

According to The Economist, “In Mr. Trump’s America, Gallup finds, nine in ten adults complain that corruption in their government is widespread — about as many as in Nigeria.” We are definitely in their image.

We congratulate the Americans for fighting hard to win back their democracy. That inspires us not to give up on our own.

Boo Chanco’s email address is [email protected]. Follow him on X @boochanco