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Not a fan of him, but some Americans trying to learn who is the Marcos Jr. running the house right now.
(lemmy.world)
The orange bastard thinks Junior is one and the same, except Junior is more of a Marcos family nerd of sorts, while his sister Imee is now also his archenemy and allied to Duterte, and happens to inherit much more of her father's egomania.
Nonetheless, they are both successful beneficiaries of mass disinformation and hatred. The thing is, however, in terms of political stability the Philippines now seems a lot milder compared to the mounting ongoing oppression in the US.
source: https://bsky.app/profile/nycsouthpaw.bsky.social/post/3luob4ojgr22n
Wife's Filipino, grew up under Marcos, calls herself a loyalist. ๐คท๐ป
She loved him. Says he modernized the state, built roads and hospitals and universities they had never had before. She can go on for quite some time about the reforms Marcos initiated. Also, being Asian, she had zero problem with him murdering loads of drug dealers. It's hard to overstate how much Asians hate drugs after what Europeans did to them. Looking at you Britain.
Sounds like he stole a lot, but also enriched the country as a whole. I wasn't there, my opinion is invalid, just repeating what she's shared.
Superficially. Most of those projects were for show, much similar to Ceausescu, but kept a lot of glaring poverty hidden from visitors, some whole slums either behind tall walls or just demolished en masse. During most of the 20-year reign more than half the loans the Marcoses acquired and meant for development were instead spent on luxuries.
What kept the Marcoses from being thrown into jail was not only an army of lawyers but also their personality cult, many of them were once children during their regime (hence why the Marcoses heavily invested in some public education in addition to controlling media).
I fear my wife was a "cultist", but she was there, I was not. Guess it's like my middle-class upbringing during Reagan seemed great. 80s America was great! But the shockwaves are still felt today.