It is hard to always see the thousand cuts in real time. Looking back, it should have been obvious that the checks and balances of our democracy were collapsing. Here was our president, successfully jailing an opposition politician who had fought to expose his crimes, with the support of the people and institutions that should have kept him in check. Duterte, like Facebook, benefited from the system of trust that they both destroyed. The weaponization of the internet had evolved into the weaponization of the law.
