Your statement about authoritarian tendencies is interesting. While I don't doubt that leaders like Trump or Duterte have them, it's a tricky situation to base such a label on their intentions or words alone. The vast majority of political leaders work towards the maximization of their own power regardless of their speaking style or underlying government type (Trump's overtly bellicose manner vs. say, Obama's much more diplomatically toned engagement with the public, other government branches and media). Either way though, I ask that you or anyone name how someone like Trump actually exercises(d) executive power very differently from a leader like Obama:
Both engaged in many of the same drives towards furthering their own personal political agendas during their respective administrations and while Trump says many things more baldly, and certainly lies much more flippantly, I fail to see how either his executive decisions or administrative pushes were or are in any notable way actually more authoritarian than those of Obama.
Just because one leader speaks more blandly than another doesn't mean that their fundamental governing power is much different, or that the more bellicose sounding figure is somehow an authoritarian if he or she is still fully constrained by the rest of a democratic government apparatus.
Furthermore, many if not most of the tendencies towards much broader presidential authority that Trump currently enjoys were established by a whole history of executive expansion which came before his term, and some of those started under much less visibly aggressive presidents. Focusing on what the orange man says more than on the deeper dynamics behind his office seems to me like more an exercise in ideological labeling than sound analysis of what authoritarian leadership means.
Both engaged in many of the same drives towards furthering their own personal political agendas during their respective administrations and while Trump says many things more baldly, and certainly lies much more flippantly, I fail to see how either his executive decisions or administrative pushes were or are in any notable way actually more authoritarian than those of Obama.
Just because one leader speaks more blandly than another doesn't mean that their fundamental governing power is much different, or that the more bellicose sounding figure is somehow an authoritarian if he or she is still fully constrained by the rest of a democratic government apparatus.
Furthermore, many if not most of the tendencies towards much broader presidential authority that Trump currently enjoys were established by a whole history of executive expansion which came before his term, and some of those started under much less visibly aggressive presidents. Focusing on what the orange man says more than on the deeper dynamics behind his office seems to me like more an exercise in ideological labeling than sound analysis of what authoritarian leadership means.