It takes at least two people to launch a nuclear weapon at almost every point in the US chain of command. Missile silos, bombers, nuclear submarines – all require more than one officer to validate a “go” order.

The exception is at the top, in the Oval Office. It’s true: A president alone has the authority to push the metaphoric button and authorize use of the nation’s atomic arsenal.

Should this be the case? President Trump’s behavior in office has raised anew this old question. Critics worry that Mr. Trump’s bellicosity toward North Korea – he’s threatened to rain “fire and fury” on the Pyongyang regime – reveals a cavalier attitude toward the use of nukes. Sen. Bob Corker (R) of Tennessee, chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee, has gone so far as to say Trump may be putting the US “on the path to World War III.”

The problem is that US nuclear command-and-control was designed this way for what the US national security structure considers good reasons. It is meant to ensure political control over the military and a quick response in a crisis, the better to deter potential adversaries. Changing it might involve difficult practical and constitutional questions.

In any case, the system might be more resistant to impulsive presidential behavior than it appears on paper. While the president orders nuclear operations, that order passes through a chain of command on its way to US forces. It’s very unlikely that Trump could wake up angry, fire off tweets about an adversary, and then decide to end the argument once and for all.

“The notion that a president could capriciously launch a nuclear first strike suggests that no one in the chain of command would raise a question or intervene. In practical terms I find that hard to believe,” says Rebecca Hersman, a former deputy assistant secretary of Defense for countering weapons of mass destruction who is currently a senior advisor at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Military would ‘be asking all sorts of things’

If the president is awakened by a phone call in the middle of the night and has only minutes to decide whether to retaliate against an incoming adversary attack, the military would be primed to execute that order whatever it is, adds Peter Feaver, a former National Security Council staff member under President George W. Bush.

But if the communication runs the other way – if a president wakes up the military at 3 a.m. and wants to attack someone due to something he’s seen on cable news – the dynamic would be very different, says Dr. Feaver, a professor of political science at Duke University.

In that scenario the military would not be primed to respond reflexively. It would start to ask questions. Is this legal under US law? Is it legal under the laws of war? Is it really a good idea?

“They’d be asking all sorts of things. It wouldn’t be an automatic response. I’m not saying they would flat-out disobey the president. I’m saying they would raise the question,” says Feaver.

For context, he says, look at the way the Department of Defense handled Trump’s tweet that transgender troops would be banned. The Pentagon has clearly slow-walked that process and has not implemented far-reaching interpretations of that order.

A lesson from 1974

A nuclear order would be a far more immediate and dire matter, of course. But there’s evidence that in the past the military has quietly moved to lessen a pressured president’s ability to launch weapons.

While it remains unclear what exactly happened, it seems that top White House staff and military officers were on guard against sudden orders from President Nixon in his last days in the White House. Jeffrey H. Smith, former general counsel of the CIA, has recently written that as a young military lawyer in 1974 he saw a message from the chairman of the Joint Chiefs to four-star subordinate commanders. It ordered the four-stars to check with the chairman and the secretary of Defense if they received any “execute” orders from the president.

On August 9, 1974, Nixon boarded Air Force One a last time as he left the White House for good, waving and forcing a smile as his hours as president ticked away. According to the timing of his resignation he would remain chief executive for a few hours as he flew toward California. But unbeknownst to him, the nuclear “football” – the suitcase containing launch codes – was already elsewhere. It had been quietly transferred to the vicinity of his successor, Vice President Gerald Ford.

The ‘football’

The “football” is the core of a president’s nuclear power. It contains devices enabling the chief executive to authenticate his identity and a short menu of different mixes of weapon launches from which they can choose.

It is the center of a system designed for three things: to prevent anyone but a president from directing nuclear use, to ensure reliability in a crisis, and to be fast.

The point is for every possible adversary to know that they can’t decapitate the US government with a quick first strike and win a nuclear exchange. No matter what, their country will be destroyed if they try.

“Much of the US nuclear command and control system was developed to be able to withstand the most awful of circumstances ... to ensure a lawful order could be issued even if the US was already under a nuclear attack,” says Ms. Hersman.

However, it’s asking a lot of any human to give them such awesome life-and-death power, alone. Trump may seem impulsive, but other chief executives have had flaws. John F. Kennedy suffered health problems and took powerful medications. Nixon drank under pressure.

Pelosi calls for a new system

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi last week said it was “urgent” to design a better system. Perhaps Congress should pass law banning the US from first use of nuclear weapons, she said. Another approach might be to require a president to discuss any nuclear use with cabinet members.

“I believe that if we go forward with anything like that it has to be in a bipartisan way, because it’s about all presidents. No matter who he or she may be down the road,” said Representative Pelosi.

But restrictions on a president’s ability to use force could run smack into the Constitution’s recognition of the president as commander-in-chief. And there would be practical considerations – would a ban on first use complicate the ability of the US to preempt an imminent attack?

It is in the gray area between responding to an identifiable attack and a clear US first strike that there are difficult questions of law and politics. Consider this scenario: A president and his cabinet have been through a deliberative process for months about an adversary attempting to arm itself with nuclear weapons. Sanctions and threats have run their course. It’s time to just preempt them with US nuclear missiles, says the president. Yet many military officials and some cabinet members aren’t convinced.

If the president persists, the military has to go along. It’s true that in such a dispute the White House wins, in terms of the law.

But the bureaucracy has its own weapons. It could leak, copiously. Top officials could resign. It is easy to see how such a situation could create a national political uproar.

To some extent, there already is a two-man rule at the top of the nuclear pyramid, says Peter Feaver. Any authenticated nuclear order must pass through the secretary of Defense, the next link down from the president in the National Command Authority. The White House does not communicate directly with missile silos or bombers. Pointing that out publicly might be a good thing.

“You are just clarifying for a worried public that is the case,” Feaver says.

Jacob Turcotte/Staff

Before “Harvey Weinstein: The Scandal” captured the national conversation, there were whispers. There were warnings. And there were jokes.

When The New York Times published a scathing report earlier this month accusing the Hollywood mogul of engaging in a decades-long pattern of sexual harassment, coercion, and abuse of young actresses, few were entirely surprised.

For one thing, the idea of starlets exchanging sexual favors – willingly or not – for prominent roles is a story that’s practically as old as Hollywood itself. There’s even a cozy euphemism: the casting couch, a metaphor that observers say has helped to normalize the practice and blur the lines of responsibility and blame in a way that promotes silence.

But this month, with a steady stream of actresses coming forward with their own accounts of being cornered, propositioned, or assaulted by Mr. Weinstein in a bathrobe, the tone of the conversation has shifted, grown louder, gained weight. Women from all walks of life have started to share their own stories of harassment and rape, or simply raised their hand on social media with the short but powerful phrase of “Me too,” as if to stack their experiences up together so they cannot drift away with the next breeze.

The Weinstein accusations have resonated with the public in a way that goes beyond the typical wave of voyeuristic titillation. It is the tangible manifestation of a narrative that has been playing out for decades, if not centuries, in what sometimes seems to be nearly every avenue of society, observers say.

How we collectively talk about these accounts can have a profound effect on how seriously grievances are taken, says Theresa Simpkin, of Anglia Ruskin University in Chelmsford, England. The words society chooses to use to describe sexual harassment and assault – and the tone we cast them with – can tint the lens the public uses to assign judgment, belief, or blame. They can help foster a culture of silence and compliance – or they can empower the vulnerable to resist and report.

“Words are incredibly important for setting up a platform for thinking and behavior and how we see certain events,” says Professor Simpkin, who heads the Department of Leadership and Management at Lord Ashcroft International Business School and studies the role of language in supporting or diminishing bias and discrimination in the workplace. “When we start using euphemistic language and skulking around the edges of these types of things, we are undercutting the gravity of them.”

Value and risks of a whisper

Whispers and warnings can serve a vital purpose, shining a dim light on dangerous situations. In the wake of the Times article, and a subsequent piece in The New Yorker in which Italian actress and director Asia Argento and two other women allege Weinstein raped them, others have shared that warnings from other women helped them steer clear of the mogul.

In an op-ed for the Times, writer, actor, and director Sarah Polley recounted the words of a publicist who promised to stay by her side when she was summoned to a meeting with Weinstein as a 19-year-old. “I knew everything I needed to know in that moment, and I was grateful,” Ms. Polley wrote.

But relegating the discussion to hushed tones and veiled words of caution carries a danger, activists say. It fosters a culture where unwanted advances – even overt coercion – are seen as a normal part of female life. It adds to a general “degree of acceptance that this is just what women have to put up with to participate in society,” says Lisa Senecal, a writer, entrepreneur, and women’s advocate who was in September appointed by the governor of Vermont to the state’s Commission on Women.

The fact that we are having the conversation at all is encouraging, observers say. The high-profile status of Weinstein and of the women who have accused him, among them Ashley Judd, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Rose McGowan, has shined a Hollywood-sized spotlight on a problem that appears to be pervasive.

Already, others in the entertainment industry have come forward with the idea that the accusations against Weinstein are emblematic of a systemic problem. Molly Ringwald wrote of running into “plenty of Harveys of my own over the years, enough to feel a sickening shock of recognition.” Oscar-winner Emma Thompson pointed out that the issue has been ongoing for decades. In her mother’s day, it was referred to as “pestering.”

And historically, the idea of the casting couch has been framed within a very different power dynamic than the one described by Ms. Judd and Ms. McGowan. Instead of an older and more powerful director or producer preying on the young, the narrative borrows from another age-old story, that of the seductive Jezebel willing to use her sexuality to improve her position.

“Everybody’s got a couch. If we put [this behavior] into simple and innocuous terms then it diminishes the reality of what this is,” Simpkin says.

It’s a pattern of harassment and cover-ups seen in accusations against Roger Ailes and Bill O’Reilly at Fox News, Bill Cosby, and, most recently, Roy Price at Amazon Studios. And it’s not just women who report being targeted, but young boys and men too, as Corey Feldman has reminded fans for years.

“This is not something that is confined to high-profile, very powerful people. It’s playing out in shops and offices and hotels and schools as well,” says Simpkin.

Ms. Senecal describes a career peppered with on-the-job sexual harassment, including an assault. She can’t discuss the assault, per a non-disclosure agreement. But she freely shares stories of any number of other brushes with sexually inappropriate behavior at work – from her first job as a 15-year-old waitress, and her next as a 16-year-old department store clerk; to her next job at 19, doing clerical work in plumbing and heating firms, and the next position as a 20-year-old at an ophthalmology group. “And those were the earlier ones,” she says.

“I don’t think that I’m unusual,” Senecal says. “I think that the unusual is to speak with a woman who has not had multiple experiences with harassment.”

According to an ABC/Washington Post poll released on Tuesday, more than half of women in the United States have been subjected to inappropriate advances at work. Of those, 80 percent said the encounter approached the level of sexual harassment. One-third said it amounted to sexual abuse. “This translates to approximately 33 million American women being sexually harassed, and 14 million sexually abused, in work-related incidents,” the pollsters write.

“I don’t think we can ignore the vast amount of properly researched statistics as well as anecdotal evidence that women ...  have for many years taken this as part of being a woman,” Simpkin says. “We really need to have a look at the cultural underpinnings that allow that to be perpetuated.”

Changing the lexicon of assault

One way is through the lexicon that we draw from when discussing accusations, accusers, and the accused, researchers and advocates say. Reliance on euphemisms and vague language diminishes the harm that results from such behavior and blurs the lines between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.

All too frequently, when women report that they have been targeted by predatory behavior, the discussion turns to one of character rather than the specific actions or incidents detailed in the report, observers say.

Women who bring claims against men are often required to first defend themselves before they can focus the attention on the perpetrator, Simpkin says. Questions of what she was wearing, if she led him on, or what she was doing out alone at night can skew public and even legal application of blame. What’s more, they underscore a narrative that if women simply do the right things and behave the right way, they will be safe, Senecal adds.

Questions of character take a different tone, however, when the discussion shifts to men who have been accused, says Zhana Vrangalova, an adjunct professor of human sexuality at New York University.

“There is this myth that ‘nice guys,’ or guys who otherwise have good reputations, can never be abusers – that abusers are these mentally disturbed or very obviously violent types of people,” Professor Vrangalova says. That fosters this idea that “if you have someone who is a well-respected member of the community, they couldn’t possibly be an abuser.”

That notion came into play in the case of Brock Turner, says Simpkin, referring to the college athlete who was convicted on three counts of felony sexual assault in 2015. In that case, the language used by the media and those defending Mr. Turner focused on the question of whether a perpetrator should carry a lifelong penalty for 20 minutes of misguided action.

“If we change that language to his being penalized for ‘20 minutes of sexual, premeditated assault on a defenseless, unconscious victim’ it changes the way we actually see that behavior,” Simpkin says.

Likewise, Weinstein's framing of his behavior as the relic of a bygone era, the so-called dinosaur defense, serves to diminish the responsibility that all men (and women) bear for their own actions.

“I know too many men who came up in the ’60s and ’70s and they don’t behave this way,” Senecal says. “It has to do with entitlement and position of power and being willing to use that position of power to victimize people. That’s not generational, that’s despicable.”

‘Just joking’

The lack of specificity in defining what constitutes harassment or assault can also lead people to unfairly characterize misguided comments or jokes as predatory behavior, Professor Vrangalova says.

“I worry about slapping people with the sexual perpetrator and the predator labels for things that are sometimes within the gray area,” Vrangalova says. “Very often sexual situations are not either/or.”

Jokes are a particularly fraught vehicle. On the one hand, they are a way to bring people’s attention to uncomfortable, taboo topics. In the case of Mr. Cosby, it was a joke made by comedian Hannibal Buress that appeared to have opened a floodgate of accusations from women. A sexual assault trial against Cosby was declared a mistrial in June.

On the other hand, jokes run the risk of being dismissed as “just jokes,” Simpkin says, pointing to a barbed remark made by Seth MacFarlane during the 2013 Academy Awards.

After introducing the five nominees for Best Supporting Actress Mr. MacFarlane quipped, “Congratulations, you five ladies no longer have to pretend to be attracted to Harvey Weinstein.”

MacFarlane this month explained in a Twitter post that actor Jessica Barth had just confided in him about a nefarious encounter with Weinstein. The remark was his way of taking a “hard swing” at the producer. “Make no mistake, this came from a place of loathing and anger,” he wrote. Ms. Barth has since come forward with her story.

At the time, the audience tittered while MacFarlane and co-presenter Emma Stone both bit down into hardened smiles.

“Yes, it’s useful to use comedy to put difficult issues out into the public domain where they can be debated, examined, and critiqued,” Simpkin says. “But it may well just be construed as a joke.”

Humor can also be used as a cloak to disguise and perpetuate harmful rhetoric, Simpkin and Vrangalova both caution. Perpetrators frequently use the defense that they were “only joking” when they are called out for inappropriate comments.

When Donald Trump characterized his lewd remarks about being able to do “anything” to women on the “Access Hollywood” tape that surfaced during his campaign as locker-room talk, “it was clear from the entire context of what Donald Trump was saying that that wasn’t a joke,” Vrangalova says. “In fact, it seemed like that was what he actually had done in the past.”

Characterizing his comments as “locker room banter suggests that it’s all right as long as it’s out of earshot,” says Simpkin. “But that language, even if it is inside the locker room, is setting up expectations that are taken outside of the locker room as well, so it underpins a narrative of how women are seen and are valued and how they interact in the community.”

President Trump’s comments on that tape also sparked a national dialogue when the recording was leaked by The Washington Post more than a decade later. Then, as they have this past month, women took to social media to share their experiences with men who assumed they could grab them wherever and whenever they wanted.

Senecal says she was heartened by that response, but frustrated that the conversation died down so soon – and that Trump was elected even after those comments were made public. The resurfacing of these themes in public discourse is again encouraging, she says. She just hopes the momentum continues.

“It is up to activists, both male and female, to try and keep it in the headlines,” she says. “Because that’s where it has to be to effect great change.”

At the peak of the economic crisis in Spain, Raul Gil readily found a job at an association in Berlin that helped bewildered young Spaniards newly arrived in Germany navigate a new language, cultural mores, and workplace etiquette.

By the time he decided to return home in 2016, ultimately to this seaside town in Cantabria where he was born and raised, he realized he could put his skills to use in reverse: for other Spaniards also now wishing to come back.

He and two friends created “Volvemos” – literally “We Return” – a nonprofit organization dedicated to the return migration of Spaniards who sought economic refuge in Britain, Germany, and beyond.

“For many years we’ve talked about those who have left, but we are now focusing on those who want to return,” says Mr. Gil in Santoña, a fishing port famous for its anchovy production.

Juan Ignacio Llana Ugalde/Special to The Christian Science Monitor

Raúl Gil once worked in Berlin to help Spanish emigrants navigate their new homes, but now he's returned home and wants to help other Spaniards do the same. He started the organization Volvemos to connect Spaniards abroad to new jobs at home. He's now living in his birthplace, Santona, where he tries to promote local culture like the anchovy industry that is based here.

His organization – and its aims – are but one sign of a country in the middle of an economic recovery. And in neighboring Portugal, the shift in fortunes feels even more dramatic.

The country needed a bailout in 2011 amid the European Union's sovereign debt crisis, and Portugal's then-prime minister, Pedro Passos Coelho, publicly told young citizens their best hope was to go elsewhere. Not only are officials now seeking to lure emigrants back home, but Lisbon, the country’s capital, has become one of the hottest destinations in Europe, helping to change the narrative of the crisis-racked Iberian Peninsula.

The economic boost in both Spain and Portugal is just part of the greater rebound they are experiencing, however. As important, perhaps more so, is the accompanying boost in morale for each after years of job contraction and population loss. Instead of being forced to go far from home to find a tenable life, Iberians are finding their homeland is becoming an attractive place to be – not just for them, but for Europeans more broadly.

“International newspapers only talked about Portugal because of its poor economic performance. Now the narrative around Portugal is really positive,” says Marina Costa Lobo of the University of Lisbon’s Institute of Social Sciences. “This positive image is unprecedented in the 21th century, and the country is taking advantage of it.”

Spain climbs back

Spain’s population increased in 2016 for the first time in five years, the most recent census figures showed this summer. It was a modest increase at 0.19 percent, but underlines a broader turn, where immigration rates have rebounded while emigration has slowed. Population growth traces Spain’s three-year economic recovery. Some 480,000 new full-time posts were created in the past year, according to government figures released this summer, although political instability is Catalonia could drag on overall growth.

Jobs are being created across the spectrum, says Javier Díaz Giménez, professor of economics at IESE Business School in Madrid. Some traditional sectors like tourism are booming, but even construction workers, the hardest hit amid the real estate bubble that popped, have become a symbol of new hope. “Even they are finding jobs again in Spain,” he says.

Ivan Jimenez, the managing director of Bizkaia Talent, travels to Britain and Germany, among other places, to attract talent to the Basque city of Bilbao. He says his job is much easier today. After years of job destruction in the region, the Basque Country has created 15,000 jobs in last three years, 45 percent of them highly qualified. “I started in 2011 in the middle of the crisis. It was not a good time to talk about attraction of talent,” he says.

Eztizen Andres knows this all too well. When she obtained her degree in architecture from the University of Navarra in 2012, she graduated right into “Generacion Crisis,” a class of university degree-holders with few prospects at home. Of her 15 closest colleagues at school, almost all packed their suitcases: for Germany, Chile, Mexico, and Ghana.

So Ms. Andres and her boyfriend left their home in Bilbao for Berlin, where they met Gil and the network of Spaniards abroad. They both landed jobs, she becoming fluent in German, and today recognize the perspectives they gained from leaving their homes and comfort zones. “But we started to miss home, and our families. Every time we went to Bilbao, we found it harder to leave,” she says.

Through the Volvemos network, she was able to land a job in her field in Madrid, and the two returned to Spain at the end of the spring – something she says more of her peers aspire to do. “It’s true Spaniards don’t want to leave. We have a Spanish saying: ‘why would we leave when we live so well here?’ Spaniards don’t even want to leave Spain for vacation.”

‘An oasis of stability’

As Spaniards return home, Portugal – particularly its two main cities Lisbon and Porto – is seeing its own revival. It's a far cry from just a few years ago, when amid an $83 billion EU bailout, young people were advised they should leave.

Now the storyline has changed – and not just due to economic recovery, with GDP growing above the eurozone average and unemployment below 10 percent for the first time since the crisis flared in 2010. Bright news is all over: the national soccer team won the Euro 2016 soccer tournament, Portugal won the Eurovision Song Contest for the first time this year, and former Prime Minister António Guterres was nominated as secretary-general of the United Nations. The country also has been spared the terrorism that has hit Europe elsewhere, as well as the rise of the far right.

Further, CNN deemed Lisbon the “coolest city” in Europe. Forbes chose Porto as “the place” to visit this year. Politico called Portugal “an oasis of stability” in Europe.

Europeans are paying attention. Laurine Montresor, a human resources manager originally from the French overseas region Guadeloupe, relocated to Lisbon from Barcelona over the summer and says Portugal is all the buzz. “So many people in France talk about coming to Portugal now. Life is better, there’s more joy, more sun,” she says. “And you don’t need to speak Portuguese to work and live here since everyone speaks English.”

It's a reverse migration of sorts. Cecilia Cardoso’s grandparents were among the almost half million Portuguese who emigrated to France in the 1960s and '70s escaping poverty. Born and raised in France, Ms. Cardoso embraced her Portuguese identity and decided in the summer of 2015 to relocate and open a pastry shop in Leiria, north of Lisbon. The terrorist attacks at the Bataclan theater and elsewhere in Paris a few months later convinced her that leaving France was the right call.

“I remember taking the subway to work a few days after and everyone looked suspiciously at you. No one trusted anyone. It felt awful. I cannot live like that,” she says. “My friends keep telling me they’ll gladly take a pay cut and move here so their kids can experience some freedom growing up.”

More work needed

Some Portuguese economists remain skeptical about the government failing to implement structural reforms to create long-term, high-quality jobs. Portugal’s debt, at 130 percent of GDP, is the eurozone’s third highest. Spain's unemployment, meanwhile, stands at 17.22 percent – and for youths it is 38.7 percent.

Much needs to change in the Spanish labor market, Gil says. While recovery in southern Europe makes the notion of Volvemos possible, he concedes, “most aren’t returning because of the marvelous working conditions in Spain,” he says. There is still a dearth of high-paid, secure work for the 7,000 Spaniards in the Volvemos database.

Volvemos tries to ensure that all the jobs advertised on its website are in demand, and when they are low quality, they are removed. The organization also works with companies and public administration offices to actively recruit Spaniards abroad, after years of unofficial policy of easing the unemployment crisis by simply letting them leave. “Spanish administrations realize they need these kinds of people to help continue to invigorate the economy,” Gil says.

Emigrants tend to have language skills, different cultural perspectives, and above all, grit, he says. “They now realize they can’t lose this talent.”

Erik De Castro/ Reuters

A banner hangs outside a church in the town of Pateros , Metro Manila, Philippines on March 14, 2017.

In a dimly lit events room in a church compound in Manila's endless suburbs, a few dozen parishioners have gathered on a bleak Tuesday afternoon. The men and women sitting in rows of plastic chairs listen to a lecture in Tagalog; some come forward to share their experiences.

The Rev. George Alfonso watches intently. The parish priest is supervising the event, a group therapy session for drug users trying to come clean – and ensure their survival.

Since President Rodrigo Duterte took office in June 2016, pledging to rid the country of drugs in order to reduce crime, addiction comes with more than the usual risks. The ensuing crackdown has claimed the lives of thousands of alleged drug users and sellers. Filipino police say they have killed more than 3,900 “drug personalities” in official operations since Mr. Duterte took office, while activists say the actual death toll could be as high as 13,000 – and that most victims are small-time dealers and addicts, many of them killed by vigilantes.

In Duterte’s inaugural State of the Nation address, he estimated there were 3.7 million “drug addicts” in the Philippines, a country of 100 million. “I have to slaughter these idiots who are destroying my country,” he said. The previous chairman of the Official Dangerous Drug Boards had put the number of drug users at 1.8 million – a discrepancy for which Duterte fired him in May.

Human rights groups have decried the campaign’s violence. But month after month, polls showed high support at home for Duterte’s anti-drug campaign, with many Filipinos frustrated by past failures to tackle the problem. Critics have been berated, and one of the most vocal opponents, Sen. Leila de Lima, has been detained on drug-trafficking charges. But public opinion appears to be on the cusp of a shift – and one of the country’s most powerful institutions, the Roman Catholic Church, is also stepping up its criticism, saying the crackdown has gone too far.

“When the president declared war against drugs, we saw the magnitude of the problem,” says Father Alfonso. “Now other church people are opening their eyes and trying to do something.”

Quiet pushback

In a society where 81 percent of the population is Roman Catholic, the church traditionally holds significant sway, and it is not known to be a passive bystander in Philippines politics. In the 1970s and '80s, it was a key player in the opposition movement that led to the downfall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. As the press was muzzled and political repression increased, the clergy helped mobilize the population against Marcos’s rule – a legacy many are proud of today.

In many parishes, opposition to the anti-drug war began quietly, one by one. The Baclaran Church in central Manila, for example, has sheltered witnesses of police violence since the beginning of the year. It has also exhibited images of police victims, in protest of the alleged extrajudicial killings.

Activists opposing the carnage would engage with clergymen at the lower rung, going from parish door to parish door in search of cooperation.

“We cannot see the whole Catholic church as one. We have to talk to every church, each diocese, archdiocese. The local parishes, they’re easy to talk to, and they allow us to use their churches as a venue," says Benjamin Cordero, an activist for the “Stop the Killing” movement.

And as the war on drugs raged in the slums, the church’s base began to tackle its consequences.

“If you go to the really poor urban communities around Metro Manila where a lot of these killings are happening, you will find it’s the local dioceses that are taking action. They are reaching out to the poorest of the poor, they are reaching out to their flock,” says Carlos Conde, the Philippines researcher for the international advocacy group Human Rights Watch.

Parishes like Alfonso’s Santa Quiteria church in Caloocan began to run rehabilitation programs together with the local government and the police, seeking to address the country's drug problem at its roots.

“We are not the owner of our life; it is God-given to us. We don’t have any right to kill a person; instead we should understand the person and [have] the means to correct his mistakes,” says the priest.

“We are offering some kind of alternative, and this is really increasing in every diocese.”

Shift in approval?

Since the start of the anti-drug campaign, critics from the European Parliament to former President Barack Obama have received verbal attacks from Duterte. The church is not immune. The president, who has said he himself was abused by a priest as a teenager, has criticized the church's alleged sense of “moral ascendency,” drawing attention to the child-abuse scandals that have tainted its reputation here and around the world.

“He knows that this is the Achilles heel of the church, and he used it against them. From the moment he stepped into the office, Duterte started firing at the church, putting it on the defensive. And it worked,” says Mr. Conde.

But as the public mood begins to shift, much of the clergy has found a louder voice.

In August, the police allegedly shot 17 year-old Kian delos Santos in an execution-style killing in the Manila district of Caloocan. Police claimed that Kian was armed and resisted arrest. Video at the scene and witness accounts, however, suggested that he was shot in the head, and that evidence of ‘resisting’ was planted near his body. The teenager’s murder sparked outcry that previous accusations of murder had failed to ignite, with protests and a funeral march attended by thousands.

Soon after Kian's death, Bishop Pablo David sheltered several witnesses of his murder, including one minor, on the grounds of San Roque Cathedral in Caloocan. When the police came to pick up the young man on Sept. 9, the bishop refused to hand him over; his father, who had arrived with police, also wound up taking shelter inside.

That opposition echoes wider public skepticism. While Duterte had previously been able to count on massive popular support for his tough stance on drugs, his net satisfaction rating fell in September to 48, compared to 66 in June, according to Philippine pollster Social Weather Stations.

The slump shows Duterte is losing the support of the country's poor, who had initially backed his crackdown, says the Commission on Human Rights, a government body that has consistently criticized the president for his anti-narcotics campaign. The lower house of Congress voted last month to slash the Commission’s budget to 1,000 pesos (about $20), although it reversed the decision after a week. 

“Filipinos in lower socio-economic classes tend to suffer more – and yet no one has been held accountable for any of these killings,” the commission said in a statement.

Protest bells

For months, the influential Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) had shied away from strong criticism, bar a warning in February that Duterte's war on drugs was creating a “reign of terror in many places of the poor.” The letter also condemned public acceptance of the killings, saying “An even greater cause of concern is the indifference of many to this kind of wrong.”

But its willingness to speak up reached a new level in mid-September, when the CBCP decreed that church bells across the country be rung at 8 p.m. for the next 40 days in protest of the killings.

“For the sake of the children and the poor, stop their systematic murders and spreading reign of terror,” the conference’s president, Socrates Villegas, wrote in a statement last month.

He became even explicit in a homily delivered a week later, marking the anniversary of martial law under Marcos. “We are losing our national soul to the Father of Lies and Prince of Darkness,” Archbishop Villegas preached, using traditional names for the devil. “They are killing the poor and poisoning our consciences.”

On Oct. 12, the president pulled the national police out of the war on drugs, saying the change should satisfy “bleeding hearts and media.” The decision leaves the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency (PDEA) – which makes up only 1 percent of the police force – to conduct all official operations.

Despite the climb-down, some worry that the church is once again headed toward a prolonged struggle with a head of state. Under Marcos, thousands of people were arrested, tortured, or killed.

"I am afraid that what we experienced during Marcos may come again. At that time, the church people were really on a collision course with Marcos, and now that may repeat itself," says Alfonso.

Chris Carlson/AP

In this Tuesday, Oct. 3, 2017 photo, tourists get a ride in a tour vehicle that also advertises gun range activities in Las Vegas. A gunman opened fire on an outdoor music concert on Sunday making it the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. But even though the city is in mourning, for many it is business as usual with celebrations and parties continuing.

My heart was pounding as I stood in front of one of Las Vegas’s many fantasy-themed gun ranges.

For reasons personal and professional, I wanted to shoot a gun for the first time – and join the 72 percent of US adults who already have. But it was a moment of sorrow and political tension. I was a reporter who had immediately flown west to Las Vegas to cover the latest of America’s mass shootings – and the wide cultural divide between regions of the country, at least when it comes to guns. 

In New York City, where I live, there are only a few gun ranges, including a single range open to the public in Manhattan. No one in my closest circle of friends owns a gun, as far as I know, and though I am originally from a conservative community in south-suburban Chicago, I cannot recall even seeing anyone shoot a gun. So I was curious.

Nevada is one of the least restrictive states for gun owners. But in Las Vegas, the country's entertainment capital, a host of gun ranges market fantasy packages for tourists from all over the world. Many of them, one range employee told me, have also never shot a gun before.

“Looking for the ultimate adrenaline rush?” asks Battlefield Vegas, one of the top attractions in the city, according to TripAdvisor’s “fun and games” section. The entertainment venue picks up patrons from their hotels with a Humvee and offers experiences with weapons “from the trenches of World War I all the way to current operations in the Middle East.” One of its more popular packages allows customers to shoot real weapons featured in the video game “Call of Duty: Black Ops.”

Strip Gun Club, a popular gun range on the Vegas strip, also markets packages for women, including “Boom for the Bride” bachelorette parties. Another range, Machine Gun Vegas, offers bachelor parties that combine shooting guns with a limo ride to a gentleman’s club afterward.

I wasn’t the only reporter to visit these gun ranges, of course. Understandably, employees of nearly all of the ranges declined to comment on the mass shooting or their business models, citing respect for the victims and their families. Off the strip and miles from the bright din of casino lights and colors, range owners and patrons dismissed such entertainments – “tourist traps” for clueless newbies, such as myself.

Most were suspicious of journalists like me who were seeking them out during this moment of tragedy, unwilling to talk on the record since they worried my motives might include portraying gun rights advocates as callous. “We felt it, and we hurt,” wrote Meredith Dake-O’Connor in The Federalist, echoing the feelings of many gun rights advocates. “As hard as it may be to imagine, a person can watch this, ache, hurt, and be profoundly affected by these events and not change his or her position on the Second Amendment.”

Like some of the range employees and gun owners I talked to, Ms. Dake-O’Connor also complained that many journalists were just ignorant about the details of guns and gun ownership.

I was under no illusions that a single visit to a Vegas gun range would somehow give my reporting added credibility. And I was not immune to the fantasies and adrenaline rushes marketed to thrill-seeking tourists on the strip.

So for $160, I purchased a “Zombie” fantasy package online from a Vegas gun range I didn’t visit earlier, and I was feeling a bit nervous. (Managers at the ranges I had visited politely but firmly declined my requests to pay to shoot at their facilities.)

After I walked in, my trainer, who I will call Jim, had me choose four paper targets, one for each gun, as well as ear and eye protectors. 

My first weapon, and the first gun I ever fired, was a Springfield XDM9, a 9mm semi-automatic pistol made in Croatia, and often marketed to beginners. Jim gave me basic instructions. I set my feet, and holding the pistol with both hands as instructed, shot at a 23” x 35” paper target – a picture of the racially ambiguous Terrorist No. 1, masked, wearing jeans, and carrying a machine gun.

A bullseye. After a few more careful and deliberate single shots, I then squeezed off a number of rounds as quickly as I could. In the end, I hit the target 12 out of 20 times.

Next was a fully automatic Glock 17 carbine — which, to a beginner like me, seemed basically a pistol placed into a device that made it a machine gun. I had chosen a classic target even I recognized: Ice-QT, who looks like a stocky, angry-looking '50s-era bank robber, a white man with his hair slicked back as he points a pistol directly at you. (Ice-QT is also the official qualification target for U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers.)

I shot a few short bursts into the paper silhouette’s chest. Of the fifty rounds I had, only two missed the target. I felt pleased.

My next weapon was classic pump-action 12-gauge shotgun. Jim loaded it with five 8-pellet buckshot shells. This silhouette, Big Helmut, was a bright green and yellow zombie. Feeling more confident, I embraced the fantasy. I aimed and pulled the trigger, shooting directly into the zombie’s chest — which I knew, as a fan of AMC’s “The Walking Dead,” doesn’t stop a zombie.

I pumped the shotgun’s fore-end, and shot again, feeling the gun’s famous recoil. For my last three shots, I decided to shoot as quickly as I could, like in the movies: Boom, chick-chick. Boom, chick-chick. Boom.

“That was awesome,” I said. “Yeah, makes you feel like a man,” Jim said as he flicked a switch and drew the target back to the booth. “You could put your fist through the hole you put into him.”

In my head, I briefly thought of the gendered discourse of power. This range also included small pink pistols marketed for women. It, too, offered special bachelorette packages. In truth, before I went in, I wondered if I should start with smaller weapons, and purchase such a package. In truth, this former high school and college wrestler could never do that, for reasons worth reflecting on.

But I was eager to shoot my final weapon: the AR-15, equipped with a scope. For what may be the most famous, or infamous, gun in the country, I chose the plain blue silhouette B-27E BR with a small red bullseye in the center. The target includes a score chart used to produce certification scores.

Jim moved the target as far back as it could go – about 10 meters. I concentrated, feeling competitive. The weapon, and the scope, was simple and elegant. My first five shots, cautious and deliberate, hit the inner X of the red bullseye. I quickly fired five more rounds. Each of my 20 shots, in fact, hit the red of the bullseye. (OK, one bullet was mostly outside the bullseye, but it grazed the red, so I’m telling everyone I got 20/20.)

I felt proud. But I also felt a deep respect for the design of this weapon, often called “‘America’s rifle.” If a newbie like me, shooting a gun for the first time in his life, can perform this well with minimal training, it obviously has more to do with the weapon’s efficient design and the utter ease with which a person can handle, aim, and shoot a target.

But it’s also an efficiency that troubled me. My editor messaged me, asking if I was a convert to gun ownership. “Good question,” I replied. “I was struck by the incredible and instantaneous power of these weapons – and I could see being interested in the sport of marksmanship,” I messaged back.

But I was not ready to own a gun, or carry one in public, I told her. “My heart is still pounding, and I’m thinking of what it means to wield such power, relatively speaking, over life and death.”

AP Photo

Protesters brave the rain as they gather in Manilla Sept. 21 to call for an end to the killings in the so-called war on drugs of President Rodrigo Duterte as well as his alleged "tyrannical rule" of the Philippines.

One gift to the world from the Philippines has been the term “people power,” or peaceful resistance in the streets against a leader’s arbitrary rule and violent suppression. In 1986, it led to a dictator’s fall and inspired pro-democracy protests in other countries. Three decades later, Filipinos are at it again.

This time they are quietly resisting President Rodrigo Duterte’s neglect of both the rule of law and the presumption of innocence in a violent crackdown on drug users and dealers. After 16 months in office leading a campaign that encouraged police to shoot “drug personalities” on sight – by the thousands – Mr. Duterte is facing a broad backlash.

His popularity has fallen below 50 percent, especially among the poor who backed his anti-drug campaign. One reason for the decline may be a video that surfaced in August showing police killing a teenager who did not appear to be resisting arrest. Even before the video came to light, more than half of Filipinos told pollsters they believe that many of the alleged drug users killed by police had not resisted arrest.

The shift in sentiment has emboldened more top figures in society – including the police and Roman Catholic bishops – to speak out, even at the risk of political retribution.

One such person is Byron Allatog, chief of police in the city of Bogo. He prefers his officers shoot only in self-defense and work with addicts to help them seek treatment. “Some people may say, ‘He’s a drug addict, nothing but trash.’ But do these people even consider the fact that these drug addicts have families? I want people to know that killing is not the final solution to the problem of illegal drugs,” he told the Philippine Daily Inquirer.

The Catholic Church, meanwhile, has begun to speak out more forcefully. In a few cases, it has provided sanctuary to police who report the murder of innocent people by other police.

Earlier this month, Duterte stopped promising immunity for officers who kill suspects. And, in a major move, he decided that only the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency should conduct operations against drug-related offenders. The PDEA makes up only 1 percent of the nation’s police.

Many Filipinos still support extrajudicial killings out of impatience to end the effects of the drug trade. But the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines warns that Duterte’s war on drugs has created a “reign of terror in many places of the poor.” An even greater concern is “the indifference of many to this kind of wrong.”

That indifference, however, is steadily eroding as more Filipinos speak out. People power is at work again.