President Arroyo’s got up to the podium, delivered her State of the Nation Address (SONA), and then stepped down from the podium.

That backgrounder out of the way, I can then say that it is quite heartening that within FilipinoVoices.com, at least, some of the usual suspects had the decency to see beyond their almost dogmatic biases and regard the content of the speech first and then render their verdict on that basis. Without a doubt, it is just a speech — albeit, a well written and delivered one. As such, it seemed to have moved even Arroyo’s most dogged critics. Of course there were morons who seemed to have just sat through the address, pen and notepad on hand, in a mental state that set them up to react only to the stimuli of keywords that were relevant to the question of her political ambitions after 2010:

Everything was a “lie”…

As expected, Gloria Arroyo enumerated a litany of lies about her so called accomplishments.

… and thus:

[...] she is tuso. She lets her minions do the manipulation to amend the Constitution so she can stay in power forever.

… after which this “reporter” proceeds to quote the entire speech verbatim in the same blog post.

Whatever.

As I said earlier, it is just a speech. Whatever way it moved people is nice fodder for the usually vacuous Philippine Media to broker at a yummy profit. True enough, this morning, the always insightful Bandila “news” program already had their cameras and mikes shoved in the faces of Jose de Venecia (live via Skype — apparently ABS-CBN is scrimping nowadays) from Australia and Erap (speech boozily slurred in his usual excellent form) — two of the bato-batos hit by the proverbial stone thrown in the SONA. The third bato-bato knocked squarely on the forehead is squeakily self-righteous Mar Roxas caught on camera schmoozing with street protesters, if I recall right, after “boycotting” the SONA. Very classy, Mr. Roxas. Very classy indeed. By the way, is schmoozing with street protestors part of that job description that defines your claim to your salary as senator of our fair land?

At least de Venecia and Erap stepped up to blabber away some kind of platitudinal response in their defense. But then too bad, guys. You were on the wrong side of the podium at an unpopular politician’s moment of glory and are relegated to pathetic schoolyard-grade comebacks after the fact. To speculate a bit on the esteemed Mar Roxas’s thoughts, I could imagine him hopping up and down inside yelling Tang ina mo! while smiling before the cameras.

The real point here is that this small two-minute sample of “responses” dished out (two verbal, and one grandstanded) by three otherwise powerful men standing outside the kulambo on Bandila this morning could easily represent the entire collective “position” of today’s Philippine “Opposition”:

“We were mis-represented”.

“Don’t believe in all those lies“.

- and most original of all -

“We are one with the rallying-man-on-the-street”.

Don’t be too surprised if every critical word uttered by the “Opposition” in response to the SONA does not fail to crystallise around the above three pillars of “wisdom”, folks. Because you are looking pretty much at the full-extent of the Filipino’s faculties for imagination.

As Ben Kritz observes in his latest blog post:

[T]he real issue is: now what?

(my italics)

There is a simple approach to answering that question, ladies and gentlemen of the Philippine “Opposition” (whether you are “united”, “genuine”, or the usual fragmented and clueless bunch of bozos you’ve traditionally been, whatever). Unfortunately for us, it requires a bit of brain-related work to cobble together. It’s called a platform. Sure you can tell us that God “commanded” you to lead us out of our wretchedness or that you have the “mandate of the people” (in whatever way you choose to substantiate that quaint claim). Indeed, you can even go on and do any of the following:

Cite the dimwitted House or Senate bills you’ve authored.

Dish out quaint platitudes about how things “should” or “must” be in our society.

- and/or -

Quote how much money “should” or “must” be spent (usually as percentages of the budget or the GDP) on this or that initiative or area of human development that all these no-added-value SWS “surveys” highlight.

The trackrecord for making such lofty pronouncements reads out like the sad stocktake of Filipino thinking that it really is.

So guess what…

Any moron can do all that;

… in the same way that any three-year-old can write out an unstructured wishlist of toys that would likely end up in a postal bin of letters addressed to Santa Claus.

Adults on the other hand, take a pre-meditated and conscious path towards achieving their objectives and acquiring what they aspire for. Not surprisingly, those who don’t, are usually prime candidates for ending up grasping society’s short end of the stick.

So in that noble undertaking of becoming a leader in a society that desperately needs to change in order to prosper, what separates the men from the boys is the ability to come up with a coherent blueprint or architecture for doing so, underpinned by an internally-consistent framework of thinking.

Sounds like a tall order? Of course it does. It does to those who have never acquired the habit of thinking things through properly.

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