Is there a connection between Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s “Goddam America” sermon and U.P. (University of the Philippines) journalism professor Luis Teodoro’s Freudian slip-ups (he has counseled his fellow journalists to blog to rub off their “virtues” on bloggers) or Australian-based “heckler” BenignO’s raves on what he thinks is the Filipinos’ penchant for hollow symbolisms?
It’s a bit of a stretch but I could see the dots leading to what seems to be the insider/outsider dialectic, with Rev. Wright using the bully pulpit to continue driving the wedge between the still inchoate Black Americans and White America, Prof. Teodoro, his academic credentials to patronize his anarchic wannabes or BenignO, his “cosmopolitanism” to shake up his primitivized “other.”
What I appreciate about fellow traveler BenigO, who likes being described as “the heckler of the politically-passionate,” is that even when he is politically anatomizing, he somehow ends up lying on the psychoanalytic couch himself – something akin to employing some tricks straight from the toolkits of novelists to create different characters in the plot out of their own disparate experiences. The internal conversation (shade of Chrisostomo Ibarra, Elias, Tasio and Simon in Rizal’s Noli and Fili, as once pointed out by commenter Pedro at PCIJ, if memory doesn’t fail me) is a lot better than coup plotting or rebelling, with or without a cause.
What’s problematic about a (Marxian) radical or a right-wing messiah from the barracks, for instance, is the not-so-unlikely risk that once state power is captured, tyranny could be replayed in a vicious rerun because power, as we know by now, often corrupts. The same scenario may obtain, on a relatively cognate plane, when a blogger reaches a million hits daily on a sustained basis and starts attracting advertisers and financiers and then ultimately gets engulfed into the same self-interested order he’s been working to upset in the first place.
Is the dialectic for real, anyways? Or are we capable of blurting “Goddam America, goddam me,” “Grow up, dude . . . as I ought” or “let’s learn or lean on together”?
I like it better then when BenignO begins his prognostication with “the trouble with us as a people” instead of, perching on a higher sill, upbraiding Pinoys for their supposed vacuousness or ocho-ocho mentality.
Still along similar vein, couldn’t blogging and posting anonymously be preliminaries to more intelligent conversation with others? Unless the use of anonymity is motivated by pure ill-will, doesn’t the exercise allow us somehow to vet first our ideas internally from a different perspective before venting them outside into the realm of social intercourse?
On the other hand, sermonizing and other forms of didactic speechifying (we do fall to it all too often, don’t we?) can be very solitary. So, when we exclaim “Goddam America,” “mind your manners, people” or “grow up or screw up” without expecting or welcoming a conversation (in the hope of coming to a consensus), can’t “trolling” be far behind?
Indeed, “(a leaf) cannot freeze and burn at the same time” (Ayn Rand). But, can it be agreed: Man is capable of being both inside and outside of himself?
Tags: blogging, blogosphere, class, communication, community, consensus, filipino society, individual, race
It is often hard to distinguish truth to power and run of the mill trolling especially if you’re on the receiving end of their message. The only way i can think of is to engage the truth teller/troll in a conversation.
Why do we fear “… a (Marxian) radical or a right-wing messiah from the barracks, for instance, is the not-so-unlikely risk that once state power is captured, tyranny could be replayed in a vicious rerun because power, as we know by now, often corrupts.”?
Thailand was able to do it, ousting Thaksin then installing a junta for a period of time then giving the government back to the people. If we are what we say we are, a rational, democracy crazy, freedom-loving people, we can do this kind of route.
The reason is simple–we are not yet ready to do the right thing. We dain to lose our property or even our voices for a short period of time.
cvj, as once a trial lawyer I sort of look at the (deliberative) process as a form of public cross examination (akin to a peer review of a scientist’s hypothesis where the ultimate goal being to find the scientific truth). It could be very liberating to everyone – the hypothesizer, the cross-examiner, the public and even the fence sitters (the lurkers, if you will). On the other hand, official policymakers may only ignore serious exchanges at their peril.
Pat, I actually have no problem with a “revolutionary government” to fix the mess for us in the short term as long as, 1) its formation has the consent of the people, and 2) the people clearly provide a “sunset clause” in the delegation of authority (so that the “giving back” is not seen as a form of gratuity but as a mandated obligation on the part of the delegates).
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