Yet again, Pinoys sit in their obscure little islands nation looking longingly across the Pacific as the United States — even while in the grips of a mind-bending financial implosion — manages to produce a beacon of hope for change that taps an immense well of youthful idealism. Consider that America remains undisputed in its claim as the most creative, innovative, and productive society on the planet. There is reason to believe that a galvanised American generation is no small deal. Though its new president will most likely be shoehorned into the realities of America’s role in geo-econopolitics, it seems that the real power wielded by President Barack Obama lies outside the White House — in the emergent energy of the collective.
The best Pinoys can come up with, on the other hand, is this:
[To] find hope in labor policies to be set by new US President Barack Obama that may give Filipinos a chance of working in the United States [...]
A stark contrast indeed.
I might take this occasion to rub a bit more salt into the festering sore that is our “national pride” by reminding everyone how — in a fit of our renowned small-minded pomposity — we kicked out America’s military presence from our shores in 1991.
Recall this specifically:
In the Philippine Senate, the move to eject United States forces seemed less a debate over the bases’ value than a demonstration of sovereignty and national pride. The Philippines was essentially an American colony from 1898, when George Dewey sailed into Manila Bay to defeat the Spanish fleet, until 1946, when it became an independent republic.
As usual the debate of the time followed that uniquely-Pinoy characteristic of being droll and unintelligent, focused on the trivial or the irrelevant:
[...] lawmakers asserted that the deal [to extend the lease term for the U.S. bases] would perpetuate the country’s image as an American lackey [...]
Behold the damage wrought by the expert mind! Evidently no amount of arse-kicking by our chicharon-munching politicians can change the pathetic stature of Pinoys in global politics and diplocmacy. Indeed, the Philippines is no longer technically a U.S. military lapdog. It is now a stray dog — reduced to scrounging for maggot-infested scraps of food in its former masters’ garbage bins while America’s new manicured poodles get fed their $10-per-can prime chow.
So are we “proud” enough yet, folks?
There is irony in how we now presume to “commentate” on American politics and cheer its latest achievement — mobilisation of America’s youth into a collective force of idealism — considering that our society is the absolute antithesis of what Obama’s million-plus-strong civilian army represents. As we progressively degrade the economic quality of an entire generation of Pinoys by subjecting them to our dismal education system, sending off their parents on remittance-generating “missions”, and demonstrating that even one good leader cannot be found in a nation of more than 90 million, we find an increasing need to junk the convoluted rhetoric expressed with pompous verbosity by our political “experts” and find the underlying simplicity of the opportunity that presents itself to us in the next 18 months leading up to Fiesta Election 2010:
:D The role of the Pinoy Youth:
It seems that at an early age, Filipinos are already systematically desensitised to lies and half-truths. How then can we presume to build a society underpinned by a continuous effort to acquire the truth? If we do not find joy in the inquisitiveness of our children and do not dignify their questions with well thought-out answers, isn’t it a bit hypocritical of us to expect our own leaders to respect the concerns and objections we raise? [excerpt from my brilliant book]
:D Our regard for Presidential Elections:
Just like mass marketing, propaganda, and the ramblings of evangelists, campaigns are nothing more than quaint mind tricks. However, even Obi Wan Kenobi and Darth Vader themselves admit grudgingly that their Jedi mind tricks work only on weak-minded fools. Let us not be quick to delegate our thinking to the most popular belief systems and their slogans. Let us evaluate our candidates with a critical mind this coming elections.
As with most things: It’s simple, really™.
What has changed since that fateful day in 1991 when we as a people chose to subscribe to the hollow rhetoric of “sovereignity” that pompous thinking so often efficiently succeeds at in embedding in the typical small mind?
Not much. And when regarded as such, where we are now comes with little surprise. Because as the eminent Albert Einstein once said:
Problems cannot be solved using the same thinking that created them.
Re-packaging old thinking and pitching it as “hope” is big business in Pinoy society. A successful business can be built on a mediocre product where there is an entire market composed of suckers.
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Benign0,
This is like comparing an accomplished man in his prime to a teenager just learning about the birds and bees. America is well nigh a quarter of a millennium old, as Democracies go, while we are about a quarter of that age, counting from 1946 (full independence).
That is why your taunting style of analyzing the Philippines and Filipinos has that certain quality that fleas take on when they reside in the matted fur of a big dawg…their jump and their bite are worse than the dog’s.
But of course we honor and admire America, please don’t get me wrong, Manong, she IS the hope of the world inspite of misanthropic curmudgeons like yourself, but where I come from, we do not make puerile comparisons of the sort you find self-saisfying somehow.
Even America found it meet to kick out the British, and in so doing gave colonialism and imperialism their first well-deserved shove into the dustbin of history.
You do not honor my forefathers with your snarling, guard-dog mentality towards America, which gave them a homeland when they too were pilgrims like the OFW that you are.
But we ARE proud of you Manong. At least you are not on Welfare, are you?
benig0 for president.
benign0 for president..
Very well. Let’s compare the Philippines to Singapore then… :D
that’s when I will mobilize my people not to vote ding :)
Singapore does not have enough land to sustain a landed-Oligarchy. In that way, LKY and his PAP had a head start in that there were no landed Oligarchs to get in the way.
Whatever land was owned (for farming) was expropriated by the government for public use such as Roads, Mass Transportation and Public Housing the latter of which is the reasons why more than 80% of Singaporeans live in government-owned housing.
If we want to follow Singapore’s way, we need to first address inequality by:
1. Getting the landed oligarchs out of the way, and…
2. …providing housing to the majority.
The only problem i see with Singapore’s strategy is that it relies too much on the Government and MNC’s for investment and too little on home-grown entrepreneurship.
I don’t think that in Oz they would like a Pommie naval base? eh? Mate?
In fact kicking out Poms is a matter of national pride! A belated Happy Australia Day Benign0!
BTW everyone would like a Pinoy Obama
Jojobama of Makati declared himself one!
Silly Conrad de Quiros declared Reynato Puno as one!
Chiz may compare himself as one
Idiocy!
Change we can count on! Time for change? Pagbabago? at Kaayusan!
BF for President! :-)
I think it is erroneous to label benign0 as an OFW. I think he is an immigrant to, and in enough months will be a citizen of, Australia.
cvj… not destined to be a citizen of Singapore, is an OFW.
This is sick, and I don’t mean it in the cool way:
http://www.inquirer.net/vdo/player.php?vid=2218
“So are we “proud” enough yet, folks?”
Not by your standards.
So, the Filipino people, your people, from now on must have their tails between their hind legs because you thought we have nothing to crow about, that it?
Why not? Hope springs eternal.
Also from Desiderata: “If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser than yourself…”
Do not often despair about the hopelessness of Philippine politics and the squalor in Manila’s squatter areas and garbage dumps.
Think of Somalia, Burundi, and the others.
Benign0,
Every group needs an H.L. Mencken. But even misanthropes must have a certain dark sense of humor to pull it off. Pare, sa totoo lang, masyado kang “antipatico”. Hindi naman nakakatawa, kahit ilang emoticon ang tuldokin mo.
Of course dissing the Pinoy is genre of writing started by no less than Jose Rizal, so who am I to restrain you? But do you always have to use a neutron bomb to state some relatively minor or even trivial tautology? Do you always have to generalize? Couldn’t you be more specific about the object of your displeasures?
You are like Hamas blithely firing rockets at a whole city of Pinoys, targetting them all with your shrapnel of sneering superiority.
Benign0 is a ‘Management Consultant’. As such, being specific goes against the grain.
DJB: “You [Benign0] are like Hamas…”
LOL!
And who’s like the IDF?
Why can’t we just admit that we have certain defects as a people so we can examine those defects and try to correct them?
Japen suffered more than we do during the WW II but she was able to build her economy from the ashes of war.
Just like Japan, the Philippines had received rehabilitation funds the sum equivalent to $620 Million Dollars as parial restoration of her badly damaged economy under the Tydings Bill/Law.
Maybe Japan used the money funneled to her by the U.S. to build her economy back from the ashes while we used ours to finance our vanity and to line the pockets of our politicians.
More reality checks for the experts who once crowed about the OFW-ism: The ultimate failure of imagination! :D
Check it out!
Behold the damage!
And true to form, I might cite another bit of irony in this excerpt:
If Arroyo hadn’t been specifically cited in the above excerpt, we may have so easily mistaken this as a description of a few you-know-who Pinoy triumphalists that infest the blogosphere. ;)
Ironic, isn’t it?
Benign0,
Your “source” for this insight of yours is a Philippine Daily Innuendo (PDI) editorial.
Are we supposed to be impressed or wowed by this? Look, even the ‘roos in the outback would find you droll.
This is subpar, substandard, even for you, Benign0.
So, you are one with those people at PDI who for years have been calling YOU ofws as “toilet bowl cleaners of the world.”
Haha. You should know your friend better, Manong.
The Filipino culture of dependence to whatever has very deep roots and I don’t think it’d easily go:
– some of us don’t leave our parents’ homes when we hit 18. some don’t leave our parents’ homes ever
– some of us take on a job, and then cling to that job hoping against hope for a sweet retirement package as a reward for “loyalty”. Unfortunately they get laid off due to redundancy (read: irrelevance) sometimes a mere few years before retirement.
– some of us grow up being taught that migrating to a western country is the be all and end all of our lives. And that whites do everything right, and the brownskins everything wrong. And that we don’t have to do anything to improve the Philippines, because we’ll be leaving it anyway.
– some of us depend on gameshows for a living, hoping against hope to be able to at least get up on the “Biga-ten” stage of Wowowee.
Of course I’m rambling now, but my point is the same. These are all manifestations of dependence — and emotional baggage. I just hope everyone acknowledges that becoming truly independent is a very long process wherein the dependents slowly wean themselves from the trappings of their dependencies and learn to explore things that were unimaginable to them, like:
– staying in the Philippines
– investing in the Philippines
– hell, *improving* the Philippines any way we can
Maybe that’s all we need to point out.
Behold Mike Arroyo and GMA are both flying to Davos to give their advice on allocating capital and minimizing risk properly to avoid a financial crisis. Just like the both of them are doing with public capital at no risk for themselves.
Both always wanted to outdo Ferdinand and Imelda.
What was it JCC said – to the victor go the spoils..
bO you remind me of Oliver Lozano and the past presidential candidate Eddie Gil. Boy can you write. But most of it is nonsense.