Furthermore, it is not a foregone conclusion that FPJ would have been a ‘stupid’ choice as compared to Gloria Arroyo. In fact, areas such as >food security, FPJ had the right strategic vision unlike the current occupant of Malacanang.

On the practical side, how can you convince your target audience if you don’t even have basic respect for them? Is that what they taught you at the Ateneo?

Sure, politics is dirty. But that’s the point. I thought you want to change the way Pinoys think and the way our politics is conducted? By playing the politicians’ and the showbiz people’s game, it makes you, I think, less different from them.

Let’s also not forget how we also came scaringly close to an FPJ Administration if not for a couple of twists in the political circus (as well as fate) that quashed that bid.

Besides, as you are wont to point out, I do not really claim to be the originator of what to you seems to be the shockingly preposterous idea that Pinoys are collectively intellectually bankrupt, as this article — written way back in 2000 — demonstrates (excerpt follow):

AN admired Filipino economist, based in New York, surveyed the economic situation here and dolefully intoned: ”What ails the country is that Philippine society is intellectually bankrupt.” Take, for instance, the national debates, she pointed out.

“They are droll and unintelligent, focused on the trivial or the irrelevant.” When the issues are of some significance, it’s the wrong arguments that prevail, the wrong side wins. Logic and common sense take the backseat to political arguments and the views of the poorly-educated. There seems to be some bases for her disenchantment [...]

Read on if you dare. :D