Impeachment (Part I)

The Beginning

On November 13, 2000, the House of Representatives filed an impeachment complaint against then President Joseph Ejercito Estrada. The complaint stemmed from allegations that Estrada received ₱400 million from jueteng, an illegal numbers game, under a bank account in the name of "Jose Velarde". The suit was brought to the Senate and an impeachment court convened. Estrada pleaded "not guilty".

This was the first time an impeachment complaint ever went up the chain. Previous complaints were always dismissed before it could get anywhere. There was going to be an impeachment trial and everything. Filipinos had never seen anything like this before. It was momentous. The affair was taken as proof that the bad old days of Marcos and his strongman rule were truly over. At long last, the people were going to hold their leaders accountable. It was a victory for justice and for democracy.

It was a mess.

Congress, which was then already well on its hellbound descent to the circus we all know today, was determined to give the Filipino people the greatest show they had ever seen. Make no mistake, this really was a big deal at the time. People were glued to their screens and radios, anxious for every juicy tidbit. From the dusty streets to the air-conditioned boardrooms; from the dingy carenderias to the office water cooler, it seemed like everyone had something to say about the trial and Mr. Jose Velarde.

Personally, I remember that Estrada's impeachment trial had, despite being a supposedly serious matter, a strange fiesta air about it. I was slightly younger then so I couldn't understand the legal arguments or the finer details of the trial, which was just fine apparently since nobody seemed interested in those things anyway. This was drama and people love that. It was funny too. The president became a safe target for comedic sport. "Erap jokes" were so common that it became a genre unto itself, being read and spread far and wide through everyone's NOKIA brick phones.

Erap was asked by a teacher to test his English ability.

Teacher: Use "deduct", "defense", "detail" and "defeat" in a sentence.

Erap: (After 15 minutes of silence) DEDUCT jumped over DEFENSE, DEFEAT first, then DETAIL!

The impeachment trial was running the risk of becoming boring and it was time for some drama. On January 16, 2001, there was a vote on whether the Senate should open a mystery envelope supposedly containing bombshell evidence against Estrada. It would be the smoking gun to prove his guilt once and for all. The Senate blocked it 11-10. The "craven eleven" they cried. There was a dramatic walk-out by the prosecution. Later, the people took to the streets.

Many things were happening but to go over them briefly, an encore performance of the smash hit "People Power" was playing out. The masa calling for his resignation was bad enough for Estrada. But the loss of support from the army and police was much worse. On January 20, 2001, the Chief Justice administered the oath of office to VP Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the new president while Estrada snuck out through the back door hours later.

Legal Goblledygook

Power, once tasted, is not so easily given up. In a shocking move, Estrada brazenly returned to the scene and claimed that he simply went on leave. It was all a misunderstanding. He called in sick that day, you see. Arroyo was just acting President as far as he was concerned.

The thing was that Estrada was never removed from office by the impeachment court. The show simply hit pause at the bit with the envelope and they lost the remote. To settle matters, they changed the channel to the more dignified court and let loose the lawsuits.

In the landmark cases of Estrada v. Arroyo and Estrada v. Desierto, which I'm sure all Filipinos have read, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Estrada's presidency was over and that Arroyo became the president in his absence. But why or how, exactly? If impeachment wasn't the cause, then it would have to be something else. This didn't seem like a revolution since the VP took over. The system demanded a legal explanation and justification for what the hell just happened.

According to Justices Puno, Vitug, and Pardo, Estrada effectively resigned from his post based on his official statements and some entries in Executive Secretary Angara's diary. He said he was "tired"! (pagod na pagod na ako) So there. Being president is exhausting so he gave up. He resigned. Any dummy can interpret what it all meant. End of story.

On the other hand, Justices Mendoza and Bellosillo argued that Estrada became "permanently disabled" and couldn't...perform anymore. How embarrassing. Estrada could neither command the armed forces nor control the government. Estrada's crippling disability was that people just wouldn't do what he said. So there. That was the reason.

Justices Kapunan and Sandoval-Gutierrez, while agreeing with the rest, stated bluntly that Arroyo's presidency had become an irreversible fact of life and that Estrada was just going to have to deal with it whether he liked it or not. Tough. If you have an issue, grab a tissue.

It was Justice Ynares Santiago's opinion that came dangerously close to the truth. She was of the opinion that mob rule was a dangerous way of changing the government. Mob rule. Feel that in your mouth for a moment. EDSA, the second and by implication the first. Our People Power. Our mob rule. What's unsaid is damning. What happened wasn't constitutional. It wasn't legal. But if we close our eyes, think hard enough and pray, it was all alright. Estrada did it all to himself. Bret screwed Bret. Justice won. Good won. The people won. End of story. 

Aftermath

Hindsight is 20/20.

Back then, this was the furthest the process of impeachment ever got. While it never "finished", slowly but surely people were getting more comfortable with the idea. Impeachment was no longer some distant thing but became a Sword of Damocles over the heads of government officials. They would attempt to impeach Arroyo later though the attempts never got off the ground. They would try to impeach Chief Justice Davide too, seemingly out of spite, but that deserves its own section. In retrospect, this was all a grim foreshadowing of what was to come.

I wanted to revisit this chapter of history to try and better understand the utter derangement and insanity afflicting the country today, especially when the Senate seems to have become a madhouse. I want to turn back the clock and follow the muddy footprints down the wrong path.

As for Estrada, he would go down in infamy as the second president to have been removed by popular uprising. He was thoroughly humiliated by the ordeal and his reputation was dragged through the gutter. His name would be forever stained and become synonymous with government corruption and ill-gotten gains. He was a villain in the eyes of the people. He was pardoned by Arroyo in 2007 and was elected Mayor of Manila in 2013. He served two consecutive terms. His son Jinggoy Estrada is, as of this writing, currently a sitting senator of the Philippines and under investigation for corruption.

Conspicuous Consumption

The Philippines was never an egalitarian society. Even before the Spanish arrived and doomed us all to their Christian hell, Philippine society was based on class. In time, nobles, freedmen, and slaves gave way to rich, not-so-rich, and poor. No matter the age, disparity will always exist.

The Philippines is hardly unique in this case. Disparity is the bane of all societies and in my opinion, managing inequality is the reason government exists. Ah, the "allocation of scant resources" - one of my favorite definitions of politics.

The smart people once tried to do away with  social classes altogether and it was a disaster. After the deaths of a few billions, mankind decided it would abide by a polite fiction instead. History was pronounced dead and from then on, people would simply believe that they were all equal. Any inequality was just a "work in progress" - a minor blip to be solved once we put the right systems in place and elect the right leaders. Eventually. Maybe. (Not really)

But in all seriousness, managing inequality should be the chief concern of any sane government interested in its own preservation. Inequality may be unsolvable, but the gap between the haves and have-nots should be kept as narrow as possible. If the gap is too wide, unrest and revolution follow. 

I don't think the Philippine government is doing well in narrowing the gap between rich and poor. The people are already taxed heavily and all that ayuda will eventually run out. 

If you can't solve a problem, all you can do is manage perceptions and make it look like the problem doesn't exist or isn't as bad as people think. Sadly, the government is failing to do even that. To be fair, it's hard to hide the problem of corruption when the capital gets flooded despite supposedly spending trillions in flood control projects. It's hard to hide inequality when the scions of the rich and powerful post selfies with luxury cars and handbags worth more than what the average Filipino makes in ten years.

This is what's funny to me. The government fears social media. Politicians are absolutely terrified by it. They're scared because they can't control it. What trends and what becomes viral is not in their control. That explains all the efforts to control it and to clamp down on vloggers and content creators in the guise of preventing misinformation. Yet, for all their fear of social media, these politicians and their larvae post all kinds of elitist nonsense and bullshit showing how rich and powerful they are. They can't help but play with fire and how can they resist? They crave attention and where else can you get it?

So what we have now is a growing name-and-shame campaign against the politicians and the wealthy. Their social media accounts are now targets for people's anger and scorn. Will anything come of this campaign? I don't know. Regardless, I am truly amazed at the lack of shame many of these spoiled assholes exhibit. In the good old days, flagrant displays of wealth would get you beaten and robbed if you were lucky or kidnapped if you were not. But I suppose since it's all online now, people feel free to show us their worst. Sadly, the technology to punch people through the computer monitor hasn't been invented yet.

All these displays of conspicuous consumption are dangerous in these times of public difficulty from the floods. Such displays during times of hardship are the kind that lead to unrest. Inequality was a serious matter regarded by serious people. The wiser rulers of the past knew this. There was a time when you donned the purple and a time when you donned the sackcloth. Perhaps it's time to bring back the old sumptuary laws, eh? No Chanel handbags and Gucci shit on Sundays or is even that too much to ask?

Butsekik - Yoyoy Villame

A Show of Force

Today, the Iglesia ni Cristo (INC) held a national rally "for peace". For those who don't know, the INC is an independent non-trinitarian Christian church and they're a pretty big deal here in the Philippines. 

The INC insisted that the rallies were not at all political but moral, which means it was definitely political. Who the hell calls for "unity" during an election season, a time when lines are drawn?

The rallies were simply a show of force. What other group can force Imperial Manila to declare a local holiday just because of all the traffic their event would cause? It was estimated that more than a million ballots showed up in Manila. The pictures showed a sea of ballots wearing white, flooding the streets and filling the Quirino Grandstand. This isn't even counting the ballots that held their own rally in my city. While not as dramatic as one Manila, it was reason enough for work to be called off early.

The INC has its detractors, the most fervent of which denounce it as a cult. The INC denounces the trinity, believes their founder was God's last prophet, and other boring run-of-the-mill "we know better than the Pope" stuff. Churches like these are a dime a dozen but the difference with the INC is that they're smart. To survive in a predominantly Roman Catholic country, they've had to play the political game and they play it very well.

I don't hate them. To be frank, I admire them in a political sense. I find it ironic that in a dysfunctional democracy like ours, it's only this group of weirdos that's doing things correctly. The INC is an excellent political party regardless of how one feels about their beliefs.

Critics who decry the INC's tactics of bloc voting are just salty. Why wouldn't members of the INC vote for whoever their leader tells them to? That's how political organizations in a democracy work. That they're a religious group is irrelevant. People are free to band together for any cause. In this case, I assume that the INC's cause is, at its simplest, freedom to conduct its business without interference from the government. Is it up to something nefarious? Who knows? Who cares? Everyone is up to something nefarious.

If people were smart, they'd follow the INC's example and band together to form their own voting blocs. That's how you get political power. Sadly, the most people can muster is their own local interests. Barangay Kamunggay will vote for whoever can promise something good for Barangay Kamunggay. At worst, people vote at the smallest level. They vote for whoever can provide for their family or (gasp) their individual selves.

Imagine if Filipinos got together based on an idea and formed a voting bloc to elect people supporting that idea. Crazy. Not in a low-trust society. This is what communists should be doing but instead of doing the groundwork, they'd rather hide in the jungle and pretend the eighties never ended.

The INC's "second resurrection" has a higher chance of happening than Filipinos learning to organize themselves to be a persistent threat to the system.

The Manchurian Candidate

Alice Quo?

Guo vadis?

By now you've probably learned everything about Alice Guo, the mayor of Bamban, Tarlac. No sweat since there's not much to learn in the first place. 

Her life was a blank until suddenly, she's running the whole damn show. To be fair, you could say the same for the spoiled scions of our political dynasties, many of whom haven't accomplished anything noteworthy except emerging from the right slit.

So who is she? Since she doesn't have much to say about her identity, the system has decided to pick one for her. How does "Chinese spy" sound? She looks the part. Can speak it too. 

As funny as the jokes and memes have been about this whole "issue", it's quite disturbing when you think about it. The "Chinese spy" bit isn't what bothers me (she isn't) but the whole circus performance the powers that be have arranged for our entertainment. You can tell this is a show since they dragged her ass to the Senate because this is undoubtedly their purview, right?  We can clap and laugh on cue like a good studio audience but on should analyze the undercurrents. What do they want us, the people, to think? Why her? Why now?

I'm no expert but I can think of a few things.

First of all, is she really a Chinese spy? Of course not. The Chinese aren't dumb. If they wanted to infiltrate our political system, such a high profile position (and an elected one at that) is not the way to do it. Think really hard. What do the Chinese gain from controlling the office of the mayor in Bamban,  of all places? Control of the strategic sugarcane reserves?

Even if we were to accept the premise that she's a foreign puppet, are we seriously suggesting that the majority of the population of Bamban were tricked by the Chinese, and the latter left no trace? Was the system itself rigged? How? Nobody's asking, of course. The attention is oddly all on her.

I offer a simpler explanation. She was installed by the local Philippine Offshore Gaming Operation (POGO) of whom she also has an interest in. POGOs are big money and rake in a lot of tax revenue. They bought her that office. We know people can be bought off. Power brokers will play along and marshal the votes needed for the right price. It was a marriage of convenience between the political system and the richest player in town. Having a stooge in office does wonders to help your business run smoother and avoid prying eyes. It's not that China installed this living enigma into office like some spy thriller, but rather that the dominant local interests, who happen to be Chinese, found it convenient to have a friend in a high place.

To me, Alice Guo is just your typical corrupt politician whose cozy with the local bigshots. I admit there's a non-zero chance that she is a spy but it's a tiny chance. The Chinese know there's more than one way to skin a cat. They've probably infiltrated us already in ways we don't know about. Corruption is the rule here and politicians sell out to anyone. 

But it's depressing to think that even mere Chinese businessmen can get us now.

You might think that the Chinese government used the POGO to plant Alice then.. To that, I'm very sorry to say that there are many other POGOs in the country. What makes this one POGO in Bamban different? If the Chinese intelligence apparatus spreads its tendrils through these institutions, they're spoiled for choice.

We know the government won't get rid of POGOs. There's too much money in it.

Sinophobia

Now that I've offered a more likely explanation, what's the point of all this hysteria then? I'm sure you've noticed that Alice Guo is already treated as a spy by the talking heads. 

I find it disturbing that a Philippine senator can so casually suggest that our electoral system, which we praise as the greatest gift God ever gave us, has been compromised by foreign powers. I also find it disturbing how the people have gone all in on Alice Guo being a spy without solid proof. The possibility that she's just a non-citizen isn't even considered anymore. We are treating this as if the worst case scenario has already happened.

What do the powers that be want us to think?

No need to beat around the bush. We're being taught to fear China - to hate China. Great forces are moving in the world and the Philippines is a pawn on the board. Whose pawn? Why, we're the pawn of our other frenemy, the United States of America.

If you've no stomach for "conspiracy theories", the piece ends here.

America has been spoiling for a fight with China for some time now. The Philippines is part of the ring physically surrounding and containing China, which includes Japan and South Korea. The Philippines is a weak country and it can't make deals with China without kuya America in the room. What does kuya say? The only language America seems to speak is escalation if the clown show in Europe is to be observed. So the Philippines has embarked on this campaign of provocation against China. Just a few weeks ago, human shields civilian fishermen were sent on a suicide run supposedly through a Chinese blockade. Did nobody find that odd? Duterte was on good terms with China but now we're stirring the pot. Why? 

The average Filipino dislikes the Chinese but doesn't hate them. It would serve certain interests if the sentiment could be turned up a notch. Look at the big picture. Look at the things Senator Hontiveros and her ilk are implying. This is a very serious matter.

What I'm trying to say is that the Alice Guo program isn't for our amusement. We're the ones being programmed but for what?

Maid in Malacañang - Movie Review

As "luck" would have it, I got a hold of a ticket to the red carpet screening of Maid in Malacañang, the hot new movie people on Twitter can't shut up about.  If you want the short story, I didn't like this movie. If you want the longer story, read on.

Unrealistic Expectations

The movie is the "untold story" of the last days of the Marcos Presidency inside Malacañang Palace before they were brought to Hawaii during the EDSA revolution.

I didn't know what kind of movie to expect at first since I had no interest in it and never expected to receive free tickets to the premiere screening to fall on my lap. To be honest, I thought that this movie would turn out to be like a Forrest Gump situation - a story about an average person, in this case a maid, caught up in the middle of historic events. It would be hit-or-miss parade of in-jokes and references from the time period. It would be all tongue-in-cheek. 

How naïve and ignorant I was.

Imee Marcos had a hand in the making of this movie. In fact, she was there during the screening along with the stars of the show. Each of them had a little mic time before the movie to thank the audience for attending the screening and all that. Imee, however, told us that this movie would finally show to us the truth of the events of those 72 hours after being buried all these years. It would finally show her family's side of the story. She publicly maintains that this movie is the capital "T" truth. 

Uh, huh. I was in for quite a ride.

We were given free popcorn and a "nutribun" to snack on while watching. I however, am upright of character and cannot be bribed by cheap snack foods. No sir. 

Truth is a Bludgeon

People throw the word "propaganda" around as if to show they're too smart to be fooled by media. But there's no other way to describe this movie. Imee herself said that this is "their side" of the story so by definition, it's biased. Rather than tipping the scales of history into equilibrium however, I'm presented with a story wherein President Ferdinand Marcos was a completely benevolent leader beset on all sides by "ahas" or traitors; a benign, Christ-like figure who would rather suffer betrayal (and lupus) in dignified silence than lash out and plunge the country in further peril. His family? Oh, they loved him. They loved him too much in fact, and agreed to suffer along with him. 

How their situation came about isn't addressed any further than people being selfish opportunists. The movie portrays the Marcoses as completely blameless.

And that's my problem with the movie - it lays it on too thick. This movie is as subtle as an oncoming semi-truck. Even when I already knew to expect that the movie would be biased, I didn't expect it to be as audacious as it was. If you weren't already a political supporter or ally of the Marcoses, this movie is practically insulting to your intelligence.

Chewing the Scenery

Let's put aside the politics for a moment. The movie is structured into ten (if I remember correctly) scenes. There's no single story or theme uniting these scenes together other than it being the final days of the Marcos Regime. Think of it as a collection of recollections. Each scene presents a scenario. For example, there's one scene wherein the elder Marcos has a talk with his son who is now our current President, Bongbong. There's a scene where Imee confronts her father about his passivity in the face of the dangers to his life. There's a scene where Imelda has a heart-to-heart with Bongbong, etc.

The problem I have with these scenes is that each scene is designed not just to present the Marcoses in a sympathetic light but to showcase the acting chops of its stars. It was tiring. It seemed that in each scene, every actor was trying to outdo the others in how hammy he can deliver his or her lines. There was screaming. There was yelling. Many tears were shed. It was all so melodramatic but that is to be expected in Philippine cinema. No, what really made this bad was that it was many scenes of overacting instead of just one in the end. One after the other, the movie would just come at you and demand that you share in its emotions. What made it even more obnoxious was that the cinema turned up the volume too high, so much so that the actress playing Imee was like screaming directly into my ear. By the middle of the movie, I was praying they would get in the chopper already.

Was there a "maid" in Malacanang? Yes, there were three, in fact. And they were easily the best, most relatable characters in the movie, which is why they were portrayed as staunch Marcos supporters. All the household help and staff in Malacanang, all simple everyday folk, loved the Marcoses, it seems, for reasons other than them being the ones paying their salaries. How could you not love the Marcoses? There was a scene where all the honest, hardworking staff and maids cried about how unfair it was, what the world was doing to their masters. Please sympathize and try not to roll your eyes.

The movie's artifice was too obvious.

Some Weird Scenes

As if the movie wasn't hard enough to go along with, the director, for some reason, decided to put some very bizarre scenes that just yanked me out of the movie.

The first scene was the one I mentioned previously where Imelda had a heart-to-heart with her son. As they laid side by side on the bed talking about how she wondered if they could return to their beloved Philippines, the camera zoomed into one of her shoes which had the label "BBM 2022". To those who don't know, that's a reference to her son's political campaign and if the scene I just described to you sounds utterly ridiculous, that's because it is. I have no idea why the director did this to me and to the audience. 

The second scene which had me scratching my head was during the finale when a loyal soldier played by Robinhood (formerly known as just Robin) Padilla volunteered to escort the President and his family to safety. When they asked this loyal soldier how he was able to sneak into the Palace, he said he pretended to be a "yellowtard" and got through. If you didn't know, "yellowtard' is a modern derogatory epithet to describe the EDSA crowd. The director, for some unexplained reason, just put that there in the subtitles but the spoken dialogue did not use "yellowtard".  Was it a mistake? Maybe the original script was packed full of vitriol. Who knows? All I know is the director seems determined to make me dislike his movie and not take it seriously despite it being the supposed buried truth of the Marcoses' Exodus. 

Also, there was also a scene where Ferdinand Marcos looked at Imee lovingly in the eyes, as a father would his daughter, and told her that it was actually her who was the real maid in Malacañang after all. I threw up a little in my mouth.

Final Thoughts

This movie was clearly not made for the likes of me. If you were a Marcos supporter, you would love this movie and you would probably even cheer when you see the magic time-travelling shoe and laugh when Robinhood made a jab against those dumb yellows. If you're on the fence or apathetic to Philippine politics, then this movie would probably be a disappointment or nothing at all. 

However, if you're an EDSA guy, a Kakampink, or of similar persuasion, this movie will kill you. You'll snap your neck from vigorously shaking your head in shame and disbelief. Consider that a warning.

Do I recommend this movie? I don't believe I have to say anything. You already know if you love it or hate it. Just don't make the mistakes I did and expect any awareness or nuance in this modern political landscape.

If you're still reading this and at this point you're wondering about my personal political leanings so you can hate me for them, then I'm sorry that modern politics has rotted your brain. 

Peace. 

Hardheaded

It is surprising to hear the government join in the chorus condemning Filipinos as "hardheaded" because they fail to obey the rules of the quarantine. It is unusual to hear the government whine about the people when it's usually the other way around but I digress.

I'm sorry but Filipinos have always been lawbreakers even before the quarantine so let's not pretend that we're only noticing this now. However, I think this complaint is inaccurate. Filipinos are not "hardheaded". They know what the law is and that is precisely why they are adept at dodging them. No, it is better to say that Filipinos are "selfish". They break the rules because they are selfish.

What is the point of rules? For the most part, rules are there to impose order and the point of order is to make sure that things are fair for everyone. For example, traffic rules exist to make sure that everyone can move in an orderly fashion. Everyone gets their spot. Everyone gets a turn. In the broader sense, laws exist to protect the rights of people from being encroached by the government and by others. All the rules, regulations, statutes, etc., exist with the welfare of the individual or the whole of society in mind. Crimes are punished since they cause harm to people or society at large.

The problem with the Filipino is that he is selfish. He sees himself separated from the whole of the Filipino people. I wrote before that the Philippines was never one nation prior to the time it was forced on us by the colonizers. The Philippines remains a multi-ethnic hodgepodge of peoples with different cultures, languages, dialects, and religions, spread over multiple islands far apart from each other. Filipinos naturally put the narrow interests of their small circle of relations first, whether that be their family, their tribe, their religious sect, or their smallest political unit. They don't care about the greater whole of the "nation" because such a thing has never existed despite everyone pretending it does. Interest begins with the individual and radiates outwards.

Filipinos break the rules because it is in their best interest to do so. Their needs come first before the greater community. They fail to grasp, whether willfully or through ignorance, that the point of rules is to ensure fairness for others. But who cares, right? If your needs are more important than everyone else's, why wouldn't you cut in line? You're just earning a livelihood so the rules should be relaxed for you, you poor, poor, dear! Are you underprivileged (or at least feel you are)? Then go and be an asshole and count on people to take pity and give you special treatment.

It's wrong to think that people break the rules because they're stubborn. That gives way to thinking that the solution is just to be more strict or, God forbid, make even more rules. Hence, our constant flirtation with authoritarianism. The problem is deeper than that. It's soul rot caught from centuries of a dog eat dog existence - my people versus your people. No matter how many policemen you put on the streets or how many laws on the books, Filipinos will always break the law because "Filipinos" don't exist. It's only ever just "me" versus "them".

So now in a time of contagion, we see the toll of this cultural disease.

War Mindset

To entertain myself in this time of enforced isolation, I went over my collection of books about World War II. I always found the war fascinating. One of my prized possessions is a reproduction of an aerial reconnaissance map of Cebu City taken during the conflict. Another prized possession of mine is my grandfather's copy of the book, The Koga Papers.

Speaking of my grandfather, I suppose I inherited this fascination with World War II, and war in general, from him. He had his own collection which he displayed on his shelf. He lived through the war as a young man and his interest stemmed from simply being a part of one of the great turning points of history. He lived through two actually: the war and the EDSA revolution, though the latter was a more local affair. He liked to talk about the war but not to me. He probably thought me too young. When I got older, certain circumstances not of our fault made us distant. The fact that I never really got to know him is something I regret.

My knowledge of my grandfather's experiences during the war is fragmented. It's second-hand stories and anecdotes from other family members. My grandfather wanted to do his bit in the war, as hot-blooded youths would tend to, but had poor eyesight. Besides, he had other responsibilities. Perhaps there was some element of longing and frustration in his preoccupation about the war. 

I know that he almost died. One day, the Imperial Japanese Army were rounding up young men for God knows what reason. My grandfather lived with his widowed mother and sisters. He was asleep on his side wearing a red sweater. When the Japanese came, they somehow mistook him for a woman since he was wearing red and lived with a lot of other women. They overlooked him and he managed to escape what would have been a horrible fate.

Of my other relatives, there was a harrowing tale of how my grandaunts tried to evade the Japanese by riding a small banca. The boat began to take on water and they were forced to throw away a small trunk filled with their most valuable jewelries and possessions.

My great-grandmother, on my mother's maternal side of the family, had a brother who was a spy. When the Japanese found out, they looked for him. When they couldn't find him, they killed one of his sisters and one or both of his parents. The Japanese were known to punish families and entire communities if even one of their members was in the resistance. Later on, my great-grandmother testified against the Japanese in some kind of military court. We still have a copy of her testimony to this day.

The war left lasting impressions on my grandfather and you could see some of it in his habits. He was very frugal. He wasted nothing and saved everything. He had a thing for hoarding big water containers "in case the water ran out". This was probably because since he was the only man in the house, he was always the one to fetch water  for his sisters and he resented the arduous task of pumping water and hauling it home on his shoulders everyday. He lived simply. He wasn't choosy and was perfectly content to eat rice porridge with a little fish for dinner. He never wore rings because one night during the war, when the electricity was cut, a stray cinder from a fire somehow got under his ring and burned his finger. He was very wary of thieves and trespassers. He made sure every door had two deadbolts, even doors to the toilet. Every window had a metal grill. 

What habits would we develop because of the Wuhan virus? Will we be hoarders of alcohol and hand sanitizers?

I wonder what my grandfather would think about the current situation if he were still around. What would he think of the quarantine? Perhaps it wouldn't seem so bad to him. Maybe it would bring uncomfortable memories? Not to make light of the current troubles, as there are people out there who are really suffering more than they have to, but can this plague compare to a war? Probably not. The Wuhan virus is a morning stroll compared to a foreign occupation by a brutal, murderous, fascist, racist, and imperialist regime. 

Again, I'm not trying to make light of the current troubles. The point I'm trying to make is that people have lived through worse and we should take heart from that fact. Public utilities are still running. Grocery shelves can and are still being restocked. We're not in any danger of suddenly being killed or having all our possessions destroyed in an instant. The world is smarter now and more technologically advanced. The best minds on the planet are no doubt dedicating all their efforts to develop a treatment for the Wuhan virus, if not a cure.

It was my grandfather's birthday yesterday. He would have been 96. We couldn't go to the cemetery.

We will visit him when this is over.

Quiet Dramas

In my workplace, I have the displeasure of regularly encountering prison inmates in the hallways. They smell of stale sweat and feces.

I feel bad for the newly arrested detainees, I really do. These thugs and hoodlums act all tough but all that bluster can't hide their palpable dread. You can see the fear in their eyes and the tension underneath the skin. Nobody likes prison, especially Philippine prison. Acting tough is laughable. I'll spare the reader the details regarding the situation of our jails but it truly is hell on earth. Conditions there are inhumane, it's where the dregs of society are dumped to be forgotten. They're the justice system's problem now. With luck, they might find some cog in the machine who really cares.

These new offenders need only take a good look at the older detainees passing by to see their future. Those that have been in the pen for too long carry an air of quiet, fatalistic acceptance. They're shuffling automatons who have either lost too much of their lives and are desperate to make up for it, or have accepted that death will probably take them before they get out.

It's not all so bleak. The inmates are brought to the courts en masse in the morning even if they're trial is in the afternoon. Their families use this opportunity to visit them outside the court in between office hours. Now, I think that prisoners interacting with the public is prohibited (or ought to be), but the prison guards just let it slide. They do this not out of the goodness of their hearts, but rather the fact that there's too few of them to do crowd control. The families often bring with them food and other little comforts. It's not uncommon to see wives and children using this time to be like a family for a while. The inmates relish this opportunity to get some "fresh" air and use toilets (that even flush!).

Come to think of it, this moment of laxity by the prison guards is the perfect opportunity to sneak in contraband. Maybe this is why the wardens of our jails can't seem to get a grip on drugs. Ah, well.

Even through the worst moments of these people's lives, their families are there for them. It's admirable. It's depressing. It's very human. Most of these people are dirt poor and have nothing but  each other. Some of these people are scum but somehow, there's still someone who loves them.

Hmm...

Poppa Guv

The main cause of all our societal angst is the clash between idealism and cold, hard reality. If you read our constitution and the laws on the books, you'll find that it's all very Utopian in its outlook. I believe that the Philippines is a frustrated socialist country that dreams it could be like one of those fancy European welfare states. 

Every country gets the government it deserves. It's a bit too easy to blame the government for all our ills but we are a democracy, are we not? It's not like these politicians came down from a U.F.O. and into office. A missing piece of the jumbled puzzle that is our popular discourse is the role of the citizenry and its relationship to the government.

It all begins with the relationship. To cite as an example, and I'm not sure if this still applies today, the Americans have a view towards government that is different from ours. To the American, rights are God-given or, if you're not a believer, rights are "natural". The rights of a human being are inherent. Therefore, the role of the government is to safeguard those rights. The rights of a person do not depend on the grace of some governing body. As you would expect, this leads to a "people first" view on government. The government serves the people and is ultimately beholden to them. Hence, the stereotype of the gun-toting cowboy/redneck yelling about freedom and giving "the man" the middle finger.

How does the Filipino view the government? Whether through a quirk of history (colonialism), or whether through some kind of innate tendency, the Filipino sees the government as something above him. Government is separate from him. Though the Spaniards are gone, we still act as if our rulers have crowns. It's a very strange thing, it's almost monarchical or feudal the way this country operates. We view our leaders as either good kings or bad kings and the country prospers or suffers accordingly. We are democratic but we clearly believe in a very vertical hierarchy. We believe nothing can get done without the say so from on high. We have a "government first" view.

The attitude of the citizenry toward the government is like a child toward a parent. People, especially the poor, see the government as provider, i.e. "loving mother" or protector, i.e. "stern father". This is why I foresee the trajectory of Philippine society as inevitably ending in authoritarianism. Filipinos want to be taken care of. Personal freedom is not so highly prized and Filipinos tend to hesitate in acting independently. This is why socialism (we'll provide all) and authoritarianism (we kill the baddies) are very appealing. It's due to our doormat nature.

I hope I'm wrong but perhaps this theory will help explain why we ended up with someone like Duterte. Duterte is stern father. He's there to make the bad people go away so we can all have good beddy-byes at night. He'll solve all our problems. See? All we needed was the right leader, a good king. It seems that given enough time, voters will get it right.

Patriotism

Lack of patriotism among the youth is one of those problems that's simply assumed to exist. Ask any Juan de la Cruz on the street if the problem exists and you'll probably get a default "yes". It's a nebulous, immeasurable problem with no clear end state where we can consider it solved.  Really, it's looking like it's just an issue Martial Law Era dinosaurs bring up to moan about because those gosh darn millenials who don't know what it was like back in "those days".

The subject of patriotism is important, especially considering what day it is today.  It is important to love one's country although the subject of patriotism is hard to discuss. It's difficult because whatever discussion is to be had on the matter inevitably devolves into the usual motherhood statements and embarrassing romanticism of an ideal Philippines that probably didn't exist or probably won't.

First thing's first, there's no need to split hairs between "patriotism" and "nationalism". The terms are different despite being commonly used interchangeably. Regardless, I doubt any Filipino sincerely believes that the Filipino is superior to every other people on earth or that our country is the greatest ever. If anything, Filipino culture has many manifestations of an inferiority complex, such as the fetishization of foreign culture and the strange obsession with breeding with foreigners to produce mixed race Filipinos, but I digress. When I say "patriotism", I mean a simple love of country.

It is difficult to fall in love with the idea of the Philippines. A country isn't just some thought. Nobody ever fought for a country for the sake of it being on a map. There is this tendency to get one's head in the clouds when talking about something as lofty as patriotism. It's easier to understand if you ground it. A country isn't just a place and it's insane to love your country on a purely physical level, as in, love for the land, sea, air, flora, and fauna. The designated tourist spots of the Philippines are wonderful but it's silly to think of fighting for your country as fighting for inanimate objects.

To ground the idea of patriotism to make it easier to grasp, we must think of our country as having an economic dimension and a social dimension. It is economic in that the country is a place where one has the opportunity to gather resources/make a living for himself. It's a place to live and prosper. It is social in that a country is always made up of people. I don't mean just the government, but the Filipino people as a whole, our culture, language, etc.

When you talk of love of country, it encompasses all these things. It's curious how when we are told to love the "Philippines", but to say nothing of loving the people within it. A country is like a franchise, a common investment that we partake in for the common good. It is inescapable that to be a patriot is to cast one's lot into this enterprise with the full trust and confidence that it will be for his own good, his children and his fellow tribe/nation.

That's why it's difficult to be a true patriot in the Philippines. I maintain that the Philippines is a fundamentally fragmented country. We were never one people before we became one country. We are divided in ethnicity, language, region, wealth, and education. I see very little love of country among my fellow man to be honest, and not just from the pesky millennials. Everyone is out for himself. Ours is a low-trust society where the naive will be taken advantage of. At best, nobody gives a damn about the greater whole. Ever heard of the tragedy of the commons? The Philippines is that writ large.

There can be no patriotism if there is no feeling of a shared fate; a shared destiny. 

Patriotism is never a solo thing. If not for your countryman, it's for your posterity. Patriotism requires community and a sense of togetherness. It's never a thing that lives for the moment, either. Patriotism reveres the past and aspires to the future.

Am I a patriot? I'll be honest, probably not. I feel no attachment to anything and I feel like nobody cares about me anyway. Sometimes I feel like an alien, like it's just a quirk of fate that I was even born here. What do I have to believe in? Everyone lives for the moment and the people in charge don't seem to have a vision for the future. In the end, I'm just one guy howling in a hurricane, writing digital words that nobody reads.

Well, happy Independence Day.

The Matrix Revolution

One of the more amusing things El Jefe's drug wars have produced is this curious thing called a "drug matrix", a new nonsense term to go along with "drug personality", "criminality", and other purposefully tedious and vague verbiage.

Way back in 2016, the president unveiled his "drug matrix" wherein persons involved in the drug trade were revealed. It was a high profile affair as it concerned drug lords within the infamous New Bilibid Prison and Senator Leila de Lima. But what is a "drug matrix"? A drug matrix is basically a chart which shows the names (and faces if we're being fancy) of people involved in drug trafficking and also shows their links to one another. It's not unlike an organizational chart one would find in a private corporation. Here's a cleaned up, "professional" version:

The matrix makes constant references to the president's rival Senator De Lima but hey,  it could just be a coincidence.

What's amazing about the president's cheap-looking whiteboard chart is that everyone seemed to believe that the information on it was accurate, if not, the truth. How did the president arrive at his conclusions? Who knows. It's on a chart with text, lines, and scary-looking mystery silhouettes. It's like an episode of C.S.I.! It looks like serious police work so it must be true!

The police have followed in the president's footsteps and have been making matrices(?) of their own. Apparently, this is how they operate now and they have a matrix for everything. I heard a few weeks ago, on the radio, a police officer being interviewed about some dead guy or something. "He was in our matrix." he said. Well, I guess that settles that. He was in THE MATRIX and only really bad dudes are in the matrix. Who's hungry?

Maybe people believe it just because of the way it sounds. Judging by the way campaign season is going, it's obvious Filipinos are tragically very easy to impress. If it sounds official and vaguely scary, sure. Personally, I find it funny. When I hear "the matrix", I tend to imagine people in trench coats chasing each other on the roof while dodging bullets in slow motion. In reality, however, people are being shot in fast motion and there's no waking up from the simulation or anything like that.

Imagine: death via powerpoint presentation.

Title Goes Here

There are many posters and tarps advertising new political groups all over the streets these days. It's election season after all, and these groups spring up like weeds only to disappear once it's all over. What caught my eye was that one of these posters had a lead candidate promoting himself as "Engineer Juan de la Cruz". Well good for him but does that mean he's planning to build a bridge or something? It didn't say what kind of engineer he was.

Traditionally, it's always been lawyers and doctors who swagger around with their titles. Nowadays, professionals from other disciplines are doing it too, not just our engineer. Accountants are trying to get in on it although adding "Accountant" before your name is probably not going to make you sound like a fun person. "Teacher" has a more noble air about it, don't you think? "Architect" is more iffy. These aren't jokes; people are doing this. 

For all the "pinoy pride" posturing, Filipinos don't think much of their own countrymen. It's always assumed that the typical Filipino is dumb, untrustworthy, or both. That's why people wear their titles in defiance as well as pride: "I am not one of the common rabble!", "I am intelligent and trustworthy!" If only that were the case. These titles denote profession. At most, they prove that you're smart enough to pass a board exam but if someone goes around calling himself "Attorney So N. So", how do I know if he's a good lawyer or a bad one?

Titles are treated as proof of character but it's not a guarantee. The den of vultures picking at the carcass of the republic are all supposedly smart people on paper. The President, who is a staunch advocate for summary executions, is a lawyer though you can be forgiven for not knowing that.

Still, people cling to their titles as a means to let others know that they're higher up the social totem pole and therefore have the right to tell you how to live your life. This is why the media made a big stink a few days ago about Imee Marcos. Imee Marcos, daughter of the late Ferdinand Marcos, claimed to have graduated from Princeton University. She didn't. A politician lying? Say it ain't so. A sheepskin from Princeton would be an awesome status symbol better than any Italian handbag. It was the same story with her brother too, who didn't earn a degree from Oxford University despite claiming he did. Their illness must be genetic.

I wonder if it's the same in other countries. I don't recall people doing this in the United States. Maybe doctors but I don't know.

Nobody tells you their title outside of professional settings unless it's to impress you. People who do this are basically selling themselves and the advertising can have different effects depending on the market. The D and E market would be very easily impressed as a title is something they aspire to and see value in. Just tell them you're a doctor and they'll assume you have two cars, two houses and two wives. The upper classes wouldn't be as impressed as they've sampled other products but a degree is still considered a bare minimum requirement to prove competence in something at least.

Don't think that I'm hating on accomplished people. I'm just skeptical. People who feel the need to drop their title constantly are suspicious. It's like a killjoy pulling rank on you. I don't have a fond experience of such people. I won't give names but I know this woman who would constantly remind everyone around her, in case they forgot, that she was an "attorney". She was a bully who did this to intimidate others. Never mind the fact that she had never stepped in a courtroom for half a century and probably had no more right to practice law. 

Everyone has something to sell, including themselves. Only doctors impress me but only because I know I'll need them sooner or later.

Just be you, for Christ's sake.

Thoughts on the Drug War

It's has been almost three years into the Duterte presidency and almost three years into his glorious war on drugs. Doesn't feel much different yet everything has changed.

Who We Are

It's a given that people have been killed in this war and we can only assume they were guilty. Good luck pinning this directly on the president. Nothing would ever be put to paper. 

Still, the president's critics and the usual vinegar-drinking scolds from the church wail about all the blood on his hands. It's all pointless and I don't know why they continue to do it. The president was upfront about what he was going to do. He ran his entire campaign promising to summarily execute the drug dealers and he won! What are we to make of that? We must accept that all of this has the approval of the majority of the Filipino people. You can't take the president down by pointing out that he's doing exactly the thing he said he was going to do.

Some harsh truths must be accepted. We cannot go on pretending that our greatest ideals are life, democracy and justice. The values espoused by the moralizers in the media are not as commonly shared as it is thought. It's all been tried. It's passe. It doesn't work. Everyone knows this so they went with the guy who said nuts to that and he'd do it his way. His critics crying about the death of democracy or whatever, don't really mean it anyway. They have their own agenda and championing old values and other lost causes is only good if it can get you elected. Who knew what would follow the EDSA era would be the cynical era? It's not so bad, for me anyway. I prefer people to be truthful. It's great that people have dropped their masks and shown their true colors. No more lectures about the rule of law or the preciousness of life. Anything and everything can be bargained away, any act can be rationalized. It's about raw power; realpolitik. Perhaps, it always had been.

You Seriously Don't Think We Can Win, Do You?

In three years when (or if) Duterte finally steps down, will the war continue? Can the troops fight without the great leader providing encouragement (and potential pardons)? I doubt it. One glaring flaw of Philippine democracy, and perhaps democracies in general, is that leaders change often and it can be hard to sustain long term projects since a new set of rulers brings in a new set of power players and cronies to infest the government. It's even worse here since politics is so personality driven and reliant on personal loyalties and not loyalties to institutions.

What if the next idiot who comes along decides that his big deal is going to be green energy or whatever, and decides to put the drug war on the back-burner, then what? Well the drug lords are going to come back, of course. What nobody realizes, least of all the dutertards, is that you cannot literally kill the problem of drug addiction and narcopolitics. I'd argue that the problem of drugs is just as much a spiritual and cultural problem as it is an economic one. Duterte's solution is the crudest solution of all and is not in any way sustainable. Cut the branches and even the trunk but the roots are still there. Other than killing, he has nothing else. Desperate people still want their fix and pushing that garbage is easy money.

What does victory even look like? Do people sincerely believe Duterte can solve the drug problem by killing every single drug dealer in the Philippines? The government can't even put down any of the communist/Muslim rebellions in the countryside for more than fifty years but we believe it completely eradicate drugs once and for all?

When the new kid in town comes along, the druggies will roll back in and it'll be as if nothing happened. Without El Jefe constantly rambling about drugs on the airwaves, people will forget about the problem. Always forget.

However, the word is that the president's daughter is considering a run for the highest office in the land. Now there's a very interesting topic: "political dynasties as a means to guarantee continuity in a cyclical form of government". If his daughter wins, the war could continue and I would be wrong. Alas, political dynasties vs. democratic elections is a topic for another day.

What I Feel

What do I think of the drug war, personally? To be honest, I don't care. I have already disabused myself of any notion that the country is some progressive heaven and its people saints.

I don't mind. It's just the world I live in.Do you blame the rain cloud when you get wet?

All I can do is hope nothing bad happens to me or people I care about.

MARS

One of the benefits of my job is that it allows me to observe the legal system closer than most people. One thing I have observed is this strange phenomenon that seems to happen whenever a particular criminal case has a lot of media attention focused on it. For academic purposes, let's call this the "Media Attention-Retardation Syndrome".

Media Attention-Retardation Syndrome (MARS) is a disease wherein people involved in a criminal case, from the public officials to the concerned parties, inexplicably drop thirty (30) points of IQ whenever the case is under intense media scrutiny or "goes viral", to borrow modern slang. It is theorized that the attention of the media produces among its victims a strong psychological response that causes forgetfulness, lack of focus, lapses in judgment, and other mental problems similar to those caused by extreme sleep deprivation. It may be thought of as a form of performance anxiety.

MARS is difficult to detect as it does not always affect people in all ways and at all times. It is possible it may not occur in some people at all. It is certain, however, that the likelihood of MARS is proportional to the intensity of the media attention. If the criminal case is featured on the national news or if a prominent politician is involved, sudden onset retardation is practically guaranteed.

For example, sufferers of MARS in the police force will inevitably and spectacularly bungle their investigation of the high profile crime. Whether or not the police always bungle their investigations and that we're only noticing it in that particular instance is a fair question, however. The police, in an effort to maintain the appearance of competence, begin to inform the media of their "findings", including their fantastical theories based on shady sources, lists of suspects who they may or may not be planning to question, and all the evidence they have collected so far. The wisdom of telling the public, and possibly the perpetrators, of your every move is not an issue. The importance of looking busy is paramount. It has been observed that the imposition of any time limit by a superior or politician dramatically increases the chance of MARS. Occasionally, the police may lock up the wrong person but they're only human.

MARS also affects suspects of the alleged crime. Suspects will exhibit erratic behavior and/or theatrical outbursts. Suspects may call for a radio interview or even a press conference to loudly proclaim that they're are innocent and that they have absolutely nothing to hide, no sir. They will then proclaim that "only God can judge them", "the truth will set you free", or any other such tedious platitudes. In severe cases the suspect may voluntarily "surrender" to the police despite still maintaining innocence and surrender being technically impossible since a case has not been filed yet.

A prosecutor suffering from MARS may suddenly forget the difference between preliminary investigation and inquest. Judges affected by MARS may come to realize or hallucinate biases against the party and inhibit themselves from the case. The lawyers file longer pleadings that read more like a madman's rambling manifesto. MARS may even cause delusions of grandeur as lawyers inexplicably begin to do their best impressions of Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

It's a nuthouse.

Philippine Democrazy: The First Layer

Our history books typically divide Philippine history by periods of colonization. When it comes to the American period, there's always a bit about their contributions to Filipino society. Aside from the Thomasites and their legacy of education, the books typically proclaim, almost proudly, that the greatest gift Uncle Sam ever gave to his little brown brother was the gift of democracy.

Getting over the notion that democracy is a supreme good is a difficult step on the road to understanding what makes this society tick. Filipinos are taught that democracy is sacrosanct, noble and all other flowery adjectives you can think of. Here's the thing: democracy isn't perfect. In fact, there's plenty of things wrong with it. Once you disabuse yourself of the delusions and examine the system carefully, you can begin to determine which pieces of the machine are causing problems and, hopefully, how it might be fixed.

This is going to sound brutal but democracy has its work cut out for it in the Philippines for two reasons. Firstly, the vast majority of Filipinos are stupid. Secondly, the population is not united in one identity and is instead subdivided into several special interests that compete with each other for scant resources. Since we're dealing with the whole body politic, let's call this the first layer.

On the first issue, the average Filipino is quite dumb. This is not his fault; circumstances are what they are. Perhaps, dumb and stupid are too harsh terms. "Politically unsophisticated" might be better. The average Filipino does not understand how his government works and what is demanded of him to make it work. He cannot be trusted to make intelligent choices neither for his own life nor for the good of broader society. Chances are he'll just sit back making more babies and wondering why the government won't give him more free money to support them. A good leader can never arise from this part of society. A mango tree cannot bear an apple. Perhaps the worst belief our society has is that if you this large group of dumb people together; they'll start acting smart. That's simply not true. Misplaced idealists often think that the Philippines is collectively what the Filipino is not individually. Hence, our politicians often promise European levels of welfare in a country that can barely print driver's licenses.

On the second issue, I've written about this before. Filipinos are not one collective. They are divided by religion, culture, geography, language and blood. On the city level, they are also divided by interests according to several other factors such as economic wealth, political allegiances and patronage. Democracy is at heart a numbers game. He who can bring up the numbers wins. Guess what's the largest group of voters in the country. Poor dumb people. Dependent. Easily manipulated. Again, they cannot be trusted to make the best choice so instead they will vote based on simple greed. Who can make the goodies flow at the expense of the other? The good of the whole is often ignored in order to cater to the most numerous or the most organized. You might think that this is not necessarily bad since the interests of a large part of society is catered to. Is that not the point of democracy? That's true but again, do the stupids really know what's best for them? They cannot be trusted to make the most intelligent decisions. They cannot be trusted, period.

Here's a question: Does the average Filipino really care if a politician is corrupt as long as said politician is feeding them their daily bread? Think about that. Let it stew. Weep.

Sometimes they aren't even motivated by selfish interests. Sometimes, the people seem to act at random. How can you explain the election of President Estrada, a know-nothing actor? The almost-victory of Fernando Poe? How about the persistence of the Marcoses and other martial law era crocodiles? How about you point to your local idiot kleptocrat and wonder how he even got there?

The sad fact is this: the Philippines is a tyranny of the stupid.

However, this was foreseen by our forebears and measures were taken. Our salvation does not lie with the people at large so let us leave the first layer. Obviously, pure democracy would be a disaster. Fortunately, our democracy has a fail-safe. The vast unwashed don't directly control government. Instead, the system works through representatives elected by the people. By necessity, these representatives would have some process of vetting to ensure some standard of quality. Perhaps through republicanism, the worst could be filtered out and the morons could only pick from the most qualified among them. 

Perhaps.

Next time, let's examine the representatives - the second layer.

Election Retrospective

If there's one thing I find amazing about the Duterte administration, it's that the problem of drugs in this country has been exposed like termites in a dying tree's trunk. It seems that everyone is either an addict, a dealer or a drug lord. If I threw a stone in a random direction, I'd probably hit a junkie at this point.

Before Duterte campaigned for the presidency, drugs were hardly an issue. People knew the problem existed but it was never really talked about. Come to think of it, the presidential candidates hardly talked about anything of substance. It was just the usual platitudes and bromides until this foul-mouthed grandpa from Davao walked into the scene.

That's why he won. He campaigned on an actual issue. Illegal drugs was something common folk could understand. Then all of a sudden Duterte was the "law and order" candidate. Can you remember what kind of candidates the others were? How about our old pal Mar Roxas? I remember him as the "everything is fine" candidate for the status quo. I'm sure all anyone else remembers him is as "that yellow guy". 

He took an issue and he owned it. It also helped that he proposed the radical solution of just shooting people dead to solve our problems. How can the other prim and proper "serious" candidates even match that? It's so dumb that it's genius. Even the stupidest Filipino can understand "shoot the baddies". Try explaining criminal justice system reform to the average Filipino and you'd be lucky if he stays awake.

The same thing happened in America, coincidentally. The whole thing was boring until some loudmouth came along and grabbed an issue a lot of people cared about but none of the other candidates dared to bring up. It was utterly bizarre to me watching American presidential hopefuls concede the issue of immigration to Trump without a fight. It turns out it mattered to a lot of people. He even had his own radical solution of building a big beautiful wall to keep illegal aliens out. Just like Duterte, Trump seemingly came out of nowhere, left his opponents befuddled and in the dust and actually won the damn race.

The takeaway here is that politics tends to become bland and stale. It's all talk about safe stuff nobody really cares about. Then someone comes along and manages to give voice to something everyone is thinking but can't seem to say anything about it; a charismatic who grasps the zeitgeist and rides it to victory.

It's something to think about.

Words And Phrases That Annoy Me

Drug Personality

Ever since Duterte's campaign against drugs began, the media struggled to find words to describe those individuals who came under intense scrutiny for their alleged involvement in drug trafficking. This dumb thing is what they came up with. 

Maybe "alleged drug dealer" was too libelous? The term is stupid because it could mean anything. Does "drug personality" refer  only to peddlers? The word itself could apply to drug users too. They have personalities although nobody cares about them. 

Furthermore, I've read drug personality used for politicians who are protecting drug dealers but don't necessarily sell drugs themselves. That's confusing. "Narco-politician" has more pizzazz. You don't need to be directly involved in drug dealing to be a drug personality? What are the rules on degrees here? No, wait. I remember hearing the term "drug protector" once to describe narco-politicos. Could a pharmacist be considered a drug personality? How about a doctor who writes prescriptions?

Handmade/Hand-crafted

I went to a restaurant recently that boasted of their "handcrafted" food. Am I meant to be impressed? Handcrafted is the word restaurants use when the word "artisan" is considered too intolerably pretentious even for the modern food snob 's standards.

Yeah, yeah, I know they mean that they themselves made the bun they use in their burgers or whatever but does that make it tastier? That's what matters most in the end, right? The local five peso bakeshop on the street corner bakes their bread by hand and you don't see them launching fireworks over it. I see no inherent value in something being handcrafted. All handcrafted means to me is inefficient. 

What image are they trying to conjure? Imagine a dystopian future where Skynet has finally taken over the world. Mindless robots churning out food daily for the helpless population. People smuggling balls of kneaded dough in dark alleys. Heartless automatons serving passable dishes devoid of any love but at a very affordable price. The humanity!

I swear, I saw a restaurant once that proudly advertised serving "handcut" steak. Did the butcher slice the cow with his razor fingers? Maybe he was a robot.

Lodi

It's a new local slang. It's the reverse of the word "idol" or something. It has to do with a game show. Honestly, I don't know what it means. All I know is that the people who use this word should be shot.

Only the Best/ Choice Ingredients

Take any packaged food and read the back of the item. It claims to use only the best and choicest ingredients which is obviously a lie. Are you telling me this bag of chips was made of literally the objectively best potatoes and processed cheese dust on the planet Earth? 

Besides, what idiot company would admit otherwise? What product would say "we use only the most average and mediocre ingredients"? It's like a politician proclaiming he's for clean rivers. Who isn't? Have you heard a politician coming from the Dead Dry Riverbed Party? The claims are meaningless.

Everyday it's an assault.

Counterflow Culture

If you read the newspapers or listen to the radio, you'd learn that the most pressing and most indisputably important issue facing the city of Cebu today is the problem of "counterflowing" drivers. The mayor recently passed an ordinance imposing stricter penalties on drivers caught in the act, including impounding their vehicle for thirty days.

Despite living in a modern city, it is tiring sometimes how public discourse meanders from one minor-but-suddenly-important topic to the next. It's all so very provincial. I digress. 

I've written many times in the past about how government tends to act in an overly oppressive manner whenever it feels the need to look busy. Not so long ago, there was a ban on tall buildings due to the sudden realization that fire exists. Recently, misbehaving youth had the city mull over imposing a  curfew to prevent kids from being recruited by gangs or something, as if they couldn't just recruit at daytime. A few days ago, the intellectuals in government grew eyes and noticed that there was a lot of graffiti on the walls so they started barking about passing measures to regulate the sale of spray-paint. You get the drift.

I admit that I'm being too unfair to the government; the people share a lot of the blame as well. Using the current hubbub about counterflowing drivers as an example, I submit that the people's general lack of discipline and cavalier attitude to law and order is what invites the heavy-handed attitude the government has. It's a chicken or egg thing but they both feed each other.

The price that must be paid to live in an ordered society is the surrender of some of our freedoms. We surrender some of our personal autonomy and agree to live by certain rules in order that our own rights are protected. A lawless state is a horror to behold. I know because I need only open a window. 

The more people act selfishly and ignore the law to the prejudice of others, the more the people clamor for government to step in and knock some heads around. The current measure against counterflowing drivers is quite popular but I don't see this as a good sign. What it means to me is that the higher our desire for order, the more willing we are to accept the government adopting increasingly brutal measures to do so.

It begs the question, "why can't people just obey the law"? That's a question with a thousand unsatisfying answers but the only one worth asking. If people were angels we wouldn't need laws. It's tragic really, how man provides the means of his own undoing. Tyranny is our ultimate destiny. It will come once it's made palatable enough or is it here already?

Perhaps we should focus on making better people rather than "better" laws.

Torment for Our Own Good

The Sinulog festivity this year is supposedly going "hi-tech", with the passes for the main event being chip-encrypted bracelets instead of ID cards. At the same time, the geniuses in government are talking about shutting down cell sites during the festival for security reasons. "Hi-tech" my ass. A cellphone isn't the only way to trigger a bomb and a bomb isn't the only way to do violence as the truck attacks in Europe show. But sure, let's shut down a vital service which would, in all likelihood, hamstring the police force just as well as it would inconvenience the local populace. The terrorists win without even having to do anything.

Thinking about this proposed measure had me thinking about how the government always seems to take the most insensitive, uncreative and clumsy measure to solve problems. Many years ago, there was a spike in the amount of murders committed by assassins riding in tandem on motorcycles. Enough people complained about the rising pile of dead bodies that the government finally felt compelled to do something. The brilliant solution proposed? Ban motorcycle helmets. The way our masters explained it is that since the murderers could no longer hide their faces, they would be more easily identified and caught. Where does one even begin to explain how stupid the idea was? Not all people who ride motorcycles are assassins. They have to know that, right? They have to know that people need to wear helmets to not die in accidents, right? Oh, they went further. They seriously considered banning people from riding in tandem altogether. You better not have a wife or any friends. It's for security purposes you see.

Fortunately, good sense prevailed. Instead of banning helmets, they only banned those which cover your face! So if you ever get in an accident, make sure you fall in the correct angle like a good citizen. Compromising the safety of everyone is necessary to lessen the risk of a statistically tinier percentage off people getting shot. The murders still happen anyway because the assassins, shockingly, don't obey the restriction. The terrorists win without even having to do anything. As for the ban on riding in tandem, only a few places have ordinances against that and even then it's not enforced because it's impossible and stupid.

The takeaway from these examples is that whenever the government is faced with a problem, their first instinct is to either impose restrictions or take away freedoms that the Filipino people enjoy. The demand is always for the long-suffering peasant to suffer even more for his own good. The attitude of our leaders is power-centric, not people-centric. Ours is a heavy-handed state. Instead of exploring options that would be least intrusive to the daily life of the citizen, the option that is most intrusive, and often the easiest, is taken. Police power is brute force and brute force requires little thought. Thinking is hard and nobody has the patience for that, least of all politicians.

Just think of any problem in society, how the government plans to tackle it and you'll realize I'm correct. Look at Manila, my favorite example of piss-poor urban planning and mismanagement. The traffic situation is apocalyptic. What's the government's solution? Does it invest in road-widening or new infrastructure? Does in invest in mass transit or expanding the rail system it has? No. The solution they went with years back is some cockamamie scheme wherein if your car has a certain number on its license plate, you can't drive it on some arbitrarily designated weekday. What a joke. What are they cooking up now? More arbitrary number schemes? Color? A ban on cars?

Drug menace? Just shoot 'em. The safety and security of the country demands it! Again, insensitive, uncreative and clumsy measures first. Power-centric, not people-centric. A million is a statistic. Etc, etc. Do you see it now?

I wouldn't be surprised if the government's solution to poor healthcare is to pass a law making it illegal to be sick.