Tag: democracy

Dutertard vs Yellowtard: Cult of personality is a hard Filipino habit to break

April 3, 2017April 3, 2017 benign0 12 Comments

Filipino activists have it all wrong. The scope of their advocacies is defined by people, and not by principle, issues, and ideas. When one defines her interests or advocacies around a person, she necessarily locks herself into a non-negotiable loyalty to that person’s own advocacies. It is a lazy sort of advocacy — picking based…

Culture, Politics, Society

Leni Robredo epitomises the deep impoverishment of Philippine society

March 23, 2017 benign0 10 Comments

You made your bed. Now you have to lie on it. This is the underlying principle that guides whether or not “vice president” Leni Robredo was right to get onto the world stage to shriek about the “horrors” of the “extrajudicial killings” (EJKs) going on in the Philippines. The EJKs (whatever way it is defined)…

Culture, Government, Society

Has the Philippines EVER been truly a country FOR Filipinos?

March 21, 2017 benign0 19 Comments

Think about it. The Philippines is named after a Spanish king. Its current sovereign territory was one defined by its Spanish colonial masters. Its current state religion is an imperial legacy of the Spanish Inquisition — an epic geno-“evangelisation” of an entire native culture by colonial forces. Then the “Philippines” became an American colony at…

Civics, Culture, Society

Outrage over Leni Robredo’s bimbo antics offer opportunities that require clear minds to exploit

March 20, 2017 benign0 3 Comments

Filipinos are up in arms following “vice president” Leni Robredo’s monumental gaffe of a video to the United Nations in which she painted the Philippines as a failed state and made statements just short of inviting foreign agents to intervene in her country’s domestic affairs. Indeed, for a purported “vice president” to suggest that her…

Government, Politics

Hipsters threaten to kill artists who perform at Donald Trump’s inauguration

January 19, 2017January 19, 2017 benign0 6 Comments

The irony seems to escape the community of America’s coastal hipster cliques. Jeering the coming inauguration of US President-elect Donald Trump has become some sort of fashion statement among the trendy set nowadays. But where does one draw the line? Dream Girls star Jennifer Holliday who initially agreed to sing at the event backed out…

Crime, Culture, Glitz and Glamour

What do basketball, karaoke, and democracy, all have in common in the Philippines?

December 23, 2016 FallenAngel 30 Comments

Basketball, karaoke, and democracy, are favorite pastimes in the Philippines. All three are things Filipinos like to associate with being Filipino. We like to think of ourselves – and are proud of it – as the most basketball-crazy country in the region. When it comes to social gatherings, and Filipinos are involved, everyone is expected…

Civics, Culture, Lifestyle, Society

The populists and the guardians of ‘decency’

December 15, 2016 rsurtida 55 Comments

There’s a common trait shared by some of the critics of US president Donald Trump and Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte that drives even the most rational supporters of both presidents into near-fanatic levels in defending their chosen candidate. The supposed supporters of “modern liberal thinking”, the antithesis of the “backward and barbaric” maxims supposedly espoused…

Culture, Government, Media, Politics, Society

The unresolved issues with the Marcoses are strong indictments of Filipino cultural dysfunction

November 30, 2016December 1, 2016 FallenAngel 8 Comments

It is tempting to think of the unresolved issues with the Marcos family – their alleged ill-gotten wealth, the lack of compensation for all those who supposedly suffered during the Martial Law era, and now the purportedly “undeserved” burial of the late strongman Ferdinand Sr. at the Libingan ng mga Bayani (LNMB) – as political…

Civics, Culture, Politics, Society