The Left can defeat the dynasties!!!
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
First we need to define the term “Left”. The Left is that part of the political spectrum that seeks more aggressive federal government intervention in the caretaking of citizens. The right is that part of the political spectrum that believes local governments, or private interests, should be empowered to care for citizens.
In the Philippine context, we can distinguish the two political forces as “The People” and “The Dynasts”.
The Liberal Party is a leftist party. Pinks are a leftist independent initiative. They are strongly center left. The more traditional leftest parties are the center-left Akbayan, the firmly left Makabayan, and the extreme left (designated terrorist) Communist Party.
The Duterte and Marcos/Romualdez families are the two most powerful dynastic families in the Philippines today. A number of other families, notably the Arroyos and Villars, have subordinated their interests to these top dynasties.
Three striking developments have taken place lately that have thrust the Left into the driver’s seat of political opposition to the dynasts.
- The Duterte dynasty is being taken down by criminal and legislative investigations. The Dutertes had maintained that they were the “opposition” to the current Marcos government.
- Makbayan has announced it will field a slate of 10 or 12 candidates for senate in 2025, giving them the strongest organized push to replace the dynasts now holding Senate seats.
- Notable attorney Chel Diokno has joined the Akbayan Party which is anchored by true opposition Senator Risa Hontiveros. In 2022, Diokno was a member of both the Robredo independent movement and leftist Leody de Guzman’s party.
The Liberal Party, now headed by former senator Leila de Lima, and the Pink independent movement that almost got Leni Robredo elected, seem not to have the strength to launch material initiatives for 2025. But they remain substantial as “peoples parties”, small “p”.
If we put all this together, we see a Left rising and one dynasty collapsing.
The Left could rise dramatically if the Yellows and Pinks joined and empowered them, say by hopping aboard Akbayan, seeking slots on their senate slate. Then Makabayan and Akbayan, if they were smart, which is 50/50 in my book, could join efforts and we’d have the Super People’s Party that is the easiest path to breaking the dynasties. I’ve written about it here (“You don’t need an anti-dynasty law to break the dynasties“). The hardest path is getting dynasts to pass an anti-dynasty law.
The second hardest path is to avoid tearing one another down. The big challenge is for Yellows, Pinks, and Left not to be territorial dynasts themselves, more consumed by their righteousness purity than how to build a left-leaning empire.
The Left can help achieve harmony by ditching two positions that are unpopular both among citizens an other political parties: (1) support for armed rebels, and (2) opposition to the US EDCA initiative/alliance. This centering of their position would make it easier, or even be the reason, for Yellows and Pinks to slip into a center-left political initiative. It already helps that the Left is not seen as elitist, and is more relatable as a peoples’ party.
Imagine 10 or 20 partners to Representative Castro and Senator Hontiveros aggressively pursuing peoples’ interests in 2025. Or 300 in 2028.
The dynasties would be broken. It is within reach.
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Cover photograph from DZRH article “Chel Diokno joins Akbayan Party“.
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The Society of Honor by Joe America 
For LP here is the latest I gathered.
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/921120/liberal-party-kiko-pangilinan-de-lima/story/
Thanks Karl. I’d seen that yesterday but chose not to insert it in the article. I think it is a weak initiative on its own. It will be interesting how the surveys poll on it. Maybe I’m wrong.
Welcome Joe. We will see if the writing on the wall gets erased and over written.
Possibly, this is what they are trying after the catastrophe trying to forge a not so big tent called Otso Diretso in 2019, and the similar debacle of 2022.
Akbayan might be trying to avoid what was said about it in 2016 because they helped PNoy, that they had become “too yellow.”
The Philippine Far Left, which Makabayan belongs to always has used “Socdem” as a cuss word – Akbayan are basically Social Democrats.
The disdain for liberal centrists like LP or social liberals like Pink is also huge in the Philippine Far Left, possibly the “eww, dilawan” reflex among many Filipinos nowadays is trickle down from that attitude within much of Filipino academe.
Add to that the usual difficulties of a people in many islands that had and in a way still have many fiefdoms in finding common ground. The Magdalo-Magdiwang split that killed Andres Bonifacio, the Roxas-Osmeña split that made LP split off from NP in 1946, most of post-1986.
That it was easy for Spain, used to playing different Muslim rulers against each other during their Reconquista, continuing with similar strategies in conquering empires in Latin America, to make Cebuanos and Boholanos help them take Manila is clear, the Philippines was tribal then.
That the Philippine revolutionaries managed to quarrel WHILE fighting with Spain, the Republic managed to fight internally fighting the USA, postwar Philippines was stricken with rebels and warlords, post-1986 Philippines had “bad actors” (c) JPilipinas ‐ those are all sequels of that.
That Trillanes is going his own way now is part of this. That Chel Diokno has joined Akbayan is also logical, as he does have a lot of respect within the Left in general. The lack of common purpose around ideals means personalities count more – VP Leni in 2022, Sen Risa in 2025.
The traditional left needs to decide which is more important, the extreme positions or governing. Because they can’t obstinately have it both ways. I told Teddy Casiño (on Twitter) that I think he is in the driver’s seat right now.
Speaking of Far Left.
I tried reading a few from the webpage of the far left. I guess the list should be expanded aside from the Support for armed rebels and opposition to EDCA.
https://philippinerevolution.nu/
Ummmm, yes.
Thanks for the link, Karl.
As far as their recent preoccupation about the Typhoon missile system vacating PH, a decision had been made:
https://www.reuters.com/world/us-keeps-missile-system-philippines-china-tensions-rise-tests-wartime-deployment-2024-09-19/
Welcome and thanks as well for the link.
The most recent survey I found about the Filipino sentiment about CN is that 91% distrust her. In that context, the PH far left should reconsider their pro CN stance to align with the masses that they claim they serve and protect.
https://www.gmanetwork.com/news/topstories/nation/909389/octa-survey-91-of-pinoys-distrust-china/story/
When it comes to PH-CN and PH-US partnership, the article linked below has insightful data: “With regard to the partnership with China, 12% of Filipinos support a partnership, while 58% do not.”
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2024/04/26/2350649/majority-filipinos-favor-us-over-china-west-philippine-sea-dispute-survey
I feel that the PH far left’s Achilles heel is their continuing Anti-US sentiments which does not mirror the reality on the ground.
Yes. I’ve preached that for years to Teddy Casiño, to no avail. I suppose it keeps them their youth base. But, of course, that’s a weak voting base.
The link about that PH CH understanding group, I know the trustee in charge of Vis Min. He is close to my dad. He is quite not so pro American he even gave my dad Sassot’s signed book about WPS.It is already a given that the far left is anti American, but with this group who gets raging mad once called traitors, by asking who is the real traitor….like the song sino ang tunay na baliw and Forrest Gump stupid is as stupid does.
Another is Mentong Laurel whom was once a consultant of Sen T whom I met once.
This chismis is really chism forming.
was supposed to say schism…now I know where chismis is derived from.
Sounds like they may need some introspection? Their anti-America sentiments are based on historical data and not grounded on the here and now. Like any country, America is only as good or bad as its present leaders and decision makers. It seems to me that some Filipinos, particularly those against US are holding on grudges. Grudges could be for real or imagined wrongs. Even the real one should have an expiration date. Moving forward is better than being stuck in past.
The finger pointing and blame games should stop too. I hope the far left could move on from divisive talks and get the wherewithal to really listen to the masses. The internal squabbles are just specks when compared to the massive PH societal problems that need their attention. Bayan bago sarili. Lick your personal wounds and fight for the country or you’re the baliw.
I would even say that the Filipino Far Left has gotten more worse over the years as they absorb more and more idiotic ideas from the so-called Global South Far Left movements. Ideas that range from those developed by elite White Western voices who know nothing about the actual struggle of the common people being on the “milder” side of radicalism, to full blown Marxism–Leninism–Maoism. One would think that continuing to idealize dead end ideology that bring zero wins and zero results would cause introspection and moderation, but I guess that’s why they’re called ideologues.
I’ve had quite a few debates with Filipino Far Leftists over the years and they are curiously anti-American yet alarmingly pro-PRC. When I pointed out that the American experiment with colonialism only lasted less than a decade before the US tried to get out as fast as the US could, they can’t accept the truth. Yet they will side with the PRC or Russia, who are neo-colonialist, neo-imperialist powers that have never changed their imperialist thinking for 500 years in the case of Russia and over 2,000 years in the case of China. Truly troglodyte levels of thinking and mental gymnastics to justify their ideology.
The further Left the ideology goes, the more purity tests matter. Purity tests are the impediment to including Far Left groups into a coalition, because if given any platform they will immediately attempt a takeover of the mainstream party or coalition. This strategy is called Entryism, and they always will attempt it (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Entryism). Look what American Far Leftists did to the Democratic Socialist Party, which until 2016 was a sleepy minor party of idealists. Entryism has existed since the French Revolution where the Far Leftist parties instigated the entire French Revolutionary Left coalition to destroy each other, leading the prominent Jacobin Georges Danton to famously utter “The revolution like Saturn devours its own children” during his trial. And after the movement is destroyed, the Far Left will take no responsibility and slink back into the shadows feeling smug in their own feelings of self-appointed superiority.
Coalitions must be big tent, but that doesn’t mean the Far Left should be included. If groups don’t act in good faith for the broader goals, it means they don’t know how to compromise to gain the majority of what they want in return for giving up a few positions. But purity tests don’t allow Far Left groups to compromise since doing so would cause them to be ostracized within their circles. The Filipino Left should eject and reject the Far Left elements and move on.
@Joey and @JP, what say you? https://apcu.org.ph/our-profile-and-history/
APCU is an example of the many “associations” and organizations the PRC has propped up around the world to launder pro-CCP propaganda. These organizations facilitate CCP spying and indoctrination in the guise of “mutual understanding.” It’s not “understanding” when one side’s views are pushed and disseminated. The US, Canada and Germany have been getting serious about cracking down on such organizations recently. Australia is an example of letting these groups wrap their tentacles too far into society. The Australians are scrambling now to remove PRC influences across their academia and government. A big lesson for other nations like the Philippines.
Thanks also for introducing entryism.
Thanks for the new word, for me. Entryism. The center left should implement Getlostism and rid themselves of these “dynasts without portfolio”.
Exactly right. The serious factions of the Filipino Left (including center-left and Left) should eject and run away from the Far Left as fast as possible. The Far Left don’t want to work within the system as-is; they want the system to fail so they can accelerate their delusions of a Maoist revolution. The fact that they are the fringe with little mainstream support among voters is the strongest signal they should no longer be entertained. But the Filipino Left, being high-minded and accommodating, always make the same mistake time and time again and allow the Far Left a platform.
Solidify around “getable” goals, accept incrementalism, and stop fighting about how fast to affect progress and change between the liberal and democratic socialist factions of the Left because even incremental wins in fact is progress to build upon. The only other alternative is complete failure and getting nothing. The Filipino Left love to congratulate themselves on failure because they “stuck with their principles,” while the dynastic forces march in lockstep to block progress.
The trouble with Philippine higher education is that a lot of stuff in the social sciences mainstream there is full of Far Left stuff, in addition to that the diluted version of it. There are also the nationalists. Little liberal stuff is taught there.
In fact, one liberal professor, Leloy Claudio, was allegedly (as some unreliable sources told me) mobbed out in both Ateneo and La Salle, seems by more Leftist colleagues in one and more nationalistic ones in the other. He teaches at Berkeley now.
My impression is that most Liberals in the Philippines are tongue-tied when the Far Left and nationalists come with slogans, in a country where he who has a quick retort “wins” as a lot of politics there is like a rap battle. This could have its roots in higher education there.
American and other Western (including German, probably) higher education institutions have a similar problem. Of course higher education has always been the realm of Leftism, but around the time I went to university White Leftists started adopting and bastardizing Black American Left political theory and Queer political theory and combining it with old school Soviet early Cold War propaganda which peaked in the late 1960s. For example, intersectionality as I understood it back in my college days and how Far Leftists use it now is completely different.
From my observations in the Philippines and talking with my old UP, AdM, LS liberal friends from the days I still used to haunt the NCR, Philippine universities are rife with Joma’s Maoist ideology especially the NCR flagship institutions. And yes, the nationalists as well who are mostly children of dynasts. Well, I guess the Far Leftists are usually also children of dynasts…
However, dynasties and the children of dynasts are but a small number of voters. In order to exert control they need to divide and conquer the population, much like their forebears learned from the Spanish during the early colonial period. Slogans can be out-sloganed. To me quick retorts an put-downs are a way of displaying power verbally, and can be countered too if a politician keeps to his/her principles and acts like a wall that cannot be knocked down. Retorts and put-downs have much less effect if one is unflinching. Liberals aren’t described as weak-kneed for nothing… they need to grow a spine and stand tall.
I find that most nationalists and Far Leftists to use ad hominem or mockery, since they have no platform or plan. Nationalists want to go back to an invented time that never existed, while Far Leftists want to burn everything down for the sake of their revolutionary delusion. To me the solution is simple: stand one’s ground on principles, find the enemy’s triggers that would make them melt down and look silly then return fire with mockery, then continue on without skipping a beat to talk about issues that the people actually want which is how to improve their lives. Michelle Obama famously said “where they go low, we go high.” Well, I say “when they go low, punch them in the face.” Even if the (rhetorical) punch fails to knock the opponent down, and one gets clobbered, just the act of springing to one’s feet quickly could quickly leading to one looking like a scrappy underdog, which Filipinos love.
@Karl
Similar to APCU are the Confucious Institutes (CI). America had seen the proliferation of Confucious Institutes (CI) in US colleges and universities. Most of them were closed due to national security concerns and loss of US government funding. As of 2023, 104 of the 118 CIs had been closed but it does not look like they will be gone for good.
“…the demise of Confucius Institutes has not deterred the Chinese government, which has persuaded American colleges and universities to reopen and rebrand Confucius Institute programs under new names.”
The article below will tell you more about CIs in the US:
https://thediplomat.com/2023/11/the-rise-and-fall-of-confucius-institutes-in-the-us/
At least US high education has the excuse of massive amounts of tuition money coming in from Chinese foreign students to take a conciliatory stance enabling instruments of the PRC within their institutions. What excuse do Filipino institutions have? They receive centavos at best, nothing at all most of the time, yet still act as enablers for a foreign country that is actively undermining the nation.
We have and had thousands of Chinese College and Masteral both from the Mainland and Taiwan.
Yes, good point Karl and that could be a factor (minus the Taiwanese students). It’s also an indicator that the top Philippine universities are still world class. Still, the number of mainland Chinese students is less than those going to the US, Canada, Australia, UK by a multiple factor. The PRC seems to prefer putting its efforts to influence the Philippines though civil organizations rather than through colleges.
Many thanks for this, JP!
Thanks Joey.
Philippine college education infuses a lot of nonsense into people. Especially into the graduates of certain top universities.
I was going up the hill to the Prague Castle with a Filipina who had graduated from a top university, ages ago when I was young 🎶 – and seeing the guards of the castle she said “Europeans, oppressors”. I thought of all people, the Czechs who always were conquered..
That the college educated tolerate both the nonsense of The Far Left as well as its Dutertian vulgarization as “tanginang mga puti” isn’t surprising if a lot of left-wing social sciences teachers in universities teach simplistic stuff they call “progressive” there.
The lack of intellectual curiosity in your acquaintance is unsurprising. One can hold certain views, but be open to hearing out other views. Entertaining opposing viewpoints doesn’t mean one is an ideological apostate; rather it means there is an openness to new ideas that possibly can refine one’s views or redefine it altogether, and at the minimum at least a respectful discourse can take place.
The problem with “intellectual” circles is their habit of forming echo chambers where to use LCpl’s crude term, the echo chamber engages in a circle of mental “salsaleros” and patting each others’ backs. But who appointed these “illustrious” thinkers anyway? Well, it was but themselves! Over time their thought calcifies into an ideology that is far removed from reality, yet they absolutely believe it to be the only way. The Far Leftists adopt a “burn it all down” mentality since they pompously believe that only they can build a better society, even though they have never actually held power. But they sure love throwing bombs and fanning the flames while taking no responsibility for societal disjunction.
The good thing is that outside of a diluted trickling down of slogans that no one really knows the meaning of anymore, society at large doesn’t really care what these self-appointed intellectuals believe or want. Those in the DE classes who comprise the vast majority of Filipino voters only latch onto vague slogans because their lives are in desperate straits and they see no alternative. I bet if DE, but especially D who are very reliable party list voters are given an alternative of which the benefits of the platform are simply and clearly explained they would gladly take it. The problem for the Filipino Left is how have a cease fire from their constant circular firing squad long enough to elevate candidates who can unite the Left parties into a coalition and be charismatic enough to be relatable to the voters.
I still can’t believe that Trillanes has gone to the dark side (maybe not totally dark but definitely murky). His embrace of Isko and Mocha is the antithesis of what I believe his character to be. I am definitely disappointed. I thought he will partner with Vico as an Independent to retain the “shine” he rightly deserved for standing up to tyrannical administrations of past.
What does Isko and Mocha have in common? Showbiz. Did Trillanes dabble in it before?
candidates’s formal filing of candidacy is from 1-8 of october. and even if they have filed their candidacy they can still change or withdraw their candidacy..
trillanes has recently sued rody duterte and bong go for the anomalous 16billion frigate deal. also recently sued paolo duterte and mans carpio, sara’s husband, for drug smuggling. cases are pending.
filing those cases dont seem like the actions of one who has gone or about to go murky. being kapartido nina isko who is running for manila mayoralty at mocha who is running for manila councilor, probly is walk in the park for trillanes. he already knew who they are and what they are capable of. aksyon demokratico party will be an intriguing platform and will keep people guessing.
trillanes is risk taker and if he gets voted as mayor of caloocan, he will not be sharing office with both isko moreno and mocha.
and if isko moreno gets voted as mayor of manila, he will be the one sharing office with mocha, i.e. if mocha gets voted as councilor of manila.
p.s. trillanes once sued mocha for slander.
Not to make palusot but the party is beyond Isko and Mocha if we are talking of who started it, it was Raul Roco. But we must go beyond personalities and go with platforms. I hope Isko and Mocha goes by the ideals of the party. Honestly, I do not like Mocha a bit, but KB is right Mocha is running for councilor of Manila and may only cross paths with Trillanes if ever there are countrywide party meetings. Isko has more chances of crossing paths because of the league of Mayors stuff.
To those accusing that he is a tuta of Marcos, well he is no longer a partymate of Marcos,
Bottomline, not defending Trillanes, he can defend himself. Our party system needs fixing. Even if it is not reduced to a two party system.
Isko Moreno only ran as president under the party but he is not the party, though he is the one who invited Alvarez, Mocha and others. If Trillanes stayed with his party then he can not run for Mayor since he will not be endorsed by the NP.
Mocha endorsed Isko last elctions.
https://politiko.com.ph/2024/08/27/2025-comeback-mocha-uson-thanks-isko-moreno-for-trust/snitch-network/
Trillanes did file criminal charges Mocha as kb mentioned.
https://www.rappler.com/philippines/182986-trilanes-files-criminal-charges-mocha-uson/
As to Trillanes passion.
I will note that Irineo has a point.
I see his works less as passion and more as calculation. I made that observation elsewhere here.
I am leaning towards calculation.
But calculating is more of not taking risks though there is the so called calculated risks which is another word or two for long shot.
Vico left the party stating that it no longer embodied the values that Raul Roco imbued in it. I read that as its original platform is no longer palatable or had departed from the Roco’s norms. Isko and Mocha are players in the Urban Dictionary sense (manipulate others for their own gain). Trillanes is better than them (or so I believe).
PH party system definitely needs a lot of reform. Voters could shun those who run without platforms or policies. They need to start asking what they will be getting for their votes instead of a measly 100 pesos. Like something intangible that will last for at least the equivalent of the politician’s time in office.
Televised debates should also be mandatory for all national candidates and town hall debates for local ones. Those who do not want to debate should forfeit their candidacy. There must be at least 2-3 debates so the masses can see for themselves how the candidates think on their feet and to gauge their fitness for office by providing possible solutions to contemporary issues.
Why is it easier for politicians to get a government position than an average Filipino to be employed in public or private organizations? The time and expense of getting all the required documents for even a minimum wage job is enough to give up a job search. Filipinos should expect more from those wanting to be elected officials. To level the playing field, political candidates should submit themselves to the same scrutiny every job seeking Juan and Juana go through before employment. Imagine the possibilities!
Independent forever? Because Vico wants party reforms first. He can’t just wish that from happening. He must support the one that can make that happen, now who could that be?
https://www.rappler.com/philippines/vico-sotto-independent-for-now-calls-stronger-political-party-system/
He believes in principles, and I would guess he would agree with my proposed unification of liberals/left around them. The question where everyone gets stumped is, “how we gonna do that?” Well, first get off your demanding little feudal horse and climb on the big-ass principled nationalist bandwagon. You let go, then you grab on. Simple.
Back to our crab discussion. Always someone looking for holes and wrong moves and mistakes.
https://www.philstar.com/nation/2024/08/20/2379067/vico-sotto-3-others-face-graft-raps
Vico said they are all traceable. The other siee knows it takes long to clear ones name. https://news.abs-cbn.com/news/2024/8/26/vico-sotto-disgruntled-ex-city-hall-workers-part-of-group-behind-graft-cases-2145
I read that he is no longer Independent. He founded Giting ng Pasig party and run on it for his 2022 re-election bid. Six months after he won, he tendered his resignation from Aksyon Demokratiko. Maybe he can mold his new party into the configuration he wish and ally with like-minded personalities who will help him in develop a stronger political party system.
Thanks for that information and best of luck to him.
Their wiki needs updating because their former affiliations are still intact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giting_ng_Pasig?wprov=sfla1
Muntulupa has its own version, with Biazon and the rest and I don’t think he and the gave up their mother parties of course glad and very happy to stand corrected per usual
Re Muntinlupa
https://mb.com.ph/2024/8/11/1-munti-party-bares-official-candidates-for-2025-local-election-in-muntinlupa
To answer those questions, we’d have to know what went into his decision to run for mayor of Caloocan. My guess is it followed a meeting with Isko and from that arose the ambition to create a Manila-based political power. And he has to follow up on the commitment. He is very much a calculator, and I think enjoys the role as LCX enjoys coming at things differently here. He knows that noise matters, good or bad, and he can step from it a known person, among voters. Leni Robredo’s weakness is her passivity and he went after it. Will he become corrupt or continue to be the white knight, now in dark armor? Who knows.
even when he was senator, trillanes was poorest among his peers, his assets stood at 5millions. as senator, he has plenty chances for corruption and enriched himself, but did not go down that road.
now, trillanes cannot run as independent, his coffer wont let him run his own campaign. he is more or less at the mercy of a political party, but only to a point. people know who trillanes is, regardless of what party he is affiliated. and I hope the people of caloocan voted him in.
Yes, I hope he wins as well.
After doing my research on Caloocan City and Aksyon Demokratiko party, I am now of the opinion that Trillanes’ move is more strategic than amoral.
The proximity of Caloocan to Manila, the importance of a party as a political vehicle, and the entertainment value of Isko and Mocha could be just the edge Trillanes needs to succeed in his mayoral ambition.
Agree. Well, there is nothing amoral in the first place for criticizing Leni Robredo for being too passive. That is a legitimate point of view for a crusader. He criticized her before the last election for waiting too long, and I would agree with him that her delay did not allow enough time to build out the votes. Plus she has done nothing to assist those challenging the legitimacy of the vote so there is no basis for saying she was robbed.
one day, leni will tell the real reason why she did not assist those challenging the legitimacy of the 30million votes.
hypothetically, after she lost her bid for presidency, she not only relinquished her vice presidency, she also lost the personal protection assigned to her (she had 78 personal guards) and lost the much needed intel they provided her. her safety was no longer their concern. and she became private citizen and vulnerable as such, very approachable and easy target, always welcoming and greeting strangers, etc.
if she was threatened post election, and told not to challenge the election result in any way, or she would disappear like the many who have disappeared, she would then be very circumspect, hypothetically speaking of course! and be friend to all.
That’s one scenario. The other is that she just could not believe COMELEC would stoop so low, or did not wish to embroil the nation in chaos, or did not have the stamina, resources, and will to take on such a challenge. She was exhausted. She is not an attack dog, snarling like most Filipinos who lose.
Ah, I thought the past PH vice presidents gets to keep a few of their detailed security personnel for a number of months after leaving office. Past US VPs keep their Secret Service protection for six months after transition, longer if there are national security concerns about their safety.
A lot of us take it for granted how dangerous it is to be a politician in PH. The bad actors have too many guns, goons and gold.
When I was in high school, I had a classmate who appointed himself as my academic, debate and sports rival. I was a poor kid on scholarship; his father is a “big name” corporate lawyer who worked for a major White-shoe firm. Despite knowing my family background as political refugees from a communist regime, he thought it was funny and “ironic” to call me and my friends group “Friedrich, Marx and Engels.” Clearly he was too stupid in his smugness to realize that Friedrich and Engels were the same person. His debating style consisted of vapid arguments about how amazing communism is, with one argument in favor of communist greatness being that everyone in communist societies are farmers (haha). Fast forward decades as we reach middle age, apparently he’s one of the main “thought leaders” within the online Far Left. He’s never had to work a single day in his life and spends all his time pontificating to uncritical youth, in between writing books and contributing to the online magazine Jacobin. He has adopted increasingly curiously Russia and PRC aligned views as he cavorts with the likes of Glenn Greenwald and Edward Snowden. All the while living in the comfort and security of American democracy with the inheritance afforded from his father.
I find Filipino Far Leftists (let’s be honest, most are former CPP/NPA who adopted new organization names to avoid red-tagging) are in the same vein. Their “thought leaders” are almost always privileged rich kids who never matured mentally, just like there are reactionaries who still believe in Ayn Rand’s vacuous writing well into their later years. Far Leftists usually don’t vote, don’t contribute constructive efforts to the greater project of progress, and are waiting for the perfect moment when others who worked hard failed politically so they can wag their fingers and say “I told you so.” Their arguments are so insipid that when it is pointed out by someone who is actually well read, they will resort to ad hominem attacks. The amount of Far Leftists who came out of the woodwork to demean and criticize the Pink movement after Leni’s lost was all too predictable. But when someone like Marcos Sr. or Duterte was in power, they hide in the shadows, refraining to criticize.
The Filipino Left spectrum from center-left, to progressive, to democratic socialist have largely the same goals. The main cause of their arguing is how fast to get to the goals. Even when the Left finally got power through Aquino, they quickly tore each other down mainly arguing over lack of progress. The Left’s common quality is their idealism, which in itself is an admirable trait. But idealism also has downsides, mainly the failure to recognize that to affect change one needs to work with the system one has since it is too difficult to immediately change the system into what one wants. And so under Aquino his coalition quickly fell apart when the progressives and democratic socialists complained at the pace of change, while the Far Leftists that were let into the coalition threw bombs from the sidelines. Would it not be better to capture the goals one can, call it a win, then fight for the rest of the goals the next day? Simplistic yet effective methods are not the realm of academically minded Leftists, who insist foolishly on more complication.
The Far Leftists need to be ejected from any future Filipino Left Coalition. There’s already enough in-fighting as-is among the Left. The election goal should be to gather as many voters as possible, and that would be the middle-of-the-way voters closer to the center. I wonder if the Filipino Left will finally “get it” in 2025/2028.
There is maturity that we gain by working. Maturity that we gain by building , teaching people, commanding, leading, planning. People who have lived only within the confines of policy etc have not matured the part of the brain that deals with the real world. unfortunately the real world is messy and full of heartache. That is partly why you mature. Rich people have the luxury of not growing up.
Well said GC, and a lot more concise than my rambling! It’s not to say I don’t think academics don’t have value, they do and are a very important piece of the puzzle. But I just wish academics would go outside and “touch grass” more often to ground theory more in the real world.
Nicholas Nassim Taleb wrote that academics should at least “have driven taxi to finance their studies” and “have gotten drunk with Russians.” Of course, that is figurative, and a lot of his ideas are problematic. But he does point a finger at the sore spot of the modern American meritocracy that has, so it seems, gotten out of touch with reality. I have read novels about out of touch hipsters who think Vice tells them what the real world is about. Well, in that case, I guess one should take below video from The Wire with a grain of salt, though it seems to show how theoretical some academics knowledge of the real world is. Were American elites before more grounded, and why are they so estranged from the working class nowadays, it seems?
American meritocracy is still largely structurally “White” as an unwritten rule. Of course the meaning of “White” has evolved over the decades and centuries, where originally it meant WASP but was later expanded to include Irish and Italians who were previously excluded as “not the right type of White people.” Of course the beauty of the “American Experiment” is that it is based on ideas and ideals, so the definitions can evolve and change to become more inclusive which is the big battle in American politics we are seeing now; a second racial backlash against a new push for equality we haven’t seen since Nixon’s reaction to the era of Civil Rights. Of course, Asian Americans also were largely kept out of positions of power not by laws but by structural impediments. It wasn’t so long ago that Asian Americans were accepted as civil bureaucrats but not leaders of government departments, accepted as doctors and engineers but not as business executives. Now things are changing.
I often listen to Nick Hanauer, an American billionaire who was branded a class traitor by his peers for pushing for better working conditions and wages for the worker. Hanauer’s efforts were critical in increasing the minimum hourly wage to $15 in many states, even though he is insistent that if wages had followed productivity gains it would be past $26/hour. Hanauer came from a lower-middle class background running his family’s small business, and has remained grounded in his early experiences working the factory line with the employees of his father’s business instead of being sucked into the pursuit of hoarding money like other nouveau riche.
Here’s a recent installment of Hanauer’s podcast, where he discusses the increasing out of touch nature of the academic class with Prof. Anna Stansbury (MIT, Economics).
Pitchfork Economics with Nick Hanauer – Economics Needs More Socioeconomic Diversity (with Anna Stansbury)
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/economics-needs-more-socioeconomic-diversity-with-anna/id1445901378?i=1000669789847
Amazingly, Prof. Stansbury is one of the first economists from a major university that has attempted to study the effects of the lack of diversity on the Economics field. Stansbury observes that even as a White woman, she is a minority within the profession as it is dominated by male economists who come from a background of educated and well-off White parents. Stansbury asserts that this causes Economics study to focus on more theoretical pursuits rather than how actual regular people are affected by Economics through PhDs going into government. Stansbury observes that the matter of diversity is not a matter of equity only, but diversity of socioeconomic experiences is crucial for fostering innovative solutions to economic challenges faced by American families. A lot of this could be applied to the Philippines too, where from my understanding a lot of economists come out of UP and have upper-middle class or wealthy backgrounds.
On a lower level outside of academic study, there are a lot of middle class and wealthy young Americans who read Vice or The Intercept. It would be similar to fashion shows where designs are so outlandish to normal people, but are rabidly praised by those in-people within the “scene.” Or hipster art galleries where I think “a child can paint better than this,” yet the art piece is relentlessly praised. In the last couple of years, I’ve started thinking about different groups of people and how they got there. It seems to me that those “out groups” of outcasts in high school and college later made their own groups as they became educated and gained positions of power in government and academia. Publications like Vice and The Intercept are also problematic as they served as incubators for intellectualists in the Far Right (Vice) or the Far Left (The Intercept). Interestingly the alumni of both publications take increasingly Russian and PRC views… Horseshoe Theory at work. The traditional theory of linear political spectrum probably needs updating.
American elites used to be more grounded, let’s say during the days of the Rockefellers. The top crust of American society definitely felt a sense of social responsibility to even the lowest class. In the American political duopoly between the Republican and Democratic Parties, the Republican Party used to have a substantial Progressive Wing (Rockefeller Republicans) that descended from the Republican Party’s original stance of being the progressive party from Lincoln to Theodore Roosevelt. Over time the business interests won over and pushed other elements out, finally vanquishing the Republican progressive wing with Nixon’s rise to power. The business interests, being a numerically small faction made an alliance with the religious conservatives (Southern Strategy) that formerly constituted the Democratic Party who were pushed out by FDR through LBJ’s New Deal and Great Society that started the process of institutionalizing equality as a practice, not just an ideal. Even in the time of Obama we were still living in a conservative backlash era governed by Minority Rule, and the current political turmoil and threats of “Civil War 2.0” is the modern day conservative backlash against a new era of progress started by Biden.
In American high education, even in my time in the early 2000s, professors were mostly standard liberals who came of age in the 1960s. A bit out of touch, yes, but far from what we are seeing now with the current crop of academics. By now we are probably in the late 2nd generation, or early 3rd generation removed from the Civil Rights and Anti-War movements of the 1960s. Being that liberal minded people try to be accommodating to opposing viewpoints, Far Leftists who subscribe to Marxist or Marxist-adjacent thought have been able to gain a foothold in American academia. We can see examples these academics and their students in the Gaza protests over the summer, where the protestors constituted a minority of academia and students (most estimates put them at less than 2%). Not sure how PhD thesis on “theories of the imagination and poetry as interpreted through a Marxian lens” contributes to anything, even in the theoretical realm, but this is just one example of how out of touch they are. The main driver of this out of touch behavior and thinking in my observation is the complete bastardization of Minority developed theories that attempted to address non-White/non-Heterosexual perspectives, such as DEI, CRT, intersectionality that have since been captured and twisted into purity tests by the Far Left fringe academics. When a White, trans academic or PhD candidate is espousing “solidarity” with the “oppressed LGBTQIA+ of Gaza” by supporting an ultra-right wing Islamo-fascist terrorist organization that would chop of their head in an instant, instead of supporting the civilian population, I just roll my eyes.
Another major contributing factor is that while the US “won” the Cold War with the Soviet Union’s downfall, Soviet agitprop ultimately won in Western academia. The PRC was slow to the uptake but they are running the same agitprop playbook nowadays, as is Iran and to a lesser extent North Korea. When elites who have been cloistered and lack social responsibility enthusiastically support Russian and PRC narratives, I do feel a bit discouraged. The saving grace is that for the common people who are too busy working and surviving, usually don’t subscribe to such nonsense whether they are on the left or the right. Maybe students who came from the working class may be influenced while they are studying, some even become true believers and are “tokenized” by the movement leaders who are almost always elite Whites. In this regard, the African American community has always been pragmatic and vigilant. It’s interesting to see the African American community push back hard against frivolous ideologies, then to see the movement leaders attack the African American community for it. So much for “solidarity,” if one doesn’t want to submit to becoming a token minority.
Arroyo and the Association for Philippine China Understanding. No further comment.
She started the pro-China ventures and the rot is being exposed with the arrest of Tony Yang in CDO. Just outrageous criminal acts. I wonder if being loyal the China pays well.
Just looking at Guo, and the brither of the economic adviser…until caught it pays.
Can the Left defeat dynasties?
I don’t think so. Unless a law is passed prohibiting political dynasties the traditional cycle of politics will continue. And even if there is law penalizing such system people will still have a hard time getting rid of something that is part of the political culture.
Members of political families that comprises dynasties in the whole archipelago is the last of the dinosaurs humans are unable to defeat. If we look at the list of presidencies from Marcos Sr. to Marcos Jr., there is one thing in common among them: they all came from influential political families.
As to the Left, how can a rag tag ideologues defeat something that has been the dominant force in the political arena for decades? They are so busy strengthening their commitment to be agents of change and in the promotion of their movements that taking down dynasties is the least of their concern. Also, if such incredible feat (defeating dynasty) happens the Leftist group that will do that will be headed by someone from a political family of a dynasty.
My bookie would put is money on your assessment. My own is that an anti- dynasty law will never get passed by dynasts, so you get stuck with a muddle of competing weak leftist groups. I would have preferred that Leni and Leila form a confab, maybe with the Binays and Joy Belmonte, ++, then bring the leftists into that initiative as one major leftish power. But they do not think and act strategically. It’s a fuedal society, even among good powers.
JoeAm, here’s another angle that touches the subject matter of your article.
While the Left defeating the dynasties may not be in the horizon, there is an ongoing slow moving collision between two dynasties, the Marcoses and the Dutertes, that could make a smorgasbord out of Philippine politics.
Rodrigo Duterte, called Pres. Marcos a drug addict earlier this year. And it was followed by his son, Sebastian “Baste”, calling for BBM to resign for being ‘lazy and lacking compassion.’
Then after the Sara Duterte drama with the Congressional committee in charge of the budget, the vice president resigned from her post as education secretary. Her struggle with Congress, headed by Romualdez, a Marcos relative, made her relationship with the president more complicated.
She has been talking a lot to the media lately about the president and she are not really closed, etc. The family is not really in a good place right now under the BBM administration.
Some suspect that since father and daughter are staunch supporters of once fugitive leader and now indicted Apollo Quiboloy, they feel that BBM hasn’t been reciprocating the ‘utang na loob’ they extended to him when Sara decided run as his vice instead of president.
Since they practically ‘owned’ Davao as a dynasty, the Dutertes are so used in getting what they want without a hitch. They are not used to meeting opposition to what they want to do or want to make of. And Marcos, not playing cozy with them, presents an annoying reality.
There’s a growing list of what seems to be issues that they were not happy about BBM. There’s the effort of the president to strengthen relations with the US which the Dutertes, the China-friendly dynasty, scoff at. Then Marcos’ effort to engage with the communist rebels is, for the Duterte, a reversal of what the former president’s policy is with regard to taking a hard stand against the rebels. There’s a lot of things the Dutertes detest BBM for and I don’t see it simmering down in the coming days. In fact, there’s an indication, with the way BBM does things his way, regardless of whoever or whatever is on the way, things might get worse.
This arrangement wherein a dynasty that gets to be under the control of another dynasty could possibly result in war of attrition.
The Duterte Marcos gong show is good for the opposition, if elections are not rigged. But the opposition is also at each others’ throats, Trillanes vs Pinks the latest. LP is weak. Akbayan is small. Makabayan is loud and extremist. Pinks are waiting and inert. So discouraging. And the Left insists on extremist positions that make them unpopular. As if compromise to win an election is outside their conceptual grasp. I tell you, the absence of organization, logic, sense, and strategy is a marvel to behold.
Giancarlo, after watching Heneral Luna, commented that Philippine history reminded him of Cloud Atlas. That is a weird movie spanning centuries where everything just recurs in new incarnations, without lessons learned.
Your last sentence could apply to Philippine tribes in 1571, Philippine revolutionaries in 1897, and Aguinaldo’s Republic in 1898. Or even to Quezon’s heirs Roxas and Osmeña quarreling in the devastated Philippines of 1946. Or the divisions just shortly after February 1986.
We have seen that the Pinks are a force to be reckoned with during the last national election. Massive rally attendance, grassroots enthusiasm and 15 million votes is nothing scoff at. The question is who has the charisma and power to mobilize this idle political resource? Would an endorsement of a personality from FVP Leni revive the movement? Who do you think can step in?
I have a feeling that Sara is not just in Naga for Ina ng Penafrancia. My opinion: She is testing the waters and want an affiliation with the FVP. An endorsement or something that will legitimize her to the Pinks as the new Independent opposition leader (in preparation for the next national election). I don’t think FVP is passive. She is a person that could not be compromised by anybody because she is true to her deeply held values. She can’t be played and will not play if she has to violate her own rules. I see that as malakas. Being true to one’s self is a strenght, not a weakness.
“He is very much a calculator, and I think enjoys the role as LCX enjoys coming at things differently here. He knows that noise matters, good or bad,” This is what I’ve been trying to divine , JP, Trillanes knows that either way VP Leni will know how to play it. If as according to him it was indeed a planned visit. He should know VP Leni has a good reason for it. If as has been explained by VP Leni’s camp that it was fiesta time, and they dropped by to visit, this also makes sense since VP Leni and VP Sara do go way back since before this presidency stuff. so maybe they are indeed this close. Trillanes also knows all this. So how does it benefit Trillanes? Where does he see himself fitting in here. cuz I agree with you here, “An endorsement or something that will legitimize her to the Pinks as the new Independent opposition leader (in preparation for the next national election).”
” to use LCpl’s crude term, the echo chamber engages in a circle of mental “salsaleros” and patting each others’ backs” I’m trying to bait Trillanes and Heyderian but I think twitter has me muted or something. But I should use this term on them. lol. On echo chamber, I don’t think people make up echo chambers, but the walls around so tweaking the walls and angles is enough to get different sounds not necessary to change voices. Which is why this VP Leni and VP Sara stuff is so interesting.
“He criticized her before the last election for waiting too long, and I would agree with him that her delay did not allow enough time to build out the votes. ” What s the counter factual on this, Joe? had VP Leni decided early would it have changed said outcome? cuz I don’t think thats the variable that caused VP Leni’s lost, that lost was already telegraphed in the polls. What got PBBM elected was VP Sara. Had VP Sara gone for the presidency, it woulda been her as 1st and VP Leni as 2nd then PBBM as 3rd. hands down that woulda been the results, Joe.
cuz this is what Trillanes said to you, Joe:
“Just trust her judgment? Remember when I called her out for vacillating on her decision to run for the presidency in 2022? The same diehard followers said the same thing, “just trust her judgment.” Well, it was proven to be a political blunder because she declared too late and we lost.” Well that’s just wrong. change that “too late” to “too early” and the outcome would be the same. So turning tables we can question Trillanes’ judgment as well. that he doesn’t know how to do counterfactuals.
I’m trying to listen to that Heyderian/Trillanes interview, though theyre both throwing out English phrases, I think Trillanes is playing dama, Heyderian is playing sungka. just purely from their interaction body language. these two are talking past each other imho, Heyderian’s playing damage control whilst Trillanes is ready to burn bridges down.
okay I’ve squeezed as much as I can from that interview. can karl, Ireneo, et al say if i’m wrong in my estimation of the Heyderian-Trillanes interaction above. cuz the threads following it is weird. cuz Heyderian wants damage control but I guess he’s so emotional over this that he’s also willing to burn bridges it seems. I guess he’s using silo as echo chamber here.
here:
I tried looking for this post for two minutes tops.No Bueno. Link please. @LCX
This morning I watched the video of the interview that was posted. I’m pretty sure that was in the thread under the interview video, karl. but now I don’t see it. I can’t find it now.
Thanks. Do not worry about my reaction to your post. We have been through a lot am sure I will check my surprise and tolerance level.
This is the gist I get:
Trillanes compared Robredo allowing Sara Duterte to come to her home to allowing Alice Guo or Apollo Quiboloy to visit her.
He makes it clear that he sees Sara Duterte as soon to be impeached. He does see Sara Duterte as winning points in her isolation by being photographed with Robredo.
He also mentioned that Robredo has strong animosity towards the Marcoses.
Hehe LCPL_X, your coming article may well stir up stuff on Twitter shortly. Some people might be like “damn the Joeam blog is advocating a Robredo-Duterte alliance” (many barely notice individual authors) and greater paranoia: “that blog is Pink, what are they planning now”?
(There were people in PNoy’s time who alleged he would “unleash the Kraken”, meaning Joe America and The Explainer aka MLQ3 blogs.) Of course, LCPL_X was the tester of the original Iron Man suit, shifted to Treadstone to compensate for a fried brain. I am humanoid AI.
I’m thinking now having watched interviews with him in English though only a few minutes (thats why I wanted to understand that Heyderian interview but in Tagalog), that Trillanes’ paranoia is warranted, Ireneo. he is onto something. I believe his sources.
Robredo could have done several things differently, but her approach was community rallies and it was building nicely. Another three months and some bigger cities could have been material. But it’s all hypothetical, so any argument can be waged.
That’s true too. but he weaponized this specific what if? against VP Leni. and that’s kinda disingenuous i thought.
Heydarian thinks of himself as too important to engage with people like us haha.
People absolutely make up echo chambers, and in the Philippines the Far Left is especially prone. In the last year they’ve been driving the Gaza narrative to the youth about the so-called “Axis of Resistance,” which is an Iranian front supported by Russia and China. Another group of Filipino youths have been fully indoctrinated into a pro-terrorist position, because of “solidarity with the oppressed” or something. No matter that the fact that these terrorist groups are far-right fascists who were the ones who committed heinous crimes, but whatever helps further the narrative in the echo chamber will cause Far Leftists to twist themselves into pretzels. The Filipino dynasties, on the other hand are generally smart with creating effective alliances with each other.
In the context of this Trillanes vs. VP Leni spat, I just think you can keep the same personalities in place, but just adjust the angles of the wall panels to get them in synch again. But maybe discord is what’s needed at the moment.
My opinion only. Still look up to Heydarian. I still respect his views.
Your views on far left.
As a military brat I heard of other brats bad mouth the left left and right but of course a part of me feels for them because I had second to unknown degree cousins who were leftists and a few of them are very far left for sure.
But speaking of relatives, I have an uncle as in very close who is class A and some relatives who of the same blood have bad blood in the local politics.
I put value in your comments and make no mistake to be irritated with your use of far left like I am irritated with Mango Avenue. There it is out of my chest….carry on
Re Trillanes.
Full disclosure
Fellow military brat with PMA class 59 parents.
Close to my dad.
I was a consultant together with my dad.
One thing that stuck to me was when he said that in this world you can not afford to be sensitive. (Slightly paraphrased)
I see many people discard him for his decisions for the past few years. I won’t do that.(discard)
I don’t agree on everything with Trillanes has done over time, but he is a pragmatic. And he’s right with those words. Treating everything with kid gloves is a problem the Left often makes since they want to be cordial, respectful and inclusive. It’s not a problem unique to the Philippines Left. We have that problem with our American Left too, and Irineo can probably share about the German Left. Generally working class doesn’t have time for flowery words, they want directness.
I got along with Micha cuz I’m kinda open to leftist thoughts. though I don’t think she was leftist per se, just anti American govt policies, Joey. chempo’s stance on socialism is like yours rabidly oppose. as for me I get my leftist bent when I started reading more about Smedley Butler which weirdly they don’t cover in bootcamp, the coup attempt and his speech for the Bonus Army (which is the reason for GI Bill and other veteran benefits post WWII). then realizing that workers movement pretty much started here in Chicago eg. May Day haymarket riot etc. so theres too much governement then too much corporate interests like East India Company VOC etc. then theres the people. what I’m seeing with Trillanes is he likes the Bonus Army and May Day riots but the day to day I don’t think he is really in the fray. and it takes actually day to day living with DE folks (like you’ve done) to get a feel of things. and this why although his instinct of VP Leni is on the money, he’s playing checkers, where VP Leni is playing a totally different game one he cannot fathom yet. but i also agree with you that leftist stuff is mostly coming from academia why I’m so rabidly oppose to DEI stuff. which I’m sure the AB crowd there are sucking up, hence Filipinx etc. so if the Left there can bring it back to workers and getting concessions from the gov’t then maybe thats a start.
What do you guys say on California vs Exxon Mobil
Re deceiving the people on the efficacy of plastic recycling.
I’m not familiar with that case, karl. but if you’ve watched Erin Brockovich , same story different characters i’m assuming. recent there was Dark Waters with that guy who played Incredible Hulk. good movie too. but yeah people are dying early of colon cancer now. companies got armies of lawyers. so I guess we have no choice but to just keep on getting colon cancer , karl, eat it all up. RFKjr is onto something.
Will look for the link. Brb
Here is the link.
https://www.reuters.com/business/environment/california-sues-exxon-over-global-plastic-pollution-2024-09-23/
California Attorney General Rob Bonta (A Fil-Am! and possibly our next governor!) is pursuing a lawsuit that accuses the petrochemical industry of running deceptive ad campaigns that plastics can be easily recycled. The petrochemical industry runs these ads all the time (just saw one earlier, and they have been playing these ads for years), and point to “recycling” as corporations being “green” and taking action on environmental stewardship. Bonda is right. Plastics often can’t be recycled since: recycling is energy and labor intensive, and even when things can be recycled the resultant plastic is of lesser quality thus needing “fresh” plastic stock made from more oil, then plastics that can’t be recycled are just dumped in landfills which defeats the point of running a recycling program.
Even until the late 1990s, it was common to have groceries bagged in paper bags. Plastic costs less so the industry moved towards plastic bags and packaging. In 2014 California’s citizens voted in a direct ballot measure (our state-level direct democracy initiatives) to ban single-use plastics and move to reusable plastic packaging or go back to paper products. The petrochemical industry sued the citizens and lost in the California Supreme Court. The current lawsuit by CA AG Bonta is to recover costs the state (and therefore the CA taxpayers) were burdened with to dispose plastics based on the industry’s misleading claims. Part of the current lawsuit is also to enforce the original 2014 direct democracy initiative which compels all corporations to eliminate non-recyclable plastics by 2032, so no new law change is necessary.
But besides from plastics pollution which is bad, plastics break down into microplastics when exposed to UV radiation. Microplastics have become a major health issue. The US and Canada have vast managed forests for wood pulp production where trees are constantly replanted after harvest. I prefer paper products anyway.
Hope chemical recycling though also contentious is a lesser evil.
There are also some interesting preliminary studies using bacteria to digest plastic waste. Though humans pump out plastics at an astonishing level it might not help. No magic bullets here. But I’ve found that while Californians at first complained about single-use plastic bans, people quickly adjusted and changed to paper bags or heavier duty grocery bags. The key is to somehow have a balance of convenience with waste generation. People will almost always lean on the side of convenience always if given a choice.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/01/230123083443.htm
Dost experimented bacteria for oil spills maybe plastics too.
Bacteria use for plastics in PH
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2019/03/28/1905258/plastic-eating-bacteria-found-zambales
Interesting. Scientists are finding more of these types of super bacteria in the world nowadays.
Everybody ingests microplastics except these creatures. https://www.sciencealert.com/microplastics-seem-to-be-in-every-kind-of-animal-except-one
One day, tardigrades will rule the world after we humans are long gone!
Yeah
You don’t like to pay by credit cards.
Almost everyone uses Apple Pay or Google Pay in the US now. I keep a bit of cash in the wallet for emergencies hehe.
Hehe the device has plastic.
Even the cash has plastic inside (the holographic image on Philippine peso notes, and the holographic security strip in American dollar notes) hehe.
Smedley Butler was only recently co-opted by the DSA after the DSA was taken over by communist entryists, because he voted for Norman Thomas once (Socialist Party Presidential candidate in 1936). Butler was a lifelong Independent Republican with Progressive Republican leanings (similar to Teddy Roosevelt). In those days “Independent” meant a non-machine politics voter. For most of his later life he identified as a Democrat and voted for FDR. As for the Bonus Army, it was a non-political movement of WWI veterans and their families suffering from the Great Depression who just wanted their pension paid (Hoover and Congress kept delaying the payment). See 1924 World War Adjusted Compensation Act aka “Bonus Act” that gave the Bonus Army their name (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_Adjusted_Compensation_Act) and 1936 Adjusted Compensation Payment Act (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adjusted_Compensation_Payment_Act). Communists will always try to take small facts that seem to further their ideology, without talking about the rest of the facts.
Same for the Haymarket Affair which the communists co-opted as May Day. Communists are very good at co-opting stuff, which they must do since they don’t have mainstream support. This is also why a lot of early communist parties styled themselves as “socialist” parties. The Second International which many American Labor Unions were a part of during that time was a socialist organization, with communists and anarchists on the fringes. By the way, the Haymarket Affair was one of the episodes which resulted in the “8-hour work day.”
DEI is not what you think it is. DEI = equality of all workers based on merit not race. The “DEI” we hear about on the news, especially conservative “news” is not DEI except in name, and has been bastardized by the American Far Left and mixed with Marxist ideology. No person in good faith who advocates for DEI would mix it with Marxist theory, but the fact that some Far Left intellectuals did created ammunition for the far right. Equality is good, otherwise non-White people would not be included fully, which includes me and you (although I’m part White so maybe I’ll get a pass in a fascist state haha).
Filipinx is just Leftist Fil-Ams copying Latinx from the Latino Left. I mean, no average Latino would use the term “Latinx.” It’s stupid and unnecessarily divisive. And as a big indicator it was created by White and White-adjacent Leftists is the tone deafness… Latinx and Filipinx don’t even work in the Spanish or Tagalog language. Leftists in their good intentioned attempts at inclusion (inclusion is good) and understanding people’s differences (understanding is good) often make dumb and avoidable messaging mistakes. One can learn a thing or two from the African American Civil Rights movement which had concise and effective messaging, and thus succeeded.
“Communists will always try to take small facts that seem to further their ideology, without talking about the rest of the facts.” Not trying to say he was communist, Joey. but for sure Smedley Butler was leftist in the sense Joe wrote about. eg. War is a Racket. he also kept calling the troops comrades. I don ‘t know how popular that term was then or whether that was specific to communists/socialists. i get that there were also NAZIs in the US at that time also. but these propagandas aren’t necessarily one way streets, there can be convergences. especially back then prior to the Cold War. the ACLU were full of them. plus he was also a Quaker, am just reading about them recently. and they’re kinda christian anarchists. every moral movement in America they were there. so in that vein ole’ Smedley was operating. pre Cold War, he woulda been anti capitalist for sure.
Smedley Butler was “left leaning” in the sense of Left-Right of the time period, which is actually a lot closer to what we would nowadays consider progressive (and not the “progressive” of the DSA who as I mentioned were taken over by anarchists and communists in 2016). The main reason Smedley Butler voted for the Socialist Party a single time was because he was anti-war from the left perspective, and not the more common anti-war sentiment of the Far Right fascist movement of those times who wanted to ally with Nazi Germany.
I think you’re looking a bit too deeply into Smedley Butler’s usage of “comrade.” Do soldiers not call each other “comrade?” They do because it derives from the French word “camaraderie” which means “the spirit of familiarity and closeness” between friends. So it was common then and now to call fellow soldiers comrades, or the Americanism “battle buddy” which means the same thing. Though I will grant that the Socialist movements of the time also used the term “comrade,” with the same meaning as the French “camaraderie.” The early European Socialist movements were basically analogous with the American Progressive movement. Their successors in Europe are today’s Social Democratic parties, which are far from being communist or even that far left. This is another instance of communists hijacking a common term or movement, since communists are radical outsiders with little support so they need to use entryism to co-opt other, more popular movements to start indoctrinating others.
ACLU is far from a radical organization. Most of the more radical elements broke off into other, smaller organizations. ACLU has done good work, and continues to do good work in protecting Americans rights (especially on the fundamentals of the Bill of Rights).
I also wouldn’t put much thought into Smedley Butler being a Quaker. I haven’t read any biographies that asserted that Smedley Butler was a strong Quaker, but if he was, then he’s doing Quakerism wrong since Quakers are famously pacifist and Smedley Butler was well known for being a maverick warrior.
I just think we need to take people and instances in the historical context and not to try to tie people or events too closely outside of the historical period. Sure, there can be a progression of events that can inform historians on how ideas and events evolved, but there are never clean lines in a sequence of events that can be connected. Most things happen due to the Butterfly Effect.
By the way, the Haymarket Affair was one of the episodes which resulted in the “8-hour work day.” This is totally why I’m more leftist leaning. fuck work. lol.
Well, this is why I moved from being on the very Right (Libertarianism) to the center, then to being a progressive in the same vein as Teddy Roosevelt, FDR, Truman, JFK, LBJ, but more so FDR/LBJ. I got tired of the constant divisiveness in the pre-Tea Party era and started investigating outside of my comfort zone, and realized that the Republican Party was basically a business-far right evangelical alliance that brings little benefits to most Americans outside of the rich. I’m probably one of the few people who moved left as I got older, since most people move right… like the neoconservatives with neoliberal economic policy who many of which started off as 1960s peaceniks.
Joe Biden is often portrayed as a centrist because he’s an old White man, but Biden’s early years were informed by FDR and LBJ policies. Biden actually has moved the Democratic Party leftwards towards progressivism again, compared to the center-left policies of Bill Clinton and Obama. Bill Clinton is actually a progressive in his bones, but was limited by the politics of the time that was still largely controlled by the Nixon/Reagan/Bush Sr. neoconservatives that had neoliberal policies. Neoconservatism describes a political ideology, while neoliberalism while often misunderstood since it has the word “liberal” in the compound word, describes an economic ideology. For example, Gingrich would attack Bill Clinton for being a neoliberal, though it would be more correct to describe Gingrich’s economic ideology as neoliberalist.
“Equality is good, otherwise non-White people would not be included fully, which includes me and you (although I’m part White so maybe I’ll get a pass in a fascist state haha).” I think you’re talking more about affirmative action or LAPD consent decree when the Feds after Rodney King stepped in and said you have to have this many from this group and that many from that group. kinda like Lebanon. which I guess works. but places where diversity is pushed cuz diversity is strength mantra is just wrong, like pushing unqualified folks into positions they have no business being in. i’m just saying we’re not all equal. start from there, then fix or experiment socially where you can afford to like the military or gov’t work, but don’t impose DEI in say SpaceX, etc. cutting edge places let those companies bring in talent needed. not to fill quotas. so I’m for affirmative action, but don’t impose it where real skills talent etc. are required. in that book the Bell Curve and subsequent books of the same thread Jews and Indians tend to produce geniuses more than other groups. so based on that our assumptions of equality and diversity needs to be rethought.
DEI is a type of affirmative policy. Affirmative policies seek to make meritocracy color-blind by removing structural advantages that would allow a mediocre person from the majority to bypass meritocratic checks if all else was equal. Consent decree means that a sub-national government under the consent decree needs to obtain consent from the DOJ before implementing a new policy because of past abuses. The two concepts are completely different hehe.
It is correct to say not all people are equal or qualified for a position or admission into a certain college. The problem is that due to generational advantage by the majority in the US, systems prefer those from the majority as even when people try their best to respect equality they might still have inherent bias they may not even be aware of. In a perfect meritocracy this won’t happen, we would simply have the best candidate be accepted to a position. But we are not in a perfect system, since the system is calcified structurally.
For example, the college admissions practice of affirmative action, which was struck down by SCOTUS in 2023, originated in JFK’s executive order that all government workers and contractors should be hired based on merit not racial or gender preferences. This allowed a couple generation of federal workers and contractors in all areas, such as the Postal Service or government contractors, which before was mostly dominated by Whites. The policy of preferring veterans in government agencies is also included as part of JFK’s affirmative policies.
SCOTUS decision on affirmative action was dumb because like Roe v. Wade it discard decades of federal legal precedent. There is no college that accepted students solely on race during the affirmative action policy; students must pass the meritocratic bar first. If anything, “legacy” students with alumni parents or whose parents donated millions of dollars to the university are accepted regularly without consideration of merits, which in a way is *bought* affirmative action. The Chinese students who were part of Students for Fair Admissions were mostly of mainland China origin who have no concept of American meritocracy. The students who were included in the case were upset that they didn’t get admitted to certain schools, even if their grades and extracurricular activities did not meet the bar for admission. Some others didn’t even want to go to the university they joined suit to sue on, probably because they wanted to collect admissions letters. I got admitted to basically all the top American universities but couldn’t go to any except Berkeley due to lack of money, so should I also sue? That’s preposterous.
In the end, those students in the suit were just used as tokens by Edward Blum, the founder of Students for Fair Admissions and leader of the American Enterprise Institute, who is always searching for minority tokens to bring his lawsuits under his legal front groups (which are funded by right-wing billionaires). His ultimate goal is to reverse progress of equality efforts and bring back White supremacy. All his efforts were unsuccessful until SCOTUS gained 3 Trump judges. Here’s some of his major cases:
1.) Shelby County v. Holder: Struck down large portions of the Civil Rights Act of 1965 that requires preclearance by the DOJ if states that have a history of racial discrimination to be allowed to racially discriminate voters again
2.) Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard et. al. (2023): Struck down affirmative action
3.) American Alliance for Equal Rights v. Fearless Fund (2024): Ludicrously would force minority-owned investment funds to give money to White applicants, while not forcing White-owned investment funds to do the same
Well, those Asian students that allowed themselves to be used as tokens are now crying foul since a year after the Affirmative Action case, elite colleges are now accepting *LESS* Asian students, not more, while White student admissions are up.
NYT: Yale, Princeton and Duke Are Questioned Over Decline in Asian Students
https://archive.ph/2PTAS
I have it from some sources that a Makati manager in the 1970s mocked a UP professor when he got a high-level appointment from Marcos Sr., saying finally he will be able to afford proper clothes. A lot of Filipino dynamics are like the song “beh buti nga, dati iniisnab mo ako dahil hindi ako La Salle”. But sure I also recognize that in finding talent, the old boy network nepotism favoritism class stuff will off set sabotage search for real talent. So yeah get everyone a shot. but question this “diversity is strength” stuff. because that can be taken to its extreme. like beauty and how now its become the fashion to accuse random people of misgendering you, like ma’am you look like a dude , sorry for misgendering but you look like a dude. Which never happens in the Philippines. misgender. yet theres Filipinx.
@LCPLX
“…now its become the fashion to accuse random people of misgendering you, like ma’am you look like a dude , sorry for misgendering but you look like a dude. Which never happens in the Philippines. misgender. yet theres Filipinx.”
There was a recent hullabaloo about a waiter claimed to have misgendered a gay celebrity in PH. He was humiliated by standing for almost 2 hours to listen to the celebrity preach about gender sensitivity. He sued the celebrity.
https://philnews.ph/2024/08/30/waiter-files-complaint-after-being-forced-stand-2-hours-jude-bacalso/
This episode was very dumb and at least the Filipino LGBTQ I’m friends with were aghast. It was even talked about in American LGBTQ circles. For sure it was used as ragebait by the American Far Right. It seems that gay celebrity is too influenced by their own self-importance and forgot humanity, and they don’t represent the Filipino LGBTQ or society which accepts a degree of gender fluidity far more than Western societies usually accept. It would’ve been better for the (minor) gay celebrity to correct the waiter with a smile. If I doubt someone’s name or pronouns I simply ask, and if I’m gently corrected I’ll just go with their preference. There was no need to be an asshole. I guess being a huge jerk transcends gender and culture.
No way. I was more thinking about pronouns. but sir and ma’am. that’ll do it alright. that poor waiter shoulda just said you look like a sir, ma’am (i mean sir, I mean ma’am). LOL. this is getting out of hand. funny, but out of hand.
The easiest way to deal with pronouns is just go with what a person wants to be called. I grew up in an age where there were only two common pronouns, and the older generation of LGBTQ also used one or the other of the two pronouns masculine or feminine. But other languages are either gender-neutral, or have three pronouns masculine, feminine, neutral. I want people to call me by my preferred name, like Joseph in professional context, Joey in informal context, and never Joe since that’s what my parents call me. When I share my preference people usually shift to using that. So to me, it’s not so different on pronouns. Most LGBTQ are kind in their sharing their preference, and when they’re not being a jerk it’s just easier to adopt their preference. Though yeah, there are some people who might not even be LGBTQ but use gendered pronoun identity as a type of intersectionality. It’s annoying, just like when people claim to be disabled or neurodivergent. It’s just youthful/immature thinking that has been made worse by Instagram/TikTok influencers.
I was surprised when Trillanes first went at Robredo. But he has walked his talk against the Dutertes, moreso than even De Lima, so one can understand why he would be irritated at Robredo for meeting with Sara Duterte, the worst of the bunch. The Isko pairing is a calculation, and it will work or not. I still consider him a good guy.
Me too. Thanks Joe.
Well my view on the Far Left is because I grew up on the right (military family, and parents who suffered directly under far left dictatorship), so I see how the fringe has been unhelpful to progress once I moved left. I’d personally rather not have allies on the fringe who only seek to destroy, not join together to build. That includes the right fringe as well. I get along fine enough with center-right to quite left like socialists. I’ll clarify that by Far Left I mean communists and anarchists. I wouldn’t describe even socialists as far left, though they are quite left.
We don’t need to agree on everything, but the important thing is we do seem to agree on many things. My political philosophy is to be part of a big tent that wants to affect actual change, even if different parts of the coalition might disagree on how fast and what methods. I just can’t see how communists and anarchists help big tent coalitions since behind their flowery words they want to burn the system down, based on their history across the world, and their record once they seize power.
Thanks…that leaves Mango allergy on my allergic reactions.Hehehe
Np Karl, glad to clarify. Now we should not mention Mango anymore even in my previous contextual anecdotes, because someone might get excited again hehe
Did you know to induce lots of flowers Mango plantation owners do burns around the field, so smoke i guess is perceived by trees and causes them to produce more flowers thus more Mangoes. so I apologize in advance for the article tomorrow, karl, re your affinity to Trillanes. but I ‘m not hating on Mangoes, just making controlled burns here. trying to get flowering going.
He was actually screaming at me on twitter when I punched mute. He doesn’t do that on TV.
Joe, can you clarify . like on FaceTime?
No, just tweeting. I can’t even remember the topic. Maybe I was defending yellows, I dunno. But it was the capital letters and exclamation points and ad hominem. I was rather shocked.
Wow, shocking but not shocking re: Heydarian.
I’m missing a lot of nuance in that Heyderian Trillanes interview but for sure the guy stopped Trillanes from talking. its like , dude, your job in an interview is just to ask the questions then listen then follow up. don’t inject yourself like you’re one of the giants. you’re just there as a journalist or researcher to ask the questions.
I agree with the point Heydarian makes here. It is the one I have been pounding. The anti-dynasts should see themselves as partners and work to empower one another, not undermine one another. Even the Left. I tend to think Trillanes/Moreno are on the dynast side of the chart right now so will not join the confab.
All cards should be on the table then. And last nights interview you see Trillanes attempt to lay all his out and its Heyderian that says No (even puts his hands up) don’t say it , sir. I think he used the word de-escalate. So its like , dude, you already set Trillanes up with the question, then you tell him to not say more on it. like putting toothpaste back into its container. I think Trillanes is not yet done on this matter. he is going to force peoples’ hands on this matter thats for sure, Joe.
Oh, he is not done, for sure.
There is now an effort to impeach your beloved from her current perch, LCPLX. She also missed the recent budget deliberation for OVP that some legislators are asking for her resignation. She is missing and was last seen in Calaguas and her reason for snubbing those who have the power of the purse is unknown. When she surface, there will be problems for her to face.
I wish MRP was here, JP. cuz he’d say Its all affidavits. as for impeachment, don’t know if its anything like impeachment here. but over there there doesn’t seem to be buy-in consensus, plus election season is on. and putting spotlight on my beloved seems like the wrong way to go. might back fire. will have to read up on this, as I was more focused on the Naga meeting. let me get back to you on this. but yeah MRP is my go to here whenever stuff like this surfaces. affidavits. Filipinos will drown in ’em. and think it justice.
JP the problem is that BBM largely swept the D class vote, while Leni’s base was more in the BC as I understand it. Now I had discussed this with a few Pinks who lamented that people in D don’t know any better and voted against their interests. I don’t fully agree with this type of uncharitable viewpoint having spent a lot of time among the DE class. Rather I would argue that D voters were voting for what they *thought* was in their interest, just like what happened when they voted for Duterte previously.
I hesitate to apply the “foolish” label to anyone unless they’re a Far Leftist. The urban poor are a lot smarter than others generally grant them. When they voted for Duterte, they wanted someone to punish those who they felt were taking advantage of their families and were hypnotized by Duterte’s promise of an economy the people can actually “feel,” versus PNoy’s economy which benefited the Philippines as a whole but was unevenly distributed due to existent power structures. When they voted for BBM, they did it in the belief that Marcos Sr. led a Philippines Golden Years that they thought they could benefit from if that era was resurrected. Many D Filipinos I interacted with a few years into Duterte’s and BBM’s respective tenures felt disappointment since they didn’t receive the benefits promised.
Now how to get around the problem of D voters misunderstanding what is in their family’s interest or against their interest? Personally I would advocate for more simple “deliverables” coupled with a positive message of hope and change. Everyone wants a better future for themselves and their family, no matter how small the benefits are. I even feel that most Filipinos not in AB are fine with the very wealthy class, since there’s a belief that the wealthy worked hard and deserved their money somehow. The point where the lower classes start to feel resentful and look for an avatar to represent them in punishing “someone,” whether that be perceived criminals or perceived elites, is when they feel not enough benefits are flowing to themselves. I’d like to think most people will be quite happy if they can earn a decent salary where their family’s needs are met and they have a little left over to buy small luxuries, and the law is generally well applied evenly. Just the standard pocketbook or kitchen table issues.
So a theoretical new Left coalition should advocate for:
1.) Better jobs, cutting red tape and useless requirements
2.) Better application of the law
3.) A strong national defense
4.) Better education for their children
5.) Funds to improve their communities and cities
This could be achieved by:
1.) Reforming FDI and immediately partnering through bilateral trade agreements with Japan, South Korea, Taiwan to bring factories to the Philippines
2.) Better funding and training of police and courts to reduce corruption due to low salaries
3.) Working with allies like the US and Quad to improve the Philippines’ security situation while continuing to modernize the AFP
4.) Increasing teacher salaries and public school funding to attract educators back to the field
5.) Infrastructure and transportation improvements
I think that even with 6 years, progress can be shown on these policy items. Even the Filipino Left often believes in austerity, but a moderate amount of sovereign debt to fund the policies is acceptable as long as loss from corruption is minimized. The fiscal benefits of success far outweigh any debt taken. The Left must move away from the mistake of trying to create a transformative “perfect” Philippines, which ends up being so big a task everyone just gives up in the end. The Philippines can get to the goal of a better Philippines through incremental progress.
I too do not like the bobotante label.
And not all AB are of touch just look at KB very down to earth even on high heels.
Joke only.
Yes, and of course the bobotante slur is mostly used by the Far Left, which ironically looks down on the very “oppressed” class they claim to want to lead.
Thus far all of Philippines’ Presidents have been from AB if I’m not mistaken. Not everyone in AB is bad; some are idealistic and high-minded like the admirable President Aquino, sadly most will protect their money above all. I don’t think it’s a particularly unique phenomenon that the rich will protect their wealth… it happens in the US where there are plenty of rich Democratic backers who are high-minded but don’t want their wealth reduced. What makes the Philippines different is the entrenched dynastic system.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ramon_Magsaysay and https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diosdado_Macapagal were from C. I guess the educational system and the two-party system then facilitated their rise.
Erap, though he portrayed astig types as an actor, was from a rich family, I guess B.
Quezon though he looked like an ABS-CBN star, was the son of a Chinoy Guardia Civil sergeant and a probinsyana mestisa, that looks more like C, probably one reason why he cared for common wealth in the Commonwealth. Quirino was a school teacher for a while, then a lawyer.
Carlos Garcia, Aguinaldo, and Ferdinand Marcos Sr. were all sons of mayors, Duterte is the son of the Davao governor. Osmeña, Roxas, and Cory were all from haciendero families. So far, three children of former Presidents have become President themselves, all after 1986.
What is interesting is that those of haciendero origin are portrayed as elitists by those with local politician origins. It parallels 1896 when ilustrados resented the Spanish and principalia resented ilustrados.
Sometimes I think the root of the Far Left resentment against elites and Americans is UP folks hating having to work in the government while the ones in Makati at multinationals with “Arneow” (Ateneo) accents earned serious money and snubbed them . I have it from some sources that a Makati manager in the 1970s mocked a UP professor when he got a high-level appointment from Marcos Sr., saying finally he will be able to afford proper clothes. A lot of Filipino dynamics are like the song “beh buti nga, dati iniisnab mo ako dahil hindi ako La Salle”.
The Leftist stuff becoming mainstream and being adopted by the rich kids in Ateneo and La Salle (and more rich kids studying at UP) were developments that IIRC took place after 1986.
Possibly post-1986 cemented the hierarchies of Philippine society even more than the Marcos Sr. era, when the middle class started retreating into gated communities (violent crime did decrease in that era, but burglary increased, I recall that) – and the era post-2001 seems to have started the rise of skyscrapers on one hand and slums getting worse on the other. Around 1910, very few rich people lived in ancestral homes, but they ran into the poor who lived in bahay kubos (must have been 90% of the population then) daily. The poor still could have some form of subsistence farming back then, often small plots, as it wasn’t as crowded yet.
Even in the early 1970s, there were some in UP Balara who had pigs (fed with the food rests of UP professors, one sideline of our Ilokana labandera was to sell kaning baboy from our kitchen to our Visayan gardener) and chickens. The tambays only drank gin. Shabu was unheard of. Those developments similar to frogs being slowly boiled in water – and how to manage all that better through opportunities and governance – should be the focus of those who want change. Especially at it seems that the urban poor especially in Metro Manila are now their third to fifth generation. The bagong salta urban poor of the late 1960s/1970s were still nice, like promdis. Those today seem more feral, while the rich seem more sheltered – a dangerous situation.
Thanks Irineo for reminding about Magsaysay, Macapagal and Quezon. I should’ve clarified that I meant “by the time they ran for President,” though now that I think on it I think Quezon was still solidly middle class when he became President.
Interesting take on earlier Far Leftism in the Philippines. In your view you don’t think Joma’s CPP/NPA and the PKP-1930 previous to that organization had a big impression on the youth and peasant farmers?
Joma founded the CPP in 1968 and the NPA in 1969. 1968 was a pivotal year in the Cold War with the withdrawal of Lyndon B. Johnson from the US Presidential Election. The Soviet Union through Comintern had seeded radical ideas throughout the world through the popular front movements of the 1930s, which largely failed politically but impressed upon the minds of countless intellectuals, academics, artists and fellow travelers who later came to prominence as idols to the youth in the late 1960s. The successor organization Cominform was quite successful infiltrating political parties and organizations, the most famous example of which is the German Green Party. Today the Green Party of the US is a large driver and conduit of Russian propaganda. Of course, the formative high school and university years have always been a time for contrarianism and rebelling against parental/societal authority, but most people moderate their views or move right as they age. The thinking process of most Far Leftists (and Far Rightists in other countries like the US) reminds me of the simplistic views of one who has never matured. Most that I ran into are idle children of the wealthy.
I don’t think those in poverty or lower socioeconomic class really care about Far Left ideas or dynastic control. They just want their lives to get a little more bearable. Even though my time in the Philippines only goes back to the late 1990s, I did see a rapid growth of gated and walled subdivisions in Manila that have subsequently spread to Cebu and beyond. For the poor who are on the outside looking in, then looking at their own circumstances, they can understand the stark divide better than those living within the walls who have already achieved First World life.
I’m not sure when was the last time you came back to visit, but yes the urban poor have become increasingly feral in their desperation in the last 20 years. It’s much worse than those who can afford to live in subdivisions realize. Partly this is due to slowly losing hope and an increasingly difficult life, not seeing any change or escape. But mixed into all this is that some among the urban poor are still figuring out how to hustle on sidelines, or serving their community through churches and small organizations. There are young students in rotting public school classrooms who are strivers despite gutom and lack of supplies. Not all is lost yet.
One of my successful mentees was helping her sisters take care of many siblings after their mother died and their father drowned himself in the bottle. Before I met their family, they were timid and just doing odd jobs for the neighborhood bossing to survive. Every day was usually one meal of utan Bisaya, and even that wasn’t enough to share among all the siblings and their father. Ever since I taught her some basics and referred her to another friend who is a manager in BPO, she reported back that it gave her elder sisters confidence to try BPO as well. Things can heal, if those with more power care enough to start the healing process.
Of course, there was foreign influence on the Philippine Far Left. As for the German Left, it has a history that goes back to Marx and Engels, with representatives like Rosa Luxemburg or Munich’s “coffeehouse anarchists” who ran the “Bavarian Soviet Republic” for just 6 days, only to have direct agents of Lenin – who had lived in Munich before – take over as the hyper idealists were completely incompetent and their ideas were out of this world. There are strains of German Romanticism in Marx’s idea that factory work as opposed to craftsmanship alienates the worker from the fruits of his labor. The German Green Party has strains of Romanticism in its ecological idealism, and was naively pacifist until the head of the “Realo” Greens Joschka Fischer spearheaded German involvement in the NATO intervention in Kosovo back in 1999.
As for the Philippines, the PKP of Taruc and Lava recruited discontented peasants, often those that had been in Colorum and Sakdal movements before. The resistance against Japan 6 course, the big break of the Hukbalahap. Took Magsaysay to dry out that movement. Sending landless peasants to Mindanao was to have other long-term effects, though. Joma’s CPP was definitely Chinese-influenced. There are two articles by our Will Villanueva, on the veteran Far Leftist Dick Malay, who was clearly from an affluent family – and spent time in China:
There is no indication of Leftist thinking having been mainstream in Philippine universities of the 1930s to 1950s, whereas it was taking root in the 1960s. Though, I still believe a lot of internal conflicts in the Philippines provided the fertile soil for them to take root. What you said about maturation is significant, as one can see in the biography of Dick Malay, who gradually became disillusioned with the movement he helped found together with Joma. Or Joschka Fischer, who had to deal with actually making decisions when his party was in government.
German Social Democracy is pretty old as well, though. At least it is based on the realistic premise that capitalism is needed to create value that can be distributed more fairly. The eight hour workday signed into law in 1918 when they were in power is one of their achievements.
My father translated Marx’s Communist manifesto into Tagalog. Never read that book fully as its preface is a long rant against some former students who formed their own sub school of thought. His conclusion, though, was that Marx’s analysis is not applicable to the Philippines. Mila Aguilar, a former Communist turned born again Christian who died last year, was also smart enough to question the analysis of society the CPP copied from Mao, also the idea that hacienderos still were the problem as they had significantly declined in influence post-1986. One author I quote often is Ninotchka Rosca who is definitely Far Left, but then again, the GOOD authors of the Left are different as they look at what Camus called the human condition. Brecht as well is a Leftist author I still respect. Though even these people often are theorists.
Thanks Irineo for the comprehensive overview. Highly enlightening and fills in gaps in my own knowledge.
My issue with the Far Left is that their misguided idealism is not possible unless a societal calamity befalls the nation. Out of control societal unrest and collapse. What makes me take further issue is that often Far Leftists actively try to fan even small embers hoping to burn everything down so they can create their perceived utopia. This luxury of idealism is the realm of the youth, and those who maintain their misguided idealism into later age almost always come from wealthy backgrounds which can afford idleness to continue to agitate. Many of the Far Left “protestors” arrested in the US over the summer college occupations are known anarchists and communists in their 40s and beyond who have been active for decades; multi-millionaire idle sons and daughters of the wealthy class leading the impressionable youth.
Let the Filipino Left learn how to moderate and coalesce around common, achievable positions like what Dick Malay advocated for in his later years. There is already much in common for the various Left groups on the left side of the spectrum if they stop arguing all the time.
Even though “socialism” is somewhat a dirty word in the US (though the CPUSA was the only party that was banned for a time through the 1954 Communist Control Act), the US is a blend of capitalism tempered by socialism in practice. Progressive monopoly busters in the vein of Theodore Roosevelt first broke the power of unrestrained capitalism of the Gilded Age. FDR’s New Deal brought a socialist safety net to moderate the renewed capitalist excesses of the 1920s that culminated in the start of the Great Depression in the US in 1929. I often see Germany having quite similar policies, though reached by other paths and a bit more left than the US generally is.
We can see the success of the hybrid capitalist economy and socialist social programs when compared to let’s say the UK, where I had declined multiple client offers in the past since the project fees/project rates offered were laughable compared to what I command here in the US. Outside of London, much of the UK is quite poor with low salaries. The main point of pride for the British, the NHS has been suffering for years and threatened with privatization.
The period where Joma started collecting his acolytes coincided with the Cultural Revolution in the PRC that whitewashed the excesses of the Great Leap Forward that precipitated the Great Chinese Famine that killed millions. I’ve no doubt CPP representatives visiting the PRC in the 1970s to be received by carefully curated tours that shielded them from seeing the final extinction of ancient Chinese culture by the CCP. In 1972 the US and PRC also normalized relations with the CCP putting on a good show for the world. Of course, many of the myths of the CCP-led utopia was laundered out of China by the American journalist Edgar Snow, who together with his first wife Helen Foster Snow where the main “China Hands” that romanticized and minimized Mao’s barbaric excesses. I wonder if Joma was also influenced by Snow’s reports from the PRC during his formative years at UP.
You’re right about socio-economic classification of FVP’s Pinks. They are mostly BC that is why they have discretionary income to donate money to her campaign. Her social services work and advocacies though mostly benefited the fringes or laylayan of the society (DE). I still do not fully understand how Marcos and Duterte garnered most of the DE votes.
According to Mangahas of SWS, in 2022, the ABC are at 7%, D are at 75% and E are at 18%. The D or the masa are the largest segment of PH population. DE is 93% or 9 for every 1 ABC. The picture these numbers conjure is making me depressed.
There’s a lot of work that needs to be done to uplift a large number of the PH population. I just heard a neat slogan that might also work for what we all endeavor to do here at TSoH: Elevate, don’t eviscerate! Eviscerate as in depriving someone of something essential like depriving the DE of their dignity by calling them hurtful names.
Your numbered advocacy suggestions and the corresponding actions needed to achieve each goal are excellent. And YES to incremental progress which I call baby steps.
thanks for this, JP. that’s like Mt. Olympus! i kinda understand this VP Leni vs. Trillanes spat a bit better now. Trillanes just can’t reach that far below i don’t think.
It is a bit discouraging JP to look at the numbers and inferring that DE largely broke towards BBM and didn’t support Leni.
But as I observed during my travels and engagement, this behavior by DE, is due to the desperation among E class and the economic insecurity of D class. People will always vote for what they think benefits their family, as we can see in the A class preferring conservative stances that protects and grows their wealth. By extension, DE also vote in hope of bringing benefits towards their family, which in their understanding means security and handouts (government officials giving stuff through the current LGU system of tax allocation). As educated people, I find many educated individuals to scoff at this reality because we want to think that all people should be given an equal opportunity, but we must work with the system we have, not the system we want because that system doesn’t yet exist.
That’s why my personal advocacy is for simple ideas that start to slowly chip away at the structural impediments to DE moving up socioeconomically. When people feel more secure in their personal security and financial outlook, they have more time to start thinking about bigger things to demand. This is why it’s important to find ways to shift a large portion of DE upwards into the middle class. The larger goal we want for a better Philippines is great, but it would be foolish to repeat the mistakes of previous Filipino progressives and try to affect structural change on a large scale. Chances to affect structural change only exist in the aftermath of social or economic upheaval, that last two chances of which were EDSA I and EDSA II/III. Both times high-minded progressives did their best but did not lay the groundwork for affecting major changes. As I see it, the fixes implemented were more like band-aids. The societal wounds still exist underneath and are not completely healed.
As for slogans, it boils down to the 1992 Bill Clinton campaign’s famous catchphrase “It’s the economy, stupid.” Instead of “Build, build, build,” the message should be “Jobs, jobs, jobs.” It is clear by now that the Filipino business magnates have no stomach to invest, only to import and sell consumer goods. Even the few export-oriented Filipino magnates only think on the level of selling raw commodities rather than transforming raw inputs into value-added products. The Philippines needs outside help, and the current FDI laws as the laws are interpreted by regulation impede that help. Set up a favorable business environment and watch the investments pour in, just like what Biden did in the US by guaranteeing relatively small amounts of government backing funds that were met by a huge rush of domestic and foreign investment pouring in. So much so that the EU is scrambling to copy the policy.
As I noted before, both the Japanese and South Korean populations are aging (Japan more so), yet they still want to make money by building factories even if not in their home countries. Japan and South Korea are building out massive factories in the US, fed by a working population that is constantly fed by immigration. The Philippines has a large youthful population that is either idle or not working full time, and even when they have work it is low paying. I have no doubt if the environment was right, Japan and South Korea would be rushing to the Philippines and planting new factories. Jobs that pay from P50K on the low end factory worker to P378K for skilled factory workers, and would force all other Filipino salaries to increase (including for BPO workers).
https://www.philstar.com/headlines/2023/02/09/2243757/demand-filipino-workers-rise-dmw-eyes-ofw-japan-desk
Good news!
Akbayan was given a seat in the HOR after SC upheld COMELEC’s decision to cancel An Waray’s registration papers because of a violation of the party list law.
COMELEC also granted the accreditation of Mamamayang Liberal party list which is the sectoral wing of the Liberal Party. ExSen Leila DeLima is its lead nominee and will run as a HOR representative under its umbrella for the 2025 election. Erin Tanada will be its second nominee and Teddy Baguilat, the third nominee.
a seat for only one year, does not matter though. akbayan has shown how it is to have guts, to be persistent, never giving up knowing they have a leg to stand on, and winning in the end. after a long fight.
https://politiko.com.ph/2024/09/23/paolo-roxas-running-for-capiz-congressman/snitch-network/
mar roxas’ son is also gunning for a seat in congress.
That’s terrific news!
I suspect that the LP party list people have the name recognition to win and that is also a good restarting position for De Lima. That’s good. The party list system seems to me to divide the House into small sectors that must go along with the majority or be useless. I don’t really understand if it’s good or bad.
I think the minorities in both houses had been able to stand up against the majority lately. Adding to their number will go a long way. As Joey says, incremental progress is good.
Totally agree with that.
This is good news! Now if all the various Left parties can just get together finally into a coalition… speed is of the essence as the midterms are quickly coming up in 2025, then the general election after that in 2028.