The opposition needs to be ‘for’ something, not against it
Analysis and Opinion
By Joe America
I was recoiling the other day to American liberals starting a “resist” chant against the Trump Administration. It struck me as wrong-headed, even if I understand the natural reaction to the offensiveness of Trump’s policies. If they are pro-democracy as they say, then they should be FOR using the institutions of democracy to voice alternatives to Trump’s destructive policies. That is, DO resistance, using tools available, rather than coming off as petulant and emotionally injured.
The same for Filipinos who disagree with the Marcos Administration, or who want to run in 2025 and 2028 as offering something different. Being “opposed” is weak. It is contentious. It is a form of destructiveness, opposing a legitimate government.
Be FOR something.
- Be FOR using taxpayer money to benefit the people (not the privileged).
- Be FOR competence in solving issues like transportation and inflation.
- Be FOR more jobs and better pay.
- Be FOR firmer action against China.
- Be FOR justice that is fast, fair, and factual.
Don’t run to oppose Marcos as a tax cheat, or dynasties as evil (they aren’t). It doesn’t establish a direction that helps Filipinos.
Give them gifts. Not complaints.
Give them a vision. Don’t add to their misery.
_________________________
Cover photo from Global Compliance News article “Philippines: Doing Business in the Philippines“.
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The Society of Honor by Joe America 
Then they would be called Propositionists.
Ex
Instead of the current ongoing blank we propose blank
Or in order to stop blank we propose ….
Something like that.
But not just order people to do your advocacies and be at the same page or frequency.
Like stop incineration just recycle.
Recycling is more nuanced than meets the eye.
Joe’s suggestions are great in not being too detailed yet not too generic.
VP Leni’s Angat Buhay Lahat was too generic while her programs were too detailed.
Old PowerPoint rule: 3-5 bullet points is what our Stone Age Mind can grasp.
Yes I enjoyed reading it. My 4 cents was only supplementary and hopefully not viewed as opposition hehehe
Troublemaker.
Eggzakly.
Yes, propositionists, exactly. The nearer they can get to DE hearts and minds, the better.
Right on, JoeAm! — GHAbad Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
Thanks, Gemino. We should resurrect that “right on!” slogan. A powerful way to inspire.
Give them gifts. Not complaints.
Give them a vision. Don’t add to their misery.
Gifts!!! God had the best gifts.
a lot more gifts from heaven. in-coming.
Joe, I have to pull on this thread some more. sorry.
But I’ll connect it to gifts. and charisma and grace, both etymologically the same.
That’s Joey’s to the left and that’s Ireneo’s to the right.
I don’t know if you guys realize but theres a dissonance in those two observations.
which relates to the being “FOR” and to doing or “DO” in the current blog, Joe.
So DEs were sharing these memes, but ABC’s were not , thus “huge huge shock”. and I remember this disconnect too when I answered comments for my PBBM will Fall blog. like Pinks really could not see they were gonna lose. it was so obvious. which begs the question what sort of memes were Pinks sharing to each other that got them so disconnected from reality?
Now I dont doubt Joey’s observation, my issue is if memes actually produce their own reality, which has been Joey’s thesis this whole time re “propaganda”, why cannot the opposing side do the same. That to me is interesting.
The idea that only the “bad guys” can have a successful propaganda campaign but the “good guys” for some reason or other just cannot figure this out and since 2016. and they’re supposed to be smarter. and stand for truth, justice and the American way (in America and the Philippines).
because that’s the same thing over here Kamala Harris lost cuz Trump’s Jedi mind tricks are just so much better, then Russian and Chinese helped thrown in. same same in the Philippines, Russian and Chinese help again. which sure there’s some.
But what actually makes people interpret said facts and conclude that’s more true than this or this is less true than that. I have too much respect for how brains actually work. so ever since EJKs and fb and China/Russian troll farms I’ve always discounted this theory.
Theres something deeper operating, and Joe’s current blog touches on it.
People are recognizing patterns, sure it may start with memes, then to conversations eg. “alam mo ba yun?” then to actually deciding eg. voting or making a conclusion for oneself as to what is fact and what is true. that to me is the complexity most here have bull dozed thru.
So here’s my answer. Joe’s right it’s about gifts.
But specifically intangibles not Santa Claus. charisma and grace. charisma is trickier cuz it comes from God, either you have it or you don’t but you can also hone it. grace is easier, and this is the gift that’ll keep on giving.
You just have to grace people with your presence. but you can’t be a wallflower that’s what Kamala Harris was, zero personality. curated herself too much. after that debate where she clobbered Trump , she shoulda been a surfer and ride that wave all the way home, by constantly and persistently
gracing people with her presence— she did not. sure you gotta talk vision and aspirations, and Joe’s correct be for something not against, cuz Kamala Harris et al were just talking about how Trump was worst, and that did no one any good at all.
how do you counter act propaganda and troll farms and memes, you just gotta be out there. but you gotta bring some charisma and not a be a stiff. so grace with your presence. Inday Sara doesn’t have charisma like her dad, but she’s always out there (at least post Summer of 2024, due to the witch-hunt).
Like her or not, she’s out there gracing people with her presence and boy what a presence it is. she’ll not need memes or troll farms, she’s just got herself and her craziness. which Filipinos will love (and this is me prognosticating here) cuz they love juramentado berserker justice.
You gotta know that about Filipinos before coming to that conclusion.
With that said,
the opposition has to fight for something, and offer up a vision or aspirations, but they have to start gracing Filipinos with their presence. best way to do that is thru internet videos. <<<< see what I did there, Joe? 😉
here’s a sample of Pinklawan meme, and see how easily it gets countered (by me).
2028, is PBBM vs. VP Inday Sara, the opposition should not be seen as taking sides. Trillanes I just heard in a Heyderain podcast blowing sweet nothings into PBBM asshole how he’s wise and a survivor and shit, bola-bola! Mango ave girls would say. people are taking sides too soon, Joe. and I know that VP Leni in that photo above was just a simple hi and also Kiko/Sharon too. but thats Heyderians idea of a meme, which sucks! he’s essentially saying lets side with PBBM over Inday Sara,
then where’s the opposition?!!! this is how CDE Filipinos will think. the Philippines is so socially intertwined unlike over here, that Filipinos really understand try-door and loyalties and being footballed and submarined. elementary age Filipinos know this over there.
This one though, I agree with Heyderian. but its DE and C culture, what are they into. thats the question. Joey and Ireneo will know more, mine insight is just Mango ave. BUT pop culture is time dependent, Filipino culture I have more confidence prognosticating on cuz deeper more entrenched culture takes generations to change. this is where Joey’s DE’s entertainment habits online comes in and Ireneo’s Ppop and youtube research will fruit.
Both of them can help the opposition here. cuz AB folks are clueless.
Whatever Joey and Ireneo report, I’m sure about one thing, I’m sure fucking Liza doesn’t have a pulse on this matter. guaranteed. so Heyderian is wrong in this regard.
here’s my meme (which is just a screen shot of DU30 press con):
Haha, yes, masterfully sly, for sure. But I agree, so no rub from me.
How is that even statistically possible, Joe? and 56, is just 65 backwards!!! the aliens are fucking with us. reality is not real, man.
LOL.
I’m with Raissa here, lol. ^
^ perfect example of high culture, right there.
Joe, you just might have found the Rosetta Stone to the restlessness of the Filipino mind & heart!! Pray, show & tell us more! You have identified: How? the TSOH coalition. Who? the Catholic Church, the dynasties, (blue & red), & the coalition sectors, et al., the Why, What, When, Where will surely follow.
Joe embodies the mostly future- (and present-)orientation of America, a country of people starting anew, a country where people left the history of their old countries behind. That is good as the masses in the Philippines look no further than the present and many elites are too caught up in the past – and as MLQ3 illustrates in the article below that may have led to the regression Duterte was.
https://opinion.inquirer.net/121916/looking-backwards
That is so true, Irineo, my great grand father fought in the Civil war, my grandfather was dealt the dust bowl which only redirected his entrepreneurial spirit, my father had his youth formed by six years of service in World War II, so the nation for my family never got defined as a complete and certifiably sound place. I was gifted economic growth and weird wars. The US is now perhaps going through its teenage petulance, in historical terms, and could become gangster, drunk, or reborn missionary.
Yes indeed, sonny. The why, what, when, and where must surely come next.
I have concluded a loooong time ago that the Liberal Party (whose espoused values I align with) is part of the problem, that is, politics in the Philippines is all for personal profit. Why? Because the party – and this applies to all other parties – is used for personal gain. The LP – and all other parties, except for a few on the Party List – does not truly adhere to the values and principles that it espouses; moreso, it does not even promote it. While they express “opposition”, they do not have a long-term “proposition”. While many well-meaning Filipinos are able to organize themselves (e.g., the Pink folks), they have yet to form themselves into a political party that represents and promotes the values and principles to which they adhere.
How did we managw to arrive at this point? Simple: We have weak leaders and untrue political parties.
Right on point, Martin. I find it incredibly frustrating that no pinks see the benefits of organizing to preserve and extend the investment they made in 2022. Shrug and go home. So, yes, weak and unprincipled.
you know the idiom: once bitten twice shy. that’s what most pinks are doing. in the meantime, they dont have to show their color to be of help. and they help a lot: they are there in the thick of things and lending a hand. so not attention seekers to shout far and wide that they are pinks and that is what they do! so take plenty of nice pictures to be shared in social media. but they shout far and wide for extra volunteers to come forward. some humongous tasks that must be accomplished soonest can only be done with extra help like in times of sakuna.
it’s nearly the same faces in the front line, silently spreading good will and tirelessly helping. well, maybe a pat in the back will suffice now and then just to let them know they are appreciated.
the pinks have ghosted themselves! but make no mistake. you know how ubiquitous ghosts are: always there, always around.
I hope so, but I also know the yellows pretty much gave up after Roxas lost. People age, they move, they get busy with other stuff. Mountains erode.
Yes.. Yes… And Yes.
…
But…
Many comments on Kamala, she won the discussion but lost it thereafter.
We are desperate for a good discussion, for good arguments, for a good policy.
But, indeed, only 3 bullet points will stick, more will confuse people.. How can you then sell complicated tricks like the economy, like the environment, like foreign policy, like social relations? People just loose track after those 3 bullet points when you have 300 more on the slides.
Like Bernie Sanders. He has great points, good reasoning and he cares. But, he is shot down every time.
Why?
If you have 100 good points, there is bound to be one which you can take out, distort it and use it to make the guy ridiculous, thereby obscuring the other 99 (actually 100) points. Bernie is too nice, too reasoned.
Then came AOC. Dancing into her office. But even she is being ridiculed. She is being attacked on all fronts on issues unrelated to her policies. But, she showed the way: the ONLY way you can beat the rightwing manipulators is: with all guns blazing. Full force, take no prisoners. Attack, attack, attack. Be very vocal, be everywhere, make strong statements.
Hey, that sounds a bit like sTrumpelstiltskin, doesn’t it?
Yes, but then with good arguments.
Who is able to mobilize and motivate the voters? AOC managed the young part of the population, but we need more. The older, the poor, the workers.
In our place, we had Gina. For a short while. But she was too nice, not a streetfighter. And it is against the Filipino character to openly fight to destroy.
We had Lenie, a very decent person, a hard worker, smart, reliable. But not a streetfighter. No match for a killer.
And even WHEN we would find this streetfighter, we probably would end up with somebody who very quickly turns into a dictator because that is what streetfighters do. Hugo Chavez would be the best fit. Not nice…
Interesting times. An opposition split along feudal lines, no inspiring leader, no common vision.
Where is this person who is omnipresent with his/her personality, with a killer mentality, with a heart for the people?
We do not even have a decent string of discussions being televised.
I would not be surprised if this all just bubbles and boils slowly until in one or two decades, the kettle overflows and we get another NPA-style reaction. There are no channels for (mainly young) people to express their emotions, their feelings, their ambitions. Facebook etc. is not structured, it is just a huge garbage pile where the jewels sink in the dirt.
So, yes Joe, we are desperate for civilised discussions, for clear policies, for leadership, for compassion, for accountability, for a vision.
Worldwide, we have this problem.
I remember a passage in the bible, the sermon of the mount, where he warns of false prophets. It is all over the world. A problem we have not mastered in 2000 years. It almost is Christmas, maybe the time that new leaders are born, but let’s hope we treat them better.
Nice portrait of how things are. Very accurate, by my view. I don’t know here the killer good guys are. Vico Sotto seems not to have national ambition. Leni Robredo is as you say. The Senate is horrid. The House has no one. Speaker Romualdez is a dud, it seems. I named Joy Belmonte in desperation. It’s a desert.
pablo, I don’t think you’ll need a streetfighter per se. just a good idea people can be passionate about. I think it’s UBI. correction, I know its UBI.
and we saw that during COVID lock-down. find a way to keep folks in door and out of the way and the world will heal itself.
But economically, the powers that be just didn’t know what to do cuz they’re working within the old economic model.
people gotta work to get paid, they said.
Well why do people gotta work to get paid, when you can pay them to stay home and not make or do anything. at all.
ergo UBI. encourage them to just chill and hang out. or better yet if you really wanna do something productive , to it online and get paid more. confine the rat race withing virtual space, pablo.
allowing physical space to reconfigure. more Dugongs.
for UBI to happen we first need fast and reliable internet connection. all this can happen concurrently. and in 4 yrs, the Philippines can have internet connection all over. the trick then is how to institute UBI.
I think you’ve just given me another idea for another blog, pablo. I’ll dedicate this one just for you.
in the mean time just spread around UBI, like so… “alam mo ba yun?” CDE voters would totally love it. but of course you gotta deliver and make it reality.
Going back to this debate about work and UBI
https://www.forbes.com/sites/adigaskell/2018/03/05/does-a-universal-basic-income-discourage-work/
==
So you inform people that they don’t actually do not have to work because of a concept called UBI
I do not think the show me the money segment will buy this.
It is always fool me once or many times but we will have the last laugh.
The government must first say this is different from 4ps and all the ayudas you are getting etc.
This will be the mother of all ayudas something to that effect
So on and so forth, otherwise thus would be like universal healthcare, not really universal is it not?
BTW
AKAP is the current Ayuda program
Critics of UBI fear that it will inevitably lead to fecklessness as people stop striving and settle into a life of relative luxury. It’s an argument that is largely debunked by a recent study examining the impact of UBI on the population of Alaska.
Discouraging work?
The Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend program has been in place for the past 25 years, with money distributed from the oil reserve royalties earned in the state. The unconditional cash payments amounts to $2,000 per Alaskan resident.
===
karl,
I think if you come at it from the perspective of really getting people to not make or do anything (other than what they want to do or make for themselves, like to give their lives meaning stuff), then UBI makes sense.
So like during COVID lockdown, the priority has to be internal (eg. staying inside, remember you were a hero cuz you stayed inside) rather than external like going to malls to buy stuff, which was what happened after 9/11 wherein W. had to tell Americans to go back to the mall and buy stuff. COVID it was stay inside and be a hero.
We’ve seen internal being prioritized before, and dolphins swam in Venice, etc. We just need to return to that mind set i think, karl. the economics of it i’m not so sure of, cuz I’m no economist. but that mindset internal stay inside mindset we’ve done that already.
So yeah the point of UBI needs to be to discourage work all together; Universal Health care unlike UBI is different for everyone. UBI can be for all though just agree to basic income that’ll entice people to not work.
So UBI is not AKAP, karl. for it to be UBI it has to be universal w/ no conditions. that Alaska program would be based on oil dividend. Thomas Paine had a similar idea but based on land, like a land use dividend.
Now with technology booming, it could be as tech dividend. I dunno too much on it so will have to read up. and Google. or youtube it. but the big concept here is that we did this during COVID, but not due to policy more on fear.
Can we make going internal the norm, thus fund that norm, and will that make the world a better place like Michael Jackson said we gotta make that change, karl.
First, I come from a country where is pays not to work. My daughter and her hubby work their asses off, just because they were brought up like that. They “own” their house but have another 20 years to pay the mortgage. Their neighbour lives in the same house, He and his wife have not worked for over 20 years, their 35 year old daugter has never worked and still they live in the same house, have a car, kill themselves smoking cigarettes and they are REALLY expensive in NL) and even go on holiday a few times per year. No, paying for not working has to be limited to people who really need it and the rest should just work. The Alaska trial was just that, a trial. In NL, we do it since I was born a long time ago and it is poisoning society.
And the money issue? Where is it coming from?
Yeah, we had 2 disaster, the 2008 crash and Covid. Both, we survived and “people did not have to work”. That is total b.s. because of 2 reasons.
In Covid, about 20% of the population worked their asses off to keep society running. Medical staff at the top, they had to run shifts which would be called slavery in normal circumstances. But also the delivery people, the shops and quite some businesses which had to be kept running with half their staff sick. The same in the 2008 crisis where businesses were kept running by staff for reduced salaries in extremely stressfull situations. I know, I have been there.
The second issue was the money.
The governments kept pouring money into the economy to “SAVE the economy” Yes, it kinda worked. But… that money did not come for free. It had to be borrowed. And who is paying? Sure, the taxpayer. So, let’s take a step back and see what actually happened. All that money seems to have “flowed upwards” to the likes of Musk, Bezos, Murdoch and their companions. They became shamefull rich. While the bottom feeder Juan c.s. did not get a payrise. The minimum wages in the USA are stagnant for ages. And to make matter worse, we somehow got used to sky-high prices and who is benefiting from that? Look at the figures: Bezos, Musk, Murdoch, Shell, BP, Exxon just to name a few. Juan has lost half his income in real terms. BUT, the taxes come from the 99.9% of the population calling themselves Juan. The top 99.9% knows very well how to evade taxes. Like a famous investor in the US said that he paid less taxes than his secretary and sTrumpelstiltskin stated that paying taxes is for suckers… No, that “free money” to pay for people not working was borrowed. Why do you think all around the world the term “Austerity” is being used? Maybe because somebody has to pay the interest of all these loans and therefore, there is less money for Juan and his minimum wages and medical benefits…. Even when the 4P’s is continued, from what I see in our municipality, that is an election argument by the ruling elite..
In hindsight, I can only conclude that we have been taken for a ride by the 0.1%.
No, Sir, money for nothing, was a beautiful song by Dire Straits, one of their best. But it won’t work for you or me. I am afraid that my song will be “Brothers in Arms”
Thanks for sharing Pablo.
The people you described in Holland also exist in Germany and are called Sozialadel, welfare aristocracy – a sarcastic term.
Re the super rich, there was a book by a German political pundit calling the very rich and the very poor antisocial (the German term asozial is even harsher) classes, as in most likely to not contribute to society, just skim off the advantages.
Well, in many places, the middle class indeed holds the short end of the stick.
Right on, Pablo. I followed parts of the auctions in which Knopfler sold a lot of his guitars. If I were in that 1% I’d a bought one for JoeJr, who is amazingly good on them. I’m trying to talk him out of going to college to just work on being the Philippine’s Clapton, or Knopfler, either will do. I take Dire Straits literally about that. For the rest of us, work is what humans are designed to do, which is why we have opposing thumbs and brains weak enough to elect dysfunctional morons to high jobs. I worked in the company store for 30 years, and now I’m committed to a free ride for another 30 or however long it takes until I’m pushing up daisies. We were also designed to be quite comfortable sitting on our asses.
I get the unconditional part, LCX
Since we already have conditional cash transfers and implementation problems of PH
Thus would be a tough sell.
Jetskis and twenty peso rice per kilo would be easier to sell unfortunately
I think you can sell the idea of free money very easy here. Just call it a promo. The hard part is funding it.
Yes Joe on funding.
Come to think of it Filipinos buy into everything then have buyer’s remorse after. Especially during Christmas.
Thanks, pablo, karl & Ireneo. I think the UBI you guys are envisioning is rob Peter to pay Paul type UBI. which is similar to fiat dollar system wherein US Treasury gives an IOU to Fed Reserves (banks) and they in turn do the same IOUs to each other, Peter and Paul.
Thus US dollar rules the world.
What if there’s a manna type UBI model, ala Iain M. Banks’ the Culture and the Minds. Because while I cannot envision that yet, cuz I’m no economist, I do envision everything disintegrating cuz AI and robotics are here, meaning there will be no more work for us soon enough, and that soon enough is coming soon.
UBI is do-able, just have to re think current thinking on economy. Universal Healthcare less doable unless death is more accepted as outcome. for example all the push back on Right to Die laws in UK/Canada coming from disabled community. similar push back I think to UBI, rich vs. poor , Paul and Peter rhetoric.
But the facts are times are a changing. so we gotta make UBI work. more working in factories, more pollution, more pollution more poverty equals more working in factories. Giedi Prime.
We gotta get out of this place
If it’s the last thing we ever do
We gotta get out of this place
‘Cause girl, there’s a better life for me and you
i’m not selling UBI, karl, I’m saying its our only option right now. the walls are closing in. New ideas are needed economically. Is there manna UBI? Lets say YES, then figure out How. that’s the needed mindset. that part I can’t Google.
But I think we can all agree, that internet fast reliable for all is totally doable now and we’ll start from there and work our way to UBI. like in 2 wks? but today fast internet for all.
This is the framework here, but we have til 2028 to fine tune.
You have great points, but also some deflections making the whole thing suddenly questionable. First of all, universal health care DOES work, I challenge you to checkout the YouTube channels from USA nationals living in The Netherlands, Germany or France. They all came to the conclusion that it works better than the USA. It works slightly different, but it certainly not is a recipe for early death, on the contrary. Then the right to die. Those people hyping the situation in Canada, who have been made shit scared, they clearly did not do their research and were used by the “Christians” who prefer to see a person suffer. Ofcourse, not everybody wants a voluntary way out. In fact, it even is a minority of the people who initially said they would. But for those who really want, there is a way. Do you really want me to use my .45 and create a mess and upset the whole family or can I please have the option to say farewell in a decent manner when the time comes and I want it like that? So, with those points out of the way comes the next. Maybe AI will create a surplus of time. Maybé. Automation was said to create havoc but it resulted in a shortage of skilled manpower. That is why my daughter and her husband make overtime and her neighbours make holiday each and every day. Where is the justice in that? Oh, you say, we somehow have to regulate that. So we share the burden. Sure, make rules. Make 100% of the people have a job. Sounds familiar to me. Let me think. Oh, I remember, I was there too. Moscow, Sakhalin, Siberia. Communism… Nice idea, but it did not work. Why not? Maybe because there was a huge majority of the population who had barely enough to eat and a top layer who went shopping in the most luxurious shops I have ever seen. Wanna see the pictures of the miners living in -40C with a plastic sheet as a window and other pictures of a shop for the happy few with gold leaf decoration on the ceiling and all Western products in the shelves? Somehow, that did not work out either.
Maybe there is no simple solution, a one-size-fits-all what communism and UBI basically are. With more and more production efficiency, it will be inevitable to ask ourselves if we really need all those resources. If we need a liter of coke or maybe 5 glasses of water are healthier. If we need a 400 gram Waygu steak or a 150 gram stroganoff once every 2 days. If we need to drive a Wrangler or design our cities so we can go about on a bicycle. If we need to go to a supermarket twice a day or grow our own veggies. If we need to cut all money to art, music etc in the name of efficiency or we learn again to appreciate art again. By the way, in Moscow, I heard some beautiful classical music, played in the Metro by professional musicians. I saw kids of 10 years old up to elderly of over 70 reading those huge classics in busses, metro, waiting rooms, airplanes. Within a kilometer radius of my house, there were 5 theatres showing classical master pieces in music, drama, contemporary theatre, dance and all. Maybe there was something done well in that system after all. There just was not enough essentials.
It ain’t easy, but a simple UBI?? I rather stay on my little piece of land, grow my veggies and mangroves and wish you success…. Ah, that was also a necessity in communist times, the dacha’s. Where people needed to grow their potatoes, cabbage and anything they could preserve in order to survive the winter. No Tesco’s, no Wallmart. Just the storage room full of glass jars with preserved fruits and veggies. Try to implement that in The Philippines where the Agrarian Reform has resulted in a disastrous reduction of agricultural production, where now even rice, coffee and cacao have to be imported along with unions and grain. Like in Europe, people have seriously lost the ability for self-sustainability even if the CARP distributed land ‘evenly’ here. UBI would be a nice program for Joe to say where we are going. A nice fighting target, the idealistic world. Everybody together. Brilliant. It just won’t work like that.
We’re not in overpopulated Europe. Let’s start with making people accountable for producing food. Accountable for delivering proper schooling for kids. Make parents accountable for sending their kids to school. Just the basic stuff. Audit the shit out of the tax boys and chop those corrupt customs and tax guys. Audit the City Engineers so we finally get projects delivered on time and within budget. Get judges to do their work. Nothing special. Just halfway good government can save this country. We have resources to make heaven on earth instead of making it impossible for our neighbours so they go abroad.
Yeah, but how… Chasing UBI is a fatal Morgana, if we cannot even make simple things work, why embark on Mission Impossible. Unless Hugo Chavez rises from the death in Quezon City…
Regards, Paul Holtslag,
Nasidman Island, Ajuy, Iloilo, Philippines. GPS: 11.074,123.012 Tel: +639957451572
19 Fisherman’s Village, Danabaai, South Africa. GPS: -34.2064,22.0214 Tel: +27632611666
Re mangroves, I have just returned from a two week vacation to Mayaland. More specifically, the Mexican state of Quintana Roo, the area Spain formally owned but never really controlled.
They take care of nature, especially mangroves and food security over there. It is in colonized Valladolid, adjoining Yucatan state, that there are signs telling people not to throw basura.
Does being colonized breed irresponsibility, while indigenous cultures understand stewardship?
I agree that the original people always take good care of the land. I still cherish Seattle’s speach and the name of my kayak always has been in his honour. Read that speech and your heart will open. Travelling through the Arabic desert with the Bedouins, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they did not leave anything behind when the changed their campsite. Clearly, indigenous people take good care of fheir environment.
BUT, that does not justify us destroying our environment. I take 7 big 50kg bags of basura from our beach every Saturday. We should start a shoe shop with all the flipflops we collect. But is not being indigenous an excuse for making a mess? The basura law is already 15 years old but nobody follows it. We had the auditors coming to the municipality, complete with armed guards commenting on the basura, but little changed. Only when Duterte checked Boracay, it changed.
But, basura is a minor part of the picture. Poachers fish the sea empty, other poachers damage the grounds permanently with their dragnets, cornplantations cause irrepairable erosion, mining activities poison whole municipalities..
yes, indigenous people would probably take better care, but they are replaced all over the world and WE need to take over.. While I can do nothing about the politics, I feel we, as individuals, can do a lot to motivate local people to get their basura under control, plant mangroves, plant more indigenous trees instead of this disastrous mahogany, and try to convince people to confrol erosion. Poaching is a list case, there is toouch money involved and too many high politicians make huge sums with illegal fisheries. But, as individuals, I feel that THIS is an area where we can make a difference. So, I appeal to all of you to look at your land, your family’s land and just enforce responsible behaviour.
However, one battle I lost just last week. After a long discussion, I got a farmer to start planting a windbreak out of kamagong, molave, ipil and mangkono. But, a farmer needs income, so he needed assurance that in 30 years, he can harvest 25% of the trees every 10 years and so sustainably keep the volume of hardwood. But, the DENR stated that we are not allowed to cut these valuable and endangered species, so the farmer is now planting mahogany, bamboo and ipil-ipil which he CAN harvest.
I don’t care, and have a nursery with kamagong, mankuno and ipil ready for planting next year when I cut all mahogany. When my ghost comes back in 40 years, I hope to see my kids taking care of a beautiful land full of rare trees. I hope that my neighbours will follow the example, I have additional seedlings for them. You never know.
DO read Seattle’s speech.
I agree that the original people always take good care of the land. I still cherish Seattle’s speach and the name of my kayak always has been in his honour. Read that speech and your heart will open. Travelling through the Arabic desert with the Bedouins, I was pleasantly surprised to see that they did not leave anything behind when the changed their campsite. Clearly, indigenous people take good care of fheir environment.
BUT, that does not justify us destroying our environment. I take 7 big 50kg bags of basura from our beach every Saturday. We should start a shoe shop with all the flipflops we collect. But is not being indigenous an excuse for making a mess? The basura law is already 15 years old but nobody follows it. We had the auditors coming to the municipality, complete with armed guards commenting on the basura, but little changed. Only when Duterte checked Boracay, it changed.
But, basura is a minor part of the picture. Poachers fish the sea empty, other poachers damage the grounds permanently with their dragnets, cornplantations cause irrepairable erosion, mining activities poison whole municipalities..
yes, indigenous people would probably take better care, but they are replaced all over the world and WE need to take over.. While I can do nothing about the politics, I feel we, as individuals, can do a lot to motivate local people to get their basura under control, plant mangroves, plant more indigenous trees instead of this disastrous mahogany, and try to convince people to confrol erosion. Poaching is a list case, there is toouch money involved and too many high politicians make huge sums with illegal fisheries. But, as individuals, I feel that THIS is an area where we can make a difference. So, I appeal to all of you to look at your land, your family’s land and just enforce responsible behaviour.
However, one battle I lost just last week. After a long discussion, I got a farmer to start planting a windbreak out of kamagong, molave, ipil and mangkono. But, a farmer needs income, so he needed assurance that in 30 years, he can harvest 25% of the trees every 10 years and so sustainably keep the volume of hardwood. But, the DENR stated that we are not allowed to cut these valuable and endangered species, so the farmer is now planting mahogany, bamboo and ipil-ipil which he CAN harvest.
I don’t care, and have a nursery with kamagong, mankuno and ipil ready for planting next year when I cut all mahogany. When my ghost comes back in 40 years, I hope to see my kids taking care of a beautiful land full of rare trees. I hope that my neighbours will follow the example, I have additional seedlings for them. You never know.
DO read Seattle’s speech.
you don’t have to travel far.
also here in Philippines there are nice places, but it very much depends on the barangays captain, there are huge differences even in the same community
youtu.be/6uwk-YHOwpk?feature=shared
The Philippines is geographically further away from Germany, where I live than Yucatan is.. but thanks for that additional info.
Your mangroves in Ajuy YT video is indeed interesting.
I had to Wiki Hugo Chavez. He had oil revenue and still couldn’t get the country on its feet. He even declared war on the rich, a kind of masterplanned UBI, I suppose. It all failed. So he died and it remains a mess today. There are no magic bullets, only work, of which thinking, planning, and doing are included. If I had to set a goal for the Philippines, it would be UBA. Universal basic accountability. Then all the rest would fall into line.
yes.
Universal Basic Accountability.
I do hope you realize how brilliant spot-on this is.
It sounds simple. Everybody understands it.
But it is very, very powerful and covers all angles.
Brilliant
Thank You
Hey, you zeroed me in on it, so thank you.
Hmm, I wonder if the vision you have is too much like the Star Trek world. Because life usually isn’t like Star Trek. Our natural drives are to work if we have to, and rest if we can as much as we can, since the Stone Age shaped our basic drives.
You of all people should know about Stone Age drives. I will BTW not leak the stolen video of you singing “We Ain’t Nothing But Mammals” during open mic session on Mango Avenue.
I do agree that conceptually cuz its not been done before we have to consider sci-fi when thinking of UBI. but your issue I think isn’t UBI per se but modes of production like manna from heaven and Heyderian mentioning Gramsci re hegemon culture (i’ve never heard of Gramsci before had to Google). that issue is culture and how we look at work. so I do agree you can’t lay in your bed forever as a human, I also agree that the rhetoric of “dignity” of work, eg. working at Jollibees is bs. similar to when W. told all Americans to go back to the malls and start buying stuff.
There’s no dignity in doing bs work, creating needless widgets and needless services (like pedi and mani cure, i’d include Mango ave. in there too if i’m being honest, Ireneo, unnecessary luxury).
So lets use an example. and since Joe has been in a good mood lately and game, let’s use Joe as example (I promise to make you look good , Joe).
I think Joe would agree that his work in the banking sector was all bs. he didn’t really produce anything of significance in the bigger picture. so too his schooling. prior to graduate work , his time in the Army for sure was all bs. unnecessary war for unnecessary wants.
his best work was probably as undergrad and or high school. But that s all water under the bridge, spilt milk.
I would argue his best work is joeam dot com, aside from his biological by-products of course.
I’m sure Joe would agree.
Now lets do a counter factual, let say America did listen to Thomas Paine and Henry George. and we did have UBI, so lets say college was free for Joe too and he got his fill of humanities, and theres no wars cuz UBI rendered them obsolete (just speculating here). I would bet my right nut that Joe would somehow still end up in the Philippines because that’s his destiny, UBI or not. He’d probably be back there in the 60s writing joeam dot com, but prior to internet it would be some sort of publication the ones hippies were prone to do, talking about how to grow things and make your own clothes and shit.
Because there was UBI, Joe didn’t have to go to war or end up in banking doing unnecessary marketing for nothing and nobody. he would’ve gone straight to work that mattered and work that made his day at the end of the day, where he’d look back before going to sleep, and say something like what LCPL_X said today made a lot of sense, or Ireneo or karl or Joey or pablo… then he’d wake up the next day and churn out more ideas. and that is work. sure he doesn’t have to go hunting or gathering, but UBI would afford him some leeway that he can skip all that working for the Man bs.
Meaning , Joe would have a lot of.
That I ‘m thinking is what UBI is all about, your ability to check out and not be a part of some societal experiment making unnecessary stuff that would just clog up landfills and into the oceans, thus because of this luxury more people can innovate by doing something more worthwhile, and not less. But like I said I need to read up more on this so will return in 2 weeks see where we are re UBI.
But anthropologically speaking (which was your comment not really UBI per se) I agree with your Mayan example, I’m the hunter/gatherer advocate on here after all. Stone age Luddite. I would just go one step further that that stewardship you’re talking about , Ireneo, all goes back to some guy deciding we should divvy up land form that river to that old tree and say it’s his or mine or yours. When they did that, the whole world changed. we all had to pay for it one way or another. its not the original sin, no, but its the source of a lot of the poverty for sure.
Pie in the sky.
We all work for the common good and we abolish the harmful activities.
Great.
But we tried that many times and always, always there were many a..holes using it for their own benefit, so rules were made, the a..holes bent the rules, more rules were made and the rule makers became the a..holes.
Pity you should not go to Moscow now, or to the smaller places in Russia and research what communism intended to do and how it worked out and why that happened. It was a beautiful system in principle, a great UBI, many people believed in it and worked hard to make it work. Beautiful things resulted from their efforts, many things not appreciated in the West. However, people being people, some people in the system started using it for their own power play. Often believing they did the right thing, but trying to enforce THEIR version of the system. WHY?? It seems that there always have been and are some guys wanting to be in charge and they honestly believe that their version of the UBI is necessary for the health of the system. Total power totally corrupts. In the end, we got people like Stalin, Putin, Kim, Xi. In principle, there always have been checks and balances. Party Congresses are a main feature of The System, but they are pre-cooked.
And here is the basis of the problem
UBI needs all noses in the same direction.
All noses in the same direction requires a managing system. A managing system will result in a (in name democratic) system governed by a (in name democratic) type of Congress which we see in all (ex) communist countries like Russia, China, Korea, Vietnam. It wasn’t working in the past, it does not work now, it will not work in the future. Why? Because effective controls fail in a single party system. That’s why we have shareholders in a company such that not a single (select group of) manager can dictate the company. That’s why old tribes had a group of elders controlling the chief.
Individuals in charge of the leader instead of the leader in charge of the individual.
When I lived in Russia, I met and worked with wonderful people, many of the older people did good things during the olden times and still had a huge sense of duty towards the community. I always felt regret because with these people it should have been possible to build a brilliant UBI. But.. it did not work out. Always the same reason: a few power hungry a..holes abused the systems.
After so many trials and errors, let’s face the music and admit that human nature cannot mimic a system which ants or bees have, where everybody unconditionally work for the community. As a beekeeper, I am always astonished at the achievements of a hive. How individuals work themselves to death for the benefit of the hive, but that when the hive decides that the queen is no good, she will be replaced, they start making new queens, the weak ones get killed and the best takes over the hive.
But, we humans cannot do this, we are genetically programmed differently. Pity, but this is a fact we have to live with.
Exit UBI
Enter UBA
UBA actually mimics the beehive: if the queen is no good, the hive decides to get rid of the queen.
But, how to introduce that in a place where accountability is absent in public life?
As always Paul, you take the words out of my mouth with your reflections under this post. You’ve expounded all the points I wanted to make here, and you’ve done it more eloquently.
I sometimes think we hold similar views as we are both well traveled (though you probably have traveled more than me) and are observers of people.
I am a bit older, you have enough time to catch up.
you seem to follow the ideal path by immersing yourself in the community.
I think you would like the YouTube channel of Itchy Boots where a single woman travels around the world on a motorbike and surprises everyone with the discovery that people all over the world are basically good and hospitality is found everywhere. That Iraq is safe, Turkey is amazing, that a whole village in Africa helps when there is a problem.
The world is not a bad place, we just need to be good stewards.
I didn’t start out this way. I’m from the bastion of modern American right-wing politics and grew up immersed in both implicit and explicit expressions of that ideology. It’s amusing to recall that even once upon a time, I was even a youth foot soldier in the 1990s culture wars that broke civility among fellow Americans. University which moves many young people leftward, at least until they accumulate wealth and affluence, didn’t change my mind.
What did change my mind was traveling across all 50 US states and most of the 16 territories, interacting with people. I have also been fortunate to do well professionally which allowed myself to work just half the year in my 20’s and travel the world or do charity work the rest of the time. I’ve been to Iraq and most of the Middle East as well, I’ve stayed with Bedouins and Copts. I’ve seen the ingenuity of Nigerians and mountain villages in the Andes. In Akita, Japan I saw how the Japanese respect their past while also creating a modern society. In Ukraine and Eastern Europe I’ve seen how society managed to survive in the face of genocidal aggression of imperialists.
Still I have a fondness for the Philippines. An imperfect country that is still trying to figure things out. Where “outside of the walls” there is vibrant life, people trying to make do in the face of conflicting identities. There’s much to learn anywhere if one becomes a listener. Sometimes that’s tough due to my height in relation to most Filipinos (190cm+). Filipinos are used to someone higher up ordering them. People reply differently when there is a power difference. So instead, I’ll raise them up to my level rather than lowering myself to their socially assigned level. There’s often much to learn from different perspectives, similar to how there are usually more than one solution to mathematical problems.
We all wind our way through life then die and who knows what gets left in our wake, good or bad. I generated millions for the bank and had an incredibly rich 366 days in Nam with the major achievement of not having died young. This marriage, that one, kids there, kid here, they create their own wakes. UBI is not going to create such life’s riches, it will take them away, like sitting in front of the wide screen watching other people work. Not something I’m passionate about, but I do think we should have safety nets for the poor, sick, and lost.
Safety nets.. freeloading is always an issue as societies now are larger than the simple communities of old. IIRC, the Agta simply didn’t give a share of meat to the able-bodied and healthy young men who didn’t join the hunt.
But yes, safety nets are important. Working is a form of joining the hunt, and I believe we indeed would feel useless without it. And I don’t believe in giving the Internet and social media more power than it already has, to the point that it runs our lives, it should stay a tool.
We are entering a period of mass mental illness brought on by the ease with which bad, unhealthy ideas are inserted into the decision making that is done by people and the leaders they choose. Are the homeless freeloaders, I wonder, or damaged by society’s impossible demands, like the flukes of happenstance such as when companies fold and that job was the only one available. Mental illness, or emotional well-being, are not taught in school. We are assumed to be whole when many are not. Ants are builders, and we wander between building and destroying, unable to figure out why we enjoy destruction so much. I’m convinced that the computers are already in charge, not in an explicit sense as we imagine leadership, but more as a massive organism growing and biding its time as it infiltrates our consciousness. They’ll eventually be eaten by cockroaches, and then earth will be in balance like it was before humans infested the place.
https://daily.jstor.org/yes-americans-owned-land-before-columbus/
That was a good read too. I remember in elementary where we covered California indians and we had to harvest and mash up oak acorns to make into flour and they made an acorn pancake out of it for us. this was vis a vis the whole California missions lesson plan.
So yeah corn was totally farmed but I think natives concept of land was still more like how cats see their territory as one of Venn diagrams overlapping and changing. so that whole notion of tracks of land with surveyors and shit was still something totally original probably started in Europe but perfected in the Americas.
California indians tended to oak trees to ensure good harvest, but no one owned the oak trees. I think it was more like Pocahontas where oak trees owned themselves and indians were all like Thank you oak trees for these acorns thats so difficult to process due to tannins that you have to leech out either by boiling or dipping it into the river for a day or two.
The old criterion the Spanish government defined for untitled land to officially belong to someone in the late 19th century was that two neighbors made a sworn statement that one had tilled it for thirty years or more.
Possibly that rule (I have actual “affidavits” like that from the 19th century related to Bikol abaca land) comes from some previous tribal idea that you own only what you actually use.
Mechanisms that prevent too much real estate speculation are always good, BTW.
joeam dot com in the 60s/70s in the Philippines would probably be akin to this article:
read: https://www.chronicle.com/featured/student-success/college-partnerships-and-community-support
“The close-knit communities in Oglethorpe are fiercely protective of how they live, Bright says. It’s a place that’s often resistant to doing things differently. “There was talk about putting up a second stoplight, and boy, it was messy. The stoplight never went up. People don’t want their quiet, rural way of life to change.”
Despite that, she says, the communities seem to be adapting to the changes at the Echo: “We’ve been able to win trust by doing consistent, good journalism, and that’s been powerful for our students and the community. We’re averaging between three and seven letters to the editor a week. That’s bonkers in the current local-news climate. People are really engaged.” (“In the first 18 months, we added six digital products, won awards, tripled advertising, and doubled subscriptions to the 149-year-old weekly newspaper,” Bright wrote last year for Nieman Lab.)”
I sometimes think we hold similar views as we are both well traveled
What are we chopped liver?!! Ireneo just came back from the Yucatan forcrissakes, Joey!
“After so many trials and errors, let’s face the music and admit that human nature cannot mimic a system which ants or bees have, where everybody unconditionally work for the community.”
I agree with this. but again there are new developments like trunk line for internet in the sky for all, then AI and robotics. quantum computing is cracked now too i read. Internet for all from the sky instead of from the ground is the start. so let’s technologically speaking add every component one at a time, and see if we can disabuse ourselves from communism as metaphor to UBI first.
“How individuals work themselves to death for the benefit of the hive, but that when the hive decides that the queen is no good, she will be replaced, they start making new queens, the weak ones get killed and the best takes over the hive.”
I had no idea bees killed their queens, but that makes sense about old age and no more eggs.
As for hive and humans I agree insects and mammals, but as in all nature, creative destruction is the norm. lots of proto humans were in the Philippines prior to humans being there, they died off just the same. it s just how nature works in general.
As for UBI and UBA the two needn’t be mutually exclusive, I would say UBI will give birth to UBA just the same. or UBA giving birth to UBI. they don’t repel each other. one is governance the other is more about life in general, eg. “Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?”
But we’ll hit the pause button on UBI for now and revisit in 2 weeks. start with internet from the sky for all first. thanks, pablo. i learned about bees today.
“And the money issue? Where is it coming from?
Yeah, we had 2 disaster, the 2008 crash and Covid. Both, we survived and “people did not have to work”. That is total b.s. because of 2 reasons.
In Covid, about 20% of the population worked their asses off to keep society running. Medical staff at the top, they had to run shifts which would be called slavery in normal circumstances. But also the delivery people, the shops and quite some businesses which had to be kept running with half their staff sick. The same in the 2008 crisis where businesses were kept running by staff for reduced salaries in extremely stressfull situations. I know, I have been there.”
This thought is related to bees.
I do think that 80-90% of humans now are non-essential. unlike bees, they’re doing shabu, gotten mental illness or underemployed and unhappy causing more unhappiness to their progenies, and or crime, etc. etc.
This is largely why I’m pro castration, but voluntarily of course with some psyops to make it fashionable and cool not having testicles.
I don’t think UBI, just giving them money will fix them, the problem is one of meaning. Camus’ suicide test if you will. you have to physically place them in a place wherein they’ll find meaning.
“, but I do think we should have safety nets for the poor, sick, and lost.”
So along with the concept of UBI there has to be a sequestration concept too, to get the non-essentials out of the way from consuming too much, to creating too much trash. i would argue most essentials during COVID were non-essentials. thats a lot of non-essentials you gotta accommodate.
Sequestering isn’t really about UBI per se, just the concept that what people are making and doing now aren’t really necessary in the bigger scheme of things.
more here: https://www.ssa.gov/history/paine4.html
“Sure, make rules. Make 100% of the people have a job. Sounds familiar to me. Let me think. Oh, I remember, I was there too. Moscow, Sakhalin, Siberia. Communism… Nice idea, but it did not work.”
Firstly, it does everyone a disservice closely looking into UBI as solution to conflate it with communism. sure lessons can be gleaned from the past, but UBI has not really been done before. fully. I would say UBI is more an American idea than not, Thomas Paine wrote about it; then Henry George. I don’t think the two knew of each others’ idea, but being Americans they both realized its a land issue more than not.
But UBI predates communism. it is something else entirely.
now 2024 going into 2025, all the land thats important have been divvied up. But there was a time when people didn’t “own” land, the concept is as foreign as owning air or sunlight.
“Does being colonized breed irresponsibility, while indigenous cultures understand stewardship?”
So to answer Ireneo when the land is “owned” by others, you stop taking ownership of said land, eg. stewardship. Some culture though persist like Mayans and Huichols on the other side of Mexico, (negritos, badjaos, aborigines, bushmen, etc.).
But IMHO there is a new realm humans can venture into, thus making return to stewardship possible. but that’s in 2 weeks.
Then the right to die. Those people hyping the situation in Canada, who have been made shit scared, they clearly did not do their research and were used by the “Christians” who prefer to see a person suffer. Ofcourse, not everybody wants a voluntary way out. In fact, it even is a minority of the people who initially said they would. But for those who really want, there is a way. Do you really want me to use my .45 and create a mess and upset the whole family or can I please have the option to say farewell in a decent manner when the time comes and I want it like that?
So I’m pro Right to Die by the way. because its cleaner, just as people are born in hospitals, people too should die in hospitals its just cleaner and no ghosts in homes you gotta worry about. that ‘ll affect home price. thus property tax.
My point about UBI being simpler than UH is that healthcare is dependent on individual and dying as solution isn’t really part of medicine right now though the UK/Canada laws is a good start. UBI on the other hand is more a blanket solution if done. but again has not been done before so the most we can do is to be wary of compare and contrasts especially with communism. that’s disingenuous.
I myself have to do more research on UBI, but we’ve already covered UBI already, I don’t know if you remember or were here for that. but basically it was UBI via MMT using CBDC. you just legislate it for all to get UBI, then for inflation follow MMT’s dictum of taxing at the back end not to generate revenue but to take out money from circulation. and because its via CBDC easier to see where money is going to. I allowed Bitcoin in that process cuz people gonna people and they don’t want Big Brother seeing their spending habits their UBI at say Mango avenue and such. or black market. but chempo and Micha both agreed you can’t have two currencies concurrent! CBDC and Bitcoin cannot co-exist they say. well I don’t know about that, but that’s where we ended our UBI talk then.
In 2 weeks we’ll cover this more. But can I at least get you to agree that internet with trunk lines in the sky and not undersea or ground cable is good for all of the Philippines. we agree on that then we can proceed with UBI in the new year. the two will be related, pablo.
“yes, indigenous people would probably take better care, but they are replaced all over the world and WE need to take over.”
this I totally agree with by the way, and the point the whole point whole point of UBI.
Those American “resist” chanters are likely among the most educated Americans who hold at least some affluence. It is often said that “elections have consequences,” but the reality is no matter who is in power, people who have already attained a foothold economically either stay the same or don’t backslide that much economically. So while their heart and values may be in the right place, performative action almost never translates into effective change.
When I was a teen and in most of my 20s, I was affiliated with the Young Republicans and College Republicans. Now those organizations were built for fighters. Members were specifically trained and encouraged to push back on “weak-kneed” liberals, and oh how fast did liberals fold in the face of aggressive attack. Modern liberals are not the political pugilists of TR, FDR through LBJ. As a consequence even as I moved leftward upon political self-introspection, I retained my pugilistic nature that I had learned from my right-wing days. While I think education and the greater good are great things, I’m often dismayed when fellow liberals shrink in the face of attack.
Liberals and Leftists in America, just like in the Philippines, often lean on their belief that they control the cultural narrative and thus are destined to win by their policy proposals that would in fact help most people. In the age of neoliberalism (the economic philosophy), liberals and leftists have increasingly been represented by the highly educated and cultural elites. They have stopped interacting with the lower socio-economic classes, instead working off of an assumption of what they think the people they want to help need. Is it that hard to just talk to others and ask them directly rather than trying to extrapolate answers from convoluted “studies?” The more people engage in discourse across socio-economic lines, what starts off as one-off anecdotes can have common patterns recognized. For lower socio-economic classes in the Philippines, just like the cultural non-elites in America, they just are happy that someone even tried to talk to them and ask them what they feel about something. People cannot be persuaded unless an effort is made to actually talk to them.
Moreover, voters want someone to fight for them. Voters want political pugilists. The late New York governor Mario Cuomo put it succinctly in classic terse New Yorker style: “You campaign in poetry. You govern in prose.” Meaning, campaigns are about emotions, vision, fighting back, all short ideas that are possibly vague. While governing requires well-thought out plans. A winning coalition needs to contain politicians and staffers who can do one of either, yet and effective party leader needs to be able to do both.
So what to do about all this? I’ve stressed the part where people want a fighter. In the absence of a “good” fighter, they will pick the “bad” one. But aside from the Philippines liberals and leftists needing to grow a spine and fight interact with people outside of their comfort zone, they need to be “doers.” As much as people like fighters, they also want leaders who will “do” something for them. So propose what the coalition of the good will do if a mandate of political power is granted. Enumerate an outline of policies and keep it simple enough that someone of any education level can understand. Keep the list short and sweet initially, so that a greater chance of success is possible when splitting focus is prevented. FDR won 4 terms as president because he was not only a fighter, but he communicated directly to the American people what his policies were going to be, and gave the American people a progress report through frequent radio broadcast “fireside chats.” If I recall, MLQ did something of the same. FDR won so much that the Republicans needed to push for a constitutional amendment to impose a term limit cap. In our neoliberal technocratic dominated government systems of today, we have forgotten these effective tools and Left-leaning politicians have relied too heavily on expecting the populace to figure out what the government had done to help them, leaving openings for attack by the other side.
So what I’d like to see in the Philippines is:
• Be unafraid of punching back politically. Once one is always defending one’s position, the fight is already lost.
• Point out what is unjust and wrong with the other side’s policies, but more importantly state clearly what one would do instead.
• Engage in constant dialogue with voters. Don’t assume or rely on surveys which can be manipulated. There is too much reliance on polls like Pulse Asia. Assumptions are often based on fantasy projections of what one “thinks” other groups believe, and are unreliable.
• Voters are more open to political views if they are reached out to. Besides if there’s no reach out, how can people be persuaded?
• But most importantly, become a Party of Doers. Being a Party of No is not enough. No one likes to vote for scolds or for those who seem to belittle and undervalue others’ intelligence.
in philippines, there is proliferation of info that must be fact checked.
https://www.rappler.com/newsbreak/fact-check/video-shows-2016-protest-south-korea-not-pro-duterte-iglesia-ni-cristo-rally/
Philippine fake news is always amusing as it’s so obviously sloppily fake, yet many on socmed mindlessly reshare posts and memes. My favorites are the AFP-related fake news, where this or that country allegedly gifted the AFP frontline fighter jets and naval destroyers. Usually I gauge the level of desperation of DDS with the outrageousness of their manufactured memes. It would seem that DDS is getting increasingly anxious with all that goes on.
it boggles the mind why fake news is never called misinformation or disinformation. fooling the people to think that fake news is lesser of the two evils when fake news really equates misinformation. hence, dds is spreading misinformation. and anything coming from the dutertes ought to be fact checked the way congress is now fact checking recipients of the vp’s confidential funds.
Not fake news, but more like rumor.
In this age of misinformation and disinformation by both nefarious gullible actors, fueled by greedy socmed corporations I’ve come to the conclusion that those who believe fake news to be filling some kind of void within themselves. I think it will be impossible to fight against fake news with the truth because the pushers can always make more fantastical claims in an instant. Passively waiting for the people to realize what is true or fake based solely on the inherent goodness of truth itself is a losing proposition. What is the void believers of fake news seek to fill? Some say it’s modern decadence that affords free time to consume such filth. Some others say that eventually people will wake up to truth, but I fear more people are converted than those who wake up. Modern technocratic governments run by faceless bureaucrats are especially vulnerable to fake news even if the government seeks to do good. I think the only antidote is a government that is closer to the people, at least that the people feel closer to. I think that’s the void people are missing. Fractured relationships and social support. Feeling that one’s vote is meaningless so might as well vote for the wrecker-in-chief and be entertained by fake news. We need civil and government organizations to communicate more effectively and frequently. Talk about specific programs that help people and give examples how it helps every individual. In a nihilistic modern world, where literacy rates are falling even in the developed world, we need to go back to the basics of human organizations that cater to people’s emotions. There are forces who take advantage of human emotions to push the bad. But human emotion is a dichotomy. It is light and dark. We are also capable of good emotions, if leaders learn how to harness it.
I finished an entire book when I was on vacation. Usually, I don’t when I am at home as I fall prey to the distractions of social media. The algorithm is very powerful, and not all of us are the equivalent of Jedi in resisting temptation.
The book is Nexus by Yuval Noah Harari. It has a number of interesting insights on how society has worked throughout the millenia. One major premise is that information is not only about truth but also is used to bring forth order.
Harari, an Israeli, starts with the story as the archetypal bond between groups of people. This is true even within global religions. Christians of all denominations will know a doubting Simon. Muslims will know how the archangel Gabriel told Mohammed to recite the Koran. Greeks knew their Homer, not Homer Simpson, with Ulysses as I long theorized and recently definitely found out thanks to Kings and Generals was the transition from Bronze to Iron Age cultural values. Ilocanos might know Lam-Ang. Most Filipinos might know Ang Probinsyano, the modern epic.
He then proceeds to a chapter about bureaucracy, as old as Sumer counting shekels of barley before shekels or thekel became a currency, or Mayans counting corn levied by the batab/ruler. Bureaucracy is needed for any state to work, but it is less easily understood than stories.
Furthermore, there are institutions that define the stories seen as right. Harari gives examples of how the Old Testament, the Mizrah, and the Talmud were defined by rabbi, some books seen as canon, and some not. Same with the New Testament, with many gospels defined as fake.
He also gives a very compelling example of how misinformation in the form of the Malus Maleficium or Hexenhammer was spread by PRINT in Germany, leading to witch hunts as a very early MODERN phenomenon. Or how radio helped both democracy and fascism later.
Finally, he says the major achievements of the Enlightenment and science were self-correcting mechanisms for information, such as scientific checking of facts, democratic checks, and balances, and he doesn’t mention it, but I see a free market under anti-trust rules as one too. Totalitarianism, as opposed to democracy has little self-correction. My example would be how North Korea believed its own myths, which led to massive crop failures. Harari mentioned how Communism in Eastern Europe, ruled by old men, grew weaker but still believed its own myths. Again, I could add comical Ali of Iran, or SS generals still believing in an eventual final victory.
In a second book within the book he warns of how the algorithms of social media have become a power by themselves, mentioning how Facebook helped contribute to incitement of hate against Rohingya by its being new in Myanmar and it’s being driven to maximize engagement. Hateful posts came up more easily then in 2014. He doesn’t mention how free FB helped fuel the 2016 campaign of Duterte, but Patricia Evangelista did that in her book “Some People Need Killing.” He sees the danger of out of control socmed algorithms and even more AI nowadays, similar to Hexenhammer and Goebbels on radio but no longer under human control. Though he did mention how FDR used radio for democracy. Whew, that was my short book review..
I’ll need to add Harari’s Nexus to my reading list. I enjoyed his book Homo Deus which came out nearly a decade ago. I don’t agree with some of his premises though such as AI or bioengineered transhumans surpassing humanity. I think that even though humans are plenty bad, humans are also capable of exceptional acts of altruism and goodness. Perhaps I’m also a skeptic of “AGI” because after all, the so-called AI is programmed by humans, and software engineers when they step outside of their area of expertise they often have a very myopic view of the world that isn’t based in reality. Humans may play “god” or seek to “control god,” as humans have always done, but ultimately humans are poor replacements for gods.
I disengaged from social media long ago when FB ceased being a fun social network. I was one of the first set of FB users I think, as Berkeley at the time was one of the first universities that FB had expanded to. I was somewhat active on Twitter but it had become unbearable after Musk took over and infected Twitter with right-wing crazies. Nowadays I spend very little time on social media though Bluesky is nice and refreshing. I spend my spare time interacting with people in the real world, reading, or playing some old RPGs (gamer habit). Keeping busy with technology is also time consuming as I have what amounts to be a mini datacenter at home. Babying the server rack, practicing new technologies so I can keep my resources honest takes up a lot of time. So is collecting media for my Plex media server even though I probably will never watch even a fraction of what I’ve collected. Just recently spent the last month building a new 36-drive 864TB NAS, as my old NAS was a bit too small. Outside hobbies also take up time that the algorithms can’t steal. Gardening, cooking, expanding my koi pond among other things. In the Spring I like to hike in the hills to enjoy wildflower blooms, while in the Summer I like to go fishing from the mountains to the sea. There’s too many things to do that brings pleasure that social media can’t give.
Facebook brought me back into contact with former Pisay classmates from 2008 onwards, after having written off the Philippines when GMA came to power, boasting how she was returning to Malacañang where she grew up.
It also gave me a warped idea of who was at fault for pork barrel as many of my former classmates posted LP buwaya memes. When Mamasapano happened and Duterte became popular, I looked for clarity and found this blog.
What followed was FB friends from the yellow/pink side, also more contact to mostly Pink former UP Elementary school classmates, also Twitter moots from that political side.
Meeting actual Pinks from Germany and Europe in Munich added to the mix.
Someone reported me on Twitter, and I decided not to return. It was fun to provoke people from the other side there, but being a high-level troll of sorts is fun only for a while.
Pink FB is boring now as the topics are repetitive, it is going nowhere very fast.
My deep dive into Filipino pop culture was mainly via YouTube, including travel vlogs to get a view of the place as it is now, without olfactory and gustatory or even tactile elements of course.
Our convos on the Philippines have deepened my picture and completed it for the moment.
At least travelling again outside Europe, first time since my trip to Sri Lanka in 2003 (going to the part of Istanbul literally called Asya in 2014 and 2015 isn’t quite that, nor was my visit to post-Brexit Britain in 2023) has reopened something for me, maybe even the Philippines again.
You should come back to the Philippines to visit. A lot has changed, and if you have the chance to visit the poorer neighborhoods (I suggest going with a friend with a bit of diskarte, hehe) the vibrancy of life is amazing. There’s a reason that I rarely visit Metro Manila nowadays except to stop by occasionally to visit old friends’ families. More than a few Filipinos called me crazy for “daring” to visit Sulu, Tawi-Tawi, Lanao del Sur, and etc. “scary” places. Maybe being 190cm tall and interacting with Filipinos with no expectation or malice enables me to mingle easily. Diskarte I learned on the streets of LA during the most heavy gangland years during the 1980s and early 1990s probably helped as well. I’m glad sharing my experiences helped you deepen your picture. I also learned a lot of small tidbits of history from you that I had a fuzzy understanding of before.
I was quite happy to notice by the second week in Mexico that the Irineo who grew up in the Philippines, walking through Cubao or taking jeepneys or even overland busses to Bikol had “come to life” again, and I don’t feel I would be totally out of place in the Philippines.
Vlogs and stories, especially by people I know who have been there recently, do show a country that has changed a lot, for better and for worse, depending on perspective. I feel I wouldn’t look like some sort of fool there by now, though people up to date and in the know would be helpful.
A lot has changed in the Philippines, even since my first visit, and that was less than 30 years ago. But as always, I think for most Filipinos the garb and the outward accruements may have changed but deep down the cultural habits are the same. So you might not feel cultural shock after all. Most Filipinos are still friendly people. Some have malice in their minds and try to scam but those are a few, and as long as I keep an eye out for them I’m ok. The nation as a whole is very vibrant and there’s life everywhere on the streets and neighborhoods. People just trying to survive.
I don’t know what it’s like to have grown up in academia. Though my parents were both academics prior to our family fortunes temporarily falling, mostly I grew up “on the streets” before climbing the academic and career ladder. So I imagine for academic minds there is some self imposed distance since educated people don’t want to assume when it solves to others. Immersing one’s self in regular people would make one quickly realize that we are all human, just with different capabilities and circumstances in life.
Living amongst academics in a smaller town in Phil, I feel that what is missing most are returning OFW’s like you guys, people who are willing to lecture a few hours per week or mentor students, teaching students to challenge ‘the world’. We tried it out several times and taught total b.s. for 15 minutes and then challenged the students why nobody raised questions. The reaction was always the same: You are a professor, so you must be right. Maybe we opened some eyes. Ofcourse, this trick only works a few times and you need a Dean who supports this. But it became clear that “outside visions” are needed. I don’t know how the situation is on other universities, but I think that your resource would be highly valuable.
I could totally imagine what you describe happening, haha! I’ve been described as having a humor peppered with sarcasm in person, and there’s been more than one time when a Filipino eagerly listened to my jokes in total enthrallment, completely missing the point.
In the technology field, especially in the US, I feel like I’ve been a survivor. I got into the enterprise right at the cusp on the tech crash and didn’t experience a career of golden handcuffs like my older GenX colleagues had. Early on, many colleagues felt threatened by Indian consulting firms coming in and securing deals by having iron-clad SLAs despite the fact that they didn’t know what they were doing most of the time. At first, the culture of Indian consultants was very top-down. Even if an Indian consultant knew the solution, he/she didn’t dare speak it out lest their Indian manager was insulted or caused to lose face. Other times the Indians would work (quite hard actually) to implement the solutions directed by their manager, yet being completely wrong to begin with, they just wasted time in their blind obedience.
Fast forward 20 years, now Indian consultants (they are mostly Tamils) have developed more skills and a bit of independence. Most are quite excellent now. I had read about the Tamil Cholas long ago, and how they had an empire. I also knew about the cultural animosity between Tamils in India with other ethnic groups who thought themselves as higher on the old caste system. Upon talking to a few Indian academic friends, they concluded that professionally the Tamils re-learned their pride and independence of the cultural Tamils of the past, while modernizing and updating those learnings.
A long winded way to say, critical thinking and independent thought can be learned, just as blind obedience is learned. There are ways to be respectful to the professor, or any other individual in a position of respect, while still challenging the issue at hand. Filipinos must learn how to walk this fine line, as it is done in Japan, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia and Indonesia. Then again as you said, changes in academic culture needs the support of the Dean and possibly school President. A bit hard I suppose when the few Deans I’ve met are a bit lazy and always take the side of professors who are in the wrong. How to get incompetent people in positions of power out of those positions, I do not know.
The book Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed describes two situations where not speaking truth to power was fatal. One was a Korean Airlines plane losing altitude and a copilot telling the pilot too politely that it was happening, the pilot didn’t notice the indirect hint but the black box later led the airline to teach their personnel to be more assertive towards authority, something not “natural” to Korean culture. A structurally similar case was a woman who went into permanent coma as the nurse sensed she needed intubation but the doctor ignored the nurse – similar consequences were IIRC determined as the husband of the woman in coma sued the hospital – it was in the USA but doctors can be “demigods in white” (German term) anywhere in the world. Harari also noted that systems that lack correcting information flows can fail in more spectacular ways than those that have them, citing the failure of Communism in Eastern Europe. I think a lot of issues in the Philippines might be due to employees too timid to report obvious errors and bosses too full of themselves to listen.
Of course, not wanting to find the truth and do better next time, but covering up for one’s own group while smearing the other group often leads to no lessons learned at all in many cases. Shame/blame rituals like House hearings over there are seldom about doing better next time.
UP Diliman is also a gated community, as per MLQ3 more now than in my youth when there still was open access between UP Balara and Old Balara, and the traffic to Katipunan flowed through the campus.
I could have easily grown up as a member of a professorial dynasty, but certain things that happened pushed my destiny away from that. There was a sense of being in a golden cage, divorced from the real world in all those too theoretical pursuits.
Finally, I don’t regret having left that the preordained path, as it was way too confining. Maybe it was my destiny to eventually land in this blog, sharing ideas with fellow laymen with a finally practical goal instead of being part of a priesthood. Even as that is a role suited for some.
Jail is confining. I observe you are the master of understatement, haha.
Joey did mention that Filipino elites tend to artificially limit who they deal with, whom they marry, and all that. In addition to that, there were those also within the elites whom one was not supposed to talk to, much less believe, for whatever reason.
Joey rightly mentioned that groups talk too little to one another in the Philippines. Others have told me the attitude some raised in the Philippines can have is distrust bordering on paranoia. There are reasons for that, but it ain’t healthy, and I hope that has changed a bit.
Foreigners don’t notice all that initially as everyone is friendly, but these divisions are there. Although yes, reading Joey’s comments and also feeling the lively vibe of kasambahay, one senses a vibrant place outside the self-imposed claustrophobia some of the elites indeed have or had. I recall how, during a high school beach trip to Batangas, a lot of my classmates thought I was a bit crazy for openly talking to some FISHERMEN. Of course, someone raised in a golden cage can be clueless at times. But I did get out of that, fortunately.
Consider also a common misunderstanding of the Filipino opposition, who are too gated, too steeped in Western-facing sensibilities living in their “First World Philippines” enclaves that the opposition often thinks dynasties being all-powerful boogeymen with leaders who know all and can control all. This is really not the case from what I’ve seen. I see dynasties as being often bumbling fools, sometimes with good intentioned programs (no doubt fashioned so the dynasty can parade positive credit upon completion) yet due to being bumbling fools they often fail badly. Sometimes dynasties resort to heavy-handedness and finger pointing, but that seems to be more likely the more they had failed, in order to cover up their own mistakes.
But it seems to me that the most powerful element of dynasty power are their surrogates, who I cheekily term as “interfaces.” Why an “interface?” Well simply put, dynasts are also elites who are removed from the populace. Even populists like Duterte are quite removed, only being trotted out in carefully curated rallies or press conferences. Some, like Duterte, do a better job at making the press who were summoned at odd hours of the night seen like organic events. The truth is that the “information” flows in one direction. So in the day to day, the “interfaces,” i.e. surrogates are the connection to the people. These surrogates provide constituent services, relay complaints that are politically advantageous to be solved or used as attacks, distribute relief goods (ahem, bribes), and so on. I have actually never seen a Filipino politician engage in glad-handing and connecting directly with the people as let’s say American politicians like Bill Clinton were famous for doing.
To understand this, that the seemingly all-powerful dynasties are in fact just another type of elite removed from the people may provide insight on how to defeat them. It is clear that Filipinos, who are often so warm and friendly, crave personal connection. That’s why it’s often hard for me to call it a night and end a session of “inuman.” My friends (and my new friends as of a few hours prior, haha!) insist on moving to the next topic, the next house if we ran out of Red Horse, pulling out random bottles of cheap liquor, rummaging to any bit of food to be grilled over the makeshift fire, until literally there is not a drop of alcohol left or a morsel of food to be found. I’m not saying that the opposition needs to be the personal friend of their constituents, but it would help if the opposition actually develops a network of surrogates to get out there to connect to voters on a more personal level. Surrogates can help spread and reinforce messages, and be the “ears on the ground” to collect more reliable voter sentiment to be added to the political calculus. The collective West, under modern neoliberal technocratic systems, forgot how to engage in basic politics which is building human connections towards a greater political purpose. And it would seem, the Philippines after EDSA also forgot as well as the Philippines strived to better emulate the West. The West, whose political systems on both the left and the right are populated by neoliberal thinking, is starting to wake up to this fact. I wonder if opposition in the Philippines will wake up as well.
The interfaces you mentioned include the likes of Arturo Lascañas, Duterte’s “Mike Ehrmantraut.” Trillanes getting him to come clean was a masterstroke.
But aside from people like that, it seems that the dynasties are far from being as powerful as, for instance, the Mafia used to be in Sicily before the 1990s mass trials under Falcone.
Duterte maybe did make the modern elites, more used to comfort than the veterans of 1986, appear scared, and maybe being ugly, rude, and from Mindanao is enough to scare many.
As for talking to people, that is something the Leni campaign tried to activate too late because most of her people were not on the same page as she has been for decades.
Those continuing to work in Angat Buhay might be at some point or are sowing seeds now.
Yes exactly like Lascañas for Duterte. Unless elites are like Leni Robredo or Isko Moreno who spent a lot of time among the people or rose up from the people, respectively, they need interfaces in order to provide a translation layer between classes. The technology analogue would be for example an interface translating between communications technology like fiber and copper connections. Or in my professional role I liken to being a “glorified secretary” translating between technical and business layers of the enterprise. But even with good interfaces, the politician still needs to at least try to understand his/her constituency, otherwise we have cases like Duterte who after his shine wore off had his coalition break. A more minor example would be the controversies of Erap or even GMA, which by the way seem so quaint and trivial compared to what Philippines politics is struggling through now.
Good to note the Sicilian Mafia trials, which in the American analog would’ve been the anti-Mob/anti-Mafia trials here in the US. These organizations were very organized and powerful, yet ultimately were brought down by prosecutors empowered by the people once the people were collectively tired of being under the thumb of such groups. Likewise for the Philippines, the people hopefully will empower good politicians to do the right thing. I have nothing but respect for PNoy, but even his administration was buoyed by emotion and sentiment. PNoy was never empowered by the people, as empowering representatives and agents of the people requires the people to become a stakeholder in the political project. As I see it, PNoy was portrayed as the last son of the Saint of EDSA and seen more as a magician who should snap his fingers to instantly give the people what they wanted. When he couldn’t because that takes hard, consistent work (which his administration certainly displayed), people turned against PNoy and his coalition broke. Demands without lending a helping hand is not becoming a stakeholder with skin in the game. Something needs to change.
I can’t speak for Leni, but personally I feel that Angat Buhay is a “long game” project to sow the seeds of good governance and sacrifice to the nation in the Filipino consciousness. Most seedlings die or are eaten by foraging birds almost immediately. Yet more become saplings yet can’t find enough water and nutrients, thus wither. But it only takes a few tiny seeds to survive and grow into immense trees. True patriotism requires personal sacrifice. And there is nothing more patriotic than helping our fellow countrymen.
I doubt that it has changed much. It’s hard for me to see any material change from 20 years ago. Still crabs, still no sense of accountability, stil ruled by the entitled, not the competent. It’s bigger populationwise, a little more developed, and one can find more of ones own kind. Still the orphan, insecure and wandering about going nowhere.
Totally agree. Define what you are. Do not define what you are as stuff that you are not.
My girlfriend from years ago took an art class, and one exercise had them drawing a chair upside down by drawing the empty spaces around the chair. It turned out remarkably well. In a way, what we are not is exactly who we are. Now the computer is squeezing us in new dimensions and some are not pretty.
David Gergen died. He mentored a lib who is on Blue Sky. The lib was naturally heartbroken and posted a tribute. A commenter typed in the remark “Eh, who cares. He was mostly Republican anyway.” We are damaged, as a people.
we have a global village but how we perceive our tribe, where we belong has barely budged. Comments such as that would not have been said if among friends or among family. We have othered practically everyone beyond ourselves.
Yes, people are objects in the main. We can send them to gas chambers, no problem.