THANK GOD I’M NOT AMERICAN

Swaying to the symphony of destruction...

On the night of January 15^th, I was at the Cardinal Santos Emergency Room, and across the curtain I could hear some guy scolding the staff for what he felt was ineptness. He was complaining about how he couldn’t reach his US-based doctor, and had to settle for the Filipino kind.

Apparently, the guy was a resident-citizen of the US who had an accident while vacationing here. Confined to a wheelchair for some reason, this American of Chinese-Filipino descent in his 50s or 60s directed profanities at everybody, bragging in English that in the US, the services and the culture were so much better. He said he was relieved that he didn’t have to live in the Philippines, and the way he said it was as an insult towards Filipinos. Unlike us, he was too good to stay in this godforsaken country.

EASY LANG, PARE

For a moment there, I was thinking of actually debating the man. I’d like to imagine that I was like Bruce Lee in ‘The big boss’: being provoked to fight but holding myself back, while childlike music is played in the background.

But in actuality, there just would have been no point to telling him that he was an idiot to think that the USA is the glory of the world.

ESCALATING MARTIAL RULE

As a reader of Agora Financial’s daily ‘5 Minute Forecast,’ I get a hint of just how awful America is becoming, and how the ideals of freedom no longer define it. People are living off the capital accumulated over two centuries, but ever-increasing restrictions on economic and social freedoms are a prelude to this empire’s fall.

Here is a list, for starters, of the horrors experienced by regular Americans in this day and age.

But what got me to write this piece was reading about an insane provision in the MAP-21 (Moving Ahead for Progress) Senate bill requiring ‘black boxes’ in automobiles produced 2015 and beyond (for a naïve writer’s take on the provision, click here).

Oh, I get it, moving ahead for progress. Cars move!

More brilliant names for legislation, and we just might forget the contentious content within these bills, I suppose.

POLITICAL, INTELLECTUAL, MORAL DETERIORATION

How can anyone feel safe about a country where senators ­― who are aware of having to make an impression on people ― actually think that these costly impingements on freedom will appeal to the masses?

I quoted H.L. Mencken recently: Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under. Nothing more true can be said when contemplating the depths to which the US is plunging.

FINAL REMARKS

So thank God I’m not American. Not to say that the Philippines is excellent either, or that Filipinos have any more sense than Americans. People are stupid, everywhere. But I’d rather deal with a coercive entity that has far less capability of tracking my every move. The Philippine government just does not have as much capital to waste to begin with.

In that sense, I’m thankful (but not proud) to be Filipino. 




Below: Kay sarap pala maging Pilipino! I like the song anyway.