Category Archives: Politics

Qwertyman No. 44: Again, America

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 5, 2023

I HAVE a good friend whom we’ll call Ted, a Fil-Am who retired a few years ago as a ranking officer in the US Navy. He was in town recently on some family business, and like we always do when circumstances permit, we had dinner and a good chat just before he and his wife flew back home.

Most of us have friends if not relatives in America, and all of this would be pretty routine except for one fact: I’m a flaming liberal, and Ted is a Trump Republican. Over the fifteen years or so that we’ve known each other—well before Donald Trump entered the picture—we’ve been aware of those political differences, but rather than politely skirt them in our conversation like many sane people would, we feel comfortable enough with each other to talk at length about them, and even exchange some friendly barbs.

Much of that level of comfort comes from my belief that, in his own way, Ted sincerely and deeply loves his country—and his ancestral home, the Philippines. He’s smart, curious, eager to learn and understand. In his former naval job and as a private citizen, Ted—who was born in the US but spent some of his formative years in his family’s hometown in Bicol, and speaks some of the local language aside from Filipino—has visited the Philippines as often as he can, trying his best to improve relations between the two countries on a personal level. (On this last visit, for example, he also took part in a ceremony to celebrate the commissioning of the USS Telesforo Trinidad, named after an Aklan-born Filipino petty officer who was awarded the Medal of Honor for bravely rescuing his shipmates from an explosion aboard their ship in 1915.)

Given his naval background—his dad joined the Navy in the 1970s—I’m not surprised that Ted is a Republican, like many military Fil-Ams are. (One notable exception is a mutual friend of ours, the former West Pointer, Army Ranger, and diplomat Sonny Busa, as staunch a Democrat as they come, and a key figure behind Filipino veterans’ causes in Washington.) His support for Trump despite the man’s many failings continues to mystify me, but I’m guessing that in his calculations, Ted chose to cast his lot with the man best positioned to thwart the liberal agenda. That includes items that Ted and other Republicans feel extremely uncomfortable with, such as what he calls the “celebration, beyond just acceptance” of transgender rights, and their judicial enforcement.

Perhaps with any other person, my liberal hair-trigger would have fired away at such comments with a fusillade of counter-arguments, but with Ted I find more value in listening and trying to understand a certain mindset, as different as some of its premises may be from mine. In our last conversation, what Ted had to say was profoundly disturbing. I’m paraphrasing here, but essentially it was this: “America is a mess. People can’t talk civilly to each other anymore. When I say I’m a Republican, people instantly assume I’m a racist.” To which I said that people at the top like Trump (and our own version of him here) greenlighted that kind of boorish discourse, with additional pressure brought on by right-wing militias armed with AR-15s. We talked about January 6 (which he opined was not an insurrection) and the Second Amendment (which I said seemed sacrosanct in American politics). “You have cancel culture,” he sighed, “to which the other guy responds by going bam bam bam!” He was deploring, not endorsing it, trying to get a fix on his own society’s ailments. “It’s in our DNA,” he said glumly about guns.

Thankfully Ted and I always have other things to talk about—like the Philippines, in which Ted said he feels much more relaxed than his own country. He knows how worked up I can get about politics and our own leadership (or the lack thereof), but as far as he could see on this trip, I and my fellow Filipinos (including those he met in Bicol) were just chugging along. “We’re survivors,” I said, “and we’ll do what it takes to get by from day to day.”

That brings me to another friend, “Tony,” who messaged me out of the blue the other day, obviously distraught by the Senate vote on the Maharlika Fund bill and asking if it was time for him and his family to leave the country, given how we seem to be back on the road to political plunder and economic ruin. It wasn’t just a rhetorical question; he was really thinking about it. Here’s what I said:

“Hi, Tony—If it’s a realistic option, I don’t think anyone can or should blame you for leaving or wanting to leave. We have only one life and we have to make the most of it in all ways. Politics is important, but it’s only one of many other factors that define who we are—love, art, family, and faith, among others. That said, it can have a way of complicating our lives and life choices. 

“Moving to the US has also been an option for me for some time now. Our only daughter lives in California and has been wanting to petition us. But my wife and I have been strongly reluctant to move there, although we visit almost every year and are familiar and comfortable with living in the US, where I spent five years as a grad student. We are artists, and our work is culture-bound. We feel appreciated here, within our small circle of friends. However good we may be, in America we would be marginalized; we don’t want to become an American minority and deal with all the issues that will come with it. And America has become much less inviting now, with all the intolerance and racial violence provoked by Trumpism. 

“So unless it were a matter of life and death, we’ll stay here, despite the present dispensation and many more aggravations like the Maharlika Fund to come in the years ahead, because I feel that my continued survival and success will be my best way of fighting back. Having survived martial law, we can survive this as well. Everyone’s circumstances are different, and again you should feel free to find your place where you can best live with your family and secure their future. Nothing is ever final anyway, and you can always come back. Follow your heart and conscience, and you should be all right, wherever you may go. All best!”

(Image from bu.edu)

Qwertyman No. 43: Perhaps It Takes a Fire

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Qwertyman for May 29, 2023

THE WORST fire I ever witnessed was that of the Family Clinic hospital near Quiapo in Manila in 1972. I was a police reporter for the Philippines Herald, on the graveyard shift at the MPD HQ, when the three-alarm alert came in and we sped out in our jeep to the fire. Flames were billowing out of the upper floors and people were on the roof when we got there, and soon, sickest of all, I began to hear the thuds of bodies falling onto the pavement, of those who could no longer bear the heat and chose the only other terminal option. When I called the night editor to tell him what I was looking at, he had an additional assignment for me: “Count up the bodies, we need a figure.” I spent the early morning making the rounds of the nearby hospitals and their morgues, seeing up close what fire can do to a human body, the weeping of burnt flesh. I was eighteen, a college dropout eager to work; that night was worth a year in journalism school for me.

Many decades later, early in the morning of April 1, 2016, I was playing poker with some friends when I got a text message from another night owl that the UP Faculty Center was burning. Ever the skeptic, my first thought was that it was the first of what would be many April Fool’s Day jokes, but then other messages confirmed the terrible news. I dropped my cards and drove back to the campus—where I also live, by the way—behind the blare of firetrucks speeding to the scene of the fire, their loudness and haste almost superfluous in the stillness of the night. 

I arrived in time to catch the sight of my office burning—the whole first floor, our whole department, was burning. Strangely at that moment I felt no pain, no sense of loss; I didn’t flail around or throw up my hands in anguish. I suppose that was a form of shock, the way our brain throws a cold, wet blanket around us to insulate us from the heat, to keep us immobilized and therefore safe in the face of catastrophe. Unavoidably my mind began taking inventory of what was in my room—books, paintings, the best student papers of thirty-some years, twenty first-edition copies of my book Penmanship I had saved for its special paper, a computer, flotsam and jetsam from an academic life. There were many precious and irreplaceable pieces in that office, for sure, but again strangely, as soon as I remembered them, I said goodbye; I realized that I was muttering what amounted to a prayer.

Two days later, when the smoke had cleared, I stepped into the gutted building and took a video with my phone. The embers were still steaming beneath my feet. I confirmed with my own eyes the finality of things. Everything but the shards of a ceramic cup was gone—and my book of stories, prettily charred around the pages as though for some theatrical presentation. My writer’s mind was compensating, salvaging scraps of beauty from the crushing loss. That comes to us like second nature; we want to give our grief exquisite form, hoping for meaning and consolation.

There is something about a fire, a compelling majesty, that Filipinos instinctively respond to—not necessarily to help, which is beyond most of us, but to watch and be spellbound by. Where is the child who didn’t jump out of bed and dash into the street at the shouts of “Sunog!”, followed by the festive clangor of alarms and firetrucks? Nighttime fires are especially dramatic, as the sky glows orange and the smoke curls into your nostrils. You are aware that something terrible is happening to someone, and the next morning the news will carry the grim details: a family trapped, a mother curled over her baby, a son who had just graduated the week before. We feel sorry for these victims, while being secretly relieved that we ourselves were spared. Perhaps what attracts us to fire is its anticipation of The End, with science assuring us that the sun will scorch the earth in its last embrace and religion threatening yet more heat for miscreant souls.

When I heard about the fire at the Manila Central Post Office building last week and began seeing the pictures coming online, I reacted with the same stunned silence, trying to absorb the enormity of it all, while morbidly, guiltily, indulging my fascination with fire. It was epic theater—the inferno raging behind and through the neoclassical columns that had withstood a war. I should have been mourning the loss of hand- and typewritten letters—rarities themselves in these days of email—and of other valuables in that building (oh, the stamp collection of the Bureau of Posts!), but my mind drew me back to my childhood, when my father was working at what was then the Department of Public Works, Transportation, and Communications, which was housed in that building.

I must have been just five or six when my dad brought me there to his mezzanine office; I recall rocking on his wooden swivel chair, and playing with the double-tipped red-blue pencils on his desk. At lunch, we crossed an inner courtyard to the cafeteria. My father was just a clerk then, but to me, he seemed like the boss of the place, and I wanted to be like him, seated behind a big table with a pen in hand (in my sixties, I would buy a similar swivel chair). 

Editorials will and should be written about the MCPO building’s loss and for its reconstruction. Explosive words like “arson,” “heritage,” “accountability,” and “negligence” will fly up in the air. For a while, like the fire itself, they will consume us, hold us in thrall, until they flicker out and we return to our daily business, our outrage expended.

Once again we find ourselves loving what is gone too late. But perhaps it takes a fire to awaken love and memory, and to teach us important albeit bitter lessons about impermanence, and thus the need to care and to give value while we can. Whether started by accident or by diabolical intent, fires remind us that we are not what we accumulate but what we regret losing, and struggle to rebuild and recover.

(MCPO photo from philstar.com)

Qwertyman No. 41: Living up to “Honorable”

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 15, 2023

I’VE BEEN following the saga of the Hon. George Santos, the freshman Republican congressman from New York, who’s been caught in a tangle of lies he made about his education and employment on his résumé, and who’s now been charged in federal court on 13 counts from wire fraud and money laundering to theft of public funds and making materially false statements to the House of Representatives. So brazen have been this young politico’s prevarications that even his fellow Republicans—many of whom had forced themselves to swallow Donald Trump’s gargantuan lies about the 2020 election—have called on Santos to resign, if only to spare their party from the prolonged embarrassment of nursing a self-confessed falsifier in their ranks.

Now this is what gets me: Santos had earlier admitted to having fabricated about four-fifths of his CV, an act he called “résumé embellishment” which involved a “poor choice of words.” He said he was sorry—but then just as quickly insisted that he was no criminal and intended to serve the rest of his term, and even run for re-election. He boldly reappeared in Congress—still dressed like the preppy he never was—and acted like nothing happened. Despite the ostracism, he stood his ground, knowing that under its rules, the US Congress couldn’t kick out one of its own—even someone convicted of a crime, unless that crime was treason.

The story fascinates me because it illustrates the utter shamelessness and disregard for the truth that now seems par for the course in politics, and not just in America. The fact that many of his colleagues found Santos’ behavior reprehensible offers hope that some people still know right from wrong. The other fact, that Santos refuses to take responsibility for his actions and resign—and that some people continue to support him nonetheless—reminds us of how degraded the idea of “honor” has become in contemporary society. 

Social scientists tell us that “honor” has evolved over the centuries from the chivalric, even aristocratic notion of responsibility to a community—think of a hero undertaking a noble sacrifice, even at the cost of one’s life, for the common good—to something much more individualized and internalized, to one’s own sense of respect, dignity, and integrity. 

I’d argue even further that for most people today, “honor” has become a much more elastic term, one that allows for a range of justifiable behaviors. I’ll give you an example: would you rat on an officemate, perhaps even your best friend, who’s also your chief competitor for that AVP position? You could, and you would—if you convince yourself that becoming that AVP is a more important honor, something your family and circle of friends would appreciate. This is the difference, as one scholar noted, between “internal” and “external” honor, between integrity and reputation. If we equate, as many might, “reputation” with popularity, with a positive public perception of your image, then it’s easy to see how and why many people find integrity expedient and expendable.

These thoughts ran through my mind when I learned of the recent passing of former Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario, and read the many eulogies and encomiums following his death. All of them spoke of him as a man of honor, someone who fought for his country, stood by his word, and conducted himself with dignity. I had only occasional brushes with him, but can agree from those encounters with what was said. Some people communicate their integrity instantly, even wordlessly, just by their very manner. 

On the other hand, there are people who, by their swagger and arrogance (often a cover for some deeply felt inferiority), immediately invite mistrust if not repugnance. I’m reminded of a man who, from his lofty perch, drenched the good secretary with vitriol, accusing him of being “not a Filipino, you don’t look like a Filipino,” and threatening to “pour coffee on your face.” To which the diplomat merely reiterated the need to defend the country’s interests and to beware of the duplicity of our aggressive neighbor. 

The sad thing is how many Pinoys laughed along with that sneering man and thought that he was doing and saying the right thing. For years, he had fed them a diet of vulgarity, as if to reinforce the idea that that was the Filipino’s natural state and that he was one of them and spoke their language. In fact, he was cultivating and normalizing their basest instincts, an easier thing to do than the nobler alternative: appealing to their better selves, to what they could yet be. I see this innate goodness and decency, this desire for self-betterment, in Filipinos every day, even among the poorest of us. Overwhelmingly, this is still who and what we are. Those who believe otherwise debase only themselves.

But we are short on exemplary leadership—on leaders who value honor and integrity, on leaders who can feel shame, on leaders who can curb their profligacy out of respect for the poverty of the many, on leaders who will be genuinely missed and mourned by the masses when they depart. Our role models have become so few—and our expectations of our officials have become so low—that many of us have forgotten what honor truly means, assuming simply and tragically that it comes with wealth and power. The word “Honorable” is too easily affixed to certain high offices. Are they truly so?

I may be aghast at Rep. George Santos’ behavior in New York, but who knows how many lies are buried in our politicians’ CV’s, how many “résumé embellishments” and “poor choices of words” we have had to swallow?

And then again there’s a part of me that says, forget the résumé; it’s never been a trustworthy predictor of moral intelligence. Ability is the most basic we should expect of our “honorables.” Living up to their titles lies at the other extreme. But still I have to wonder: if a George Santos happened here, would he resign? 

Qwertyman No: 40: Teaching History

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Qwertyman for Monday, May 8, 2023

I HAVE a subscription to the New York Times, which I enjoy for its features and commentary as much as its news coverage, and the other day my attention was piqued by a small headline: “It’s Not Just Math and Reading: US History Scores for 8th Graders Plunge.”

According to the article, recent test scores reveal that young Americans (about 13-14 years old for eighth-graders) have become much less knowledgeable about their history and civics over the past decade—with 40 percent scoring “below basic” and only 13 percent ranked as “proficient.” 

I immediately wondered how our students would score given similar tests. Would they be able to answer even simple questions about why Ferdinand Magellan sailed to the Philippines, what prompted Filipinos to revolt against Spain, why the Americans occupied us, what led to our involvement in the Second World War, and what martial law and EDSA were all about? I’ll probably be safe in my prediction that they would score dismally, from what I’ve seen in my own classes in UP (yes, in UP), where I’ve been dismayed to find a yawning ignorance of history and literature among my students, supposedly among the best in the country. 

Don’t get me wrong: these are bright, idealistic kids, desirous of all things good for their people and their families. They perform well in class and will likely succeed in whatever career lies ahead of them. But when I ask a roomful of English majors if they know or have read NVM Gonzalez and only a couple of hands go up, I get worried. When I ask when or what year the Americans arrived to conquer us and I get strange answers like “1945,” I get worried. 

However shocked we may profess to be, we can’t blame the students. In 2014, following the passage of the Enhanced Education Act of 2013 or the K-12 Law, the Department of Education issued Order No. 20, Series of 2014, effectively removing Philippine History as a high school subject and subsuming it as an “integrated subtopic” under “Asian Studies,” supposedly to provide students with a wider global perspective. The idea sounds nifty, but as many educators have since pointed out, its practical effect has been to dilute the teaching of Philippine history to the point of oblivion. The result is that we have young Filipinos with no knowledge of the most basic facts and issues of their past, and no appreciation of how that past brought us to where we are today.

That vacuum has been an open invitation to misinformation and historical distortion, the stock-in-trade of political propagandists, trolls, and spinmeisters. It’s become much easier to sell myths like a golden age under martial law to impressionable youngsters who were never told or taught the truth. Not surprisingly, Order No. 20 has been attacked by its critics as a means to lobotomize the youth and to render them more susceptible to alternative narratives (aka fake news) concerning our history. 

And yes, I have to acknowledge that all this began under the late President Noynoy Aquino, a champion of K-12, whom I prefer to believe had no such nefarious motives in mind, as he and his family would have had little to gain by erasing history. But the policy was upheld and sustained by the following administration, with DepEd Secretary Leonor Briones arguing strenuously that History (including our martial-law experience) was being taught in Grade 6 under Araling Panlipunan, and again in high school as a component of Asian and World History.

Given the current DepEd’s expressed desire to review K-12, it might be a good time to test how effective that policy has been: just how much Philippine History are our high school students learning and retaining? How much should they know by the time they get to college, where thornier issues such as nationalism, agrarian reform, and foreign policy will be threshed out in all their nuances?

Long before these questions arose, it was a common complaint among students and even teachers that our problem with History was how badly it was taught, often as a collection of names and dates rather than a coherent narrative (which I must say I sometimes wonder about, fact often being stranger and messier than fiction). We generally agree that History should involve more reasoning than rote memorization. But as the New York Times reports, “That emphasis can contribute to a troubling lack of background knowledge,” with experts observing a “rapid and very significant decline in what students know about history and geography—like the fact that Africa is a continent, not a country.” So the basics of names, dates, and places remain important—getting the facts straight before getting into more complicated arguments.

It’s even more troubling to note that on top of this decline in historical knowledge and awareness among young Americans, there’s now a ham-fisted effort from conservative politicians to purge school curricula of what they see as “woke” content—subjects that have challenged the longstanding impression of America as a nation forged by whites. Governors like Florida’s Ron DeSantis—eager to present themselves as the flag-bearers of political and moral rectitude—have supported moves to eliminate African-American and LGBTQ studies from the curriculum. Others have called for banning books that threaten their view of traditional America, including books titled “The Infinite Moment of Us” (a young adult novel about love and sex) and “How to Be an Antiracist” (a nonfiction book about racism and ethnicity). This reminded me of how some Philippine state universities, not too long ago, went on their own book-banning spree, on some silly suspicion that books by such authors as National Artist Bienvenido Lumbera were “subversive.”

The New York Times piece came with an irresistible teaser: a brief five-question, multiple-choice history quiz for readers to test themselves on how well they know American history. I scored four out of five (failing a question about post-Civil War reconstruction)—not too bad, I thought, for a guy living seven thousand miles away. But then I come from a generation schooled on American textbooks, who know American history and geography better than many Americans. That’s a topic for another column.

In the meanwhile, let’s ask ourselves: how well do we know our history, and how important is that knowledge to understanding our present and shaping our future? Is “Maria Clara and Ibarra” pointing the way forward?

Qwertyman No. 37: Time for Winter-Melon Soup

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 17, 2023

AS I SHOULD have expected, last week’s Qwertyman piece on a recent visit I made to Taiwan as an ordinary tourist provoked a small firestorm from readers who berated me for my “ignorance” of the “one-China policy,” because I had described Taiwan as a “country” in my column.

I replied politely to these objections, explaining that (1) while I was aware that our government, among most others in the world, subscribed to the one-China policy, I wasn’t the government, and (2) that “country” to this writer was more of a state of mind, if not of fact (and if we have to be persnickety about fact, then consider that Wales and Scotland are accepted as countries within the United Kingdom). 

One of my reactors was gracious enough to yield the point and leave me be, but another insisted that I had China all wrong—that it had no unfriendly intentions toward the Philippines, and that its occupation of what we hold to be our islands in the South China Sea was a mere enforcement of its historic rights to those territories. “Absolutely no intentions of invading the Philippines?” Hasn’t that already begun?

My column also prompted some reflections from an old friend and comrade in the fight against the martial-law dictatorship. Commenting on China’s threats to bring Taiwan under its heel, by force if necessary, my friend remarked: “It’s hard to comprehend how the leaders of big, powerful China could feel justified in unleashing death and destruction against the people of small but proud Taiwan, a country that poses no threat, and against fellow Chinese of near identical racial and cultural origin. After all, isn’t this the China that I, and many of us, not too long ago, emulated as the model for ‘liberating’ our own country, and whose proletarian ideology we embraced as the formula for ushering a new and better age for humanity? How is this a manifestation of Mao’s ringing slogan to ‘Serve the People?’

“But then we’re seeing the same perversion of once lofty ideals in the current behavior of Russia, the progenitor of ‘egalitarian socialism,’ now immersed in a barbaric project to decimate the people of Ukraine, members of their own Slavic family. Yes, Putin doesn’t call himself socialist but it was this system that trained and tutored him, and whose humiliation he’s trying to undo…. However, in light of the current behaviors of Russia and China, the two foremost homes of the Marxist experiment, and in light of the incontrovertible failure of Joma Sison’s project in our country, we who dabbled in this belief system need to step back and take a good hard look.”

I thanked my friend for his ruminations, which I completely identify with. Indeed, as fervent if naïve activists in the 1970s, we looked up to Mao’s China as a beacon of socialist virtue. Today’s Red-taggers would have fulfilled their month’s quota with the likes of me. I kept Mao’s “Little Red Book” in my shirt pocket, and could spout quotations like “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun” and “A revolution is not a dinner party, or writing an essay, or painting a picture, or doing embroidery; it cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous, restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overthrows another.” 

On my first visit to China in 1987, our guide was surprised that I could sing “Sailing the Seas Depends Upon the Helmsman” and that I wanted to visit Mao’s tomb. “What do you want to visit him for?” our guide asked in consternation. “He killed my father during the Cultural Revolution!” 

In various capacities as a tourist, a journalist, a writer, and academic, I have visited China many times since that first encounter, and have seen how its people—honest, hardworking, hopeful people like us—have managed to survive and prosper under a challenging succession of regimes and global conditions. I observed how the government was intent on modernizing its economic and physical landscape, razing down whole rows of hutongs or old communities in cities to make way for swanky new high-rises. On one visit to Shanghai, I couldn’t resist noting the irony of how the historic site of first National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party—a sacred shrine of that ideology—was located in the heart of what has become one of the city’s glitziest and most upscale districts, Xintiandi, in close proximity to a posh French restaurant.

I don’t think anyone can fault China for its transformation into an economic powerhouse, or even deny that its strong central planning was a key factor in making that happen, especially under Deng Xiaoping. What I’m sad about (and this statement will probably cost me my next Chinese visa, but no matter) is how this China has remained a tyrant to its own people and a bully to its neighbors—something that it doesn’t need to be, except to flex the almighty power of the CCP. 

If it wants to, it could yet become an example of a confident and benign socialism—something the CCP will never dare to embrace, for fear of seeming soft, especially in the face of American, Japanese, Korean, and yes, Taiwanese resistance. I can’t help thinking that while there may be “one China” in whatever configuration the politicians propose, there are indeed two Chinas in our hearts—the one we have been historically and culturally enmeshed with and want to love, and the other that won’t rest until we kowtow to its might.

And before the pro-Beijing troll machine springs into action, let me say this again: I separate governments and regimes from the people they theoretically represent and should be serving. (We also have to be reminded that there are significant political factions in both Beijing and Taipei, and that Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang were no angels when they “liberated” Formosa from the Japanese, only to take it over.)

I have written favorably (and critically when I had to) about both China and Taiwan without any sponsorship from either entity’s government. There are powerful lobbies for both sides right here in this country—one even offered to send me on an “observation tour,” which I gently declined, aware of the political subtext; I would go, I said, on my own dime, and I did. (Which is not to say I will refuse “observation tours” of the south of France, Tahiti, the Nordic fjords, the Patagonian forests, and other bucket-list destinations not likely to invade the Philippines.)

To Beijing’s and Taipei’s cheerleaders, chill out and enjoy the scenery; some calming winter-melon soup might help to keep the vitriol down.

Qwertyman No. 34: America the Paradox

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 27, 2023

“AMERICA THE Paradox” was the title of an undergraduate paper I wrote on Carlos Bulosan for my class in Philippine literature, in which I observed—as many had done before me—that Bulosan felt deeply conflicted by the two faces that he kept seeing in America. On the one hand, it was the mother with open arms, calling out to the world’s orphans, and accepting of all brave and enterprising spirits. On the other hand, it was the hard fist of racism, viciously averse to all complexions other than white. 

Bulosan arrived in Seattle in 1930, a time of great economic turmoil, and he soon found himself fighting for the exploited poor, becoming a labor organizer and writing radical poetry. He would remain poor for the rest of his short life, despite achieving some degree of literary celebrity following the success of his semi-autobiographical 1946 novel America Is in the Heart. He died of tuberculosis in Seattle in 1956, never having been able to come home. I was so moved by Bulosan’s travails that I gifted our daughter with a signed first edition of his novel as her wedding present, and paid my respects at his grave when I visited Seattle some years ago.

Last Thursday, March 23rd, I joined several hundred other guests for dinner at the Sofitel to celebrate a joyful event: the 75th anniversary of the Fulbright program in the Philippines. Over that period, the Fulbright program, which selects and sends scholars from all over the world to study in the US, has sponsored over 3,000 Filipino scholars and 1,000 American scholars coming to the Philippines. The Philippines—through the Philippine-American Educational Foundation (PAEF)—has the longest-running Fulbright program in the world, dating back to March 23, 1948, hence last week’s big commemoration.

It isn’t hard to see why Sen. J. William Fulbright believed that such a scholarship program was a good idea then, with the Cold War brewing and America projecting itself as the champion of the Free World. For the Philippines, it was a continuation of the prewar practice of sending pensionados to the US, thereby ensuring a cohort of Filipino intellectuals and administrators sympathetic to the American cause.

I myself went out on a Fulbright twice—in 1986, for my MFA at Michigan and then my PhD at Wisconsin, and then in 2014 as a senior scholar at George Washington University. It would be an understatement to say that the Fulbright—especially that first five-year stint—was life-changing for me. The learning was exhilarating, but the living—away from home and family—was fraught with pain.

Still, we Fulbrighters had it much better than Bulosan. Most of our expenses were borne by the American taxpayer (although, because of a budget crunch, I had to teach and also to work part-time as a cook, cashier, and busboy at a Chinese takeout). Our return home was guaranteed (indeed, legally mandated). Most of us enjoyed the hospitality and support of new Fil-Am and American friends. 

Although here and there we had the inevitable brush with racism, we saw America in the best possible light, as a source of knowledge and of the democratic spirit. Arriving in Michigan just after EDSA 1986, I too was seen as living proof of the long and beneficial reach of America’s cultural influence: I could speak English like they did, and (mild boast coming) could write at least as well if not better than they did. 

I recall how, in one Shakespeare class, I was the only one who could explain the difference between “parataxis” and “hypotaxis,” and how, in another class, our professor wrote up a long sentence from one of my stories on the board to demonstrate “Jose’s perfect command of punctuation.” But all that was presumably because of my Americanized education—not even in America, but in the Philippines, where we had seemingly prepared all our lives to come to America, only to find ourselves more indoctrinated than many Americans. (I had memorized all the state capitals in grade school in La Salle, confounding my American friends at Trivial Pursuit.)

Ironically, I also belonged to the First Quarter Storm generation that railed against “American imperialism,” that learned about our colonial exploitation and about the primacy of American self-interest in its transactions with the world. We rallied at the US Embassy against the war in Vietnam and against the US bases in the Philippines. We denounced Ferdinand Marcos as an American puppet, and saw Washington’s hand in every instance of political mayhem around the globe. Where did all that militancy go? Was a scholarship to Hollywood enough to negate these accusations?

Seated at that Fulbright dinner and listening to the speakers extolling our special relationship with America, I thought about Bulosan, the FQS, my Fulbright experience, our daughter in California, my teaching of American literature, and such recent issues as EDCA and the Chinese presence in our territorial waters to sort out my emotions. 

The America that had been such a paradox for Bulosan remains, in many ways, a chimera for us today—speaking with moral authority against the Russian invasion of Ukraine, and yet still enamored in many places of Trumpian demagoguery; espousing peace and human rights while allowing assault rifles on its streets; and promoting education and global literacy while hosting the world’s biggest engines of disinformation. We want to believe in the America that believed in us, although the cynical can argue that “believed” should be taken as “invested,” of whose efficacy this column offers ample proof. 

In the end, I reminded myself of what I tell my students: (1) The American government and the American people are not necessarily the same; (2) The American people are many peoples; there is no single, monolithic America; (3) We study America and its literature not to become Americans, but to be better Filipinos; and (4) We often take the terms “America” and “American” in an ideal or idealized sense, a compound of expectations and aspirations shaped by Abraham Lincoln, Hollywood, cable TV, and Spotify.

We went to America not just to study there, but to study America, and that study continues. 

(Image from pacforum.org)

Qwertyman No. 33: The Gunman

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 20, 2023

(This story may seem inspired by recent events, but it has nothing to do with the facts of specific cases.)

CPL. ELMER Kabigting heard the hornbill minutes before he spotted it on his PVAR, a kind of a honk followed by a murmur. He knew the sound from the long days and nights he had spent in forests, an almost hourly reminder of time passing, until human footfalls and gunfire broke the spell and sent the birds and monkeys scattering overhead. Through his gunsight, Kabigting watched the hornbill hop from branch to branch until it found just the right one to perch on, peering down at the landscape over its bright red mouth. 

He tried to imagine what the bird could see. A scientist he had befriended in Bukidnon once told him that birds saw colors that humans could not, and that their eyes worked well in the low light of dawn and dusk, enabling them to hunt while other animals stumbled around or waited for things to clarify. The corporal wondered if a gunsight could be made that could see like a bird. The sun was beginning to drop on the horizon, and in an hour it would be hard to tell one van from another, especially if they came in a convoy—not that it mattered, given what he had to do, but something in him revolted at the thought of unnecessary waste. There were things he did not care to see in sharp detail.

Even without pulling the trigger, Kabigting felt the power of the weapon in his hand. The Pneumatic Valve and Rod Rifle was almost new, and if he had had it in Marawi, he might not have lost so many friends. It was supposed to be superior in so many ways—less recoil, less muzzle rise, better accuracy, lower maintenance—and he had heard that it was favored by the Special Forces, which made him feel like he had been promoted, using it today. He didn’t ask Sgt. Galicia where the cache had come from; even while in service, the sergeant had been remarkably resourceful, finding extra rations, gin, and cigarettes for the men, bringing tears even to Capt. Reyes’ eyes. Reyes was an academy graduate who was honest to the core and whose men rolled their eyes when he spoke of “courage, integrity, loyalty” and had them kneel in prayer, but even he could not and did not ask Galicia to stop what he was doing.

Kabigting turned his eye from the hornbill to the road. He knew that, a kilometer up, where the road ascended from a deep valley, a spotter was waiting to let him—let them—know by radio that the convoy was coming. There were six of them, three on either side, two with grenade launchers, the last men a couple of hundred meters down, a gauntlet through which no one would pass alive. Elmer knew three of those men, Marawi veterans like himself whom Sgt. Galicia had located in the bars and slums of Ozamis and Dipolog, people who no longer had much to lose but everything to gain for themselves and their families. 

“What if we get caught—or if we die?” asked one of the six, when they had gathered together to discuss the operation in a carinderia in Dapitan.

“Then your families get everything. They’ll be set for life. If you don’t talk,” said Sgt. Galicia.

“We might be better off dead,” said another, with a chuckle. “If we die, we can’t talk.”

“I don’t have a family,” said yet another man, stubbing his cigarette onto his plate and burning a scar onto the cheap plastic. 

“Then we’ll divide your share among the others,” said the sergeant. “They’re your family now.” The other men laughed but the ex-soldier remained glum. He was one of those whom Elmer knew, and Elmer knew as well that the man’s wife had left with their children after he had broken her nose once too often. 

Elmer thought about his own family—his mother, his wife, and their five children back in Kabankalan, the youngest not even six, the eldest a high school senior who wanted to be a doctor. His daughter’s ambition made him laugh—they couldn’t possibly afford to send her to medical school—but he stopped laughing when she told him that it was for her to cure him if he ever got shot. He did come home once with a bandaged head, telling the children he had been grazed in a firefight with rebels, but he had been roundly bashed in a brawl with fellow soldiers over a card game debt. It wasn’t long after that incident that he found himself on the street and out of uniform, along with the sergeant and several of his buddies, after a local merchant complained to the governor—who happened to be his cousin—that a group of soldiers had broken into his warehouse and had carted away two truckloads of rice.

Yes—Elmer had admitted to his superiors—they had taken the rice, but everyone knew that it had been smuggled in from overseas, so who was the bigger thief? But nobody heard him, Elmer thought, they weren’t even listening.

So when Sgt. Galicia called for a gang of the boys to get together for some jobs, it was easy for Elmer to convince himself that they were still at war, except that this time the enemy was whoever Galicia said was as bad as the rice merchant, whose children went to private schools in Manila and whose wife served as the hermana mayor in the town fiesta. Their first target was the merchant himself, for no money but just to exercise their trigger fingers and feel good about themselves. This was followed by hits on a couple of rural banks, a vice-mayor, a radio commentator, and a regional bureau director, and despite some touch-and-go moments, it all became more routine, especially as the money flowed in and they began buying motorcycles, fishing boats, flat-screen TVs, and smartphones for the kids. Even Elmer’s daughter began to think he was serious when he teased her about taking up plastic surgery, so she could fix his cauliflower ears. 

But those targets were easy and never shot back. Today was going to be different—an armed convoy of a van and two SUVs, including a police escort. They said the vice-governor was going to be in the van in the middle. They knew he preferred to ride the HiAce instead of his armored Montero when he was with his family. Elmer had seen them in church once, at a friend’s wedding. The older boy had a cowlick in his hair. He heard the hornbill’s call again. His radio crackled. The corporal did not want to see whatever the bird could.

Qwertyman No. 32: This Business of Titles

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 13, 2023

THERE’S BEEN a lot of buzz online recently about the use of titles like “Doctor” and “PhD,” a topic of inflammatory interest to Pinoys for many of whom those extra letters before and after one’s name can mean everything between abject inconsequence on the one hand and celestial esteem on the other.

While nobody seems to question why public officials from the president down to the barangay kagawad use their titles with gleeful abandon, academic degrees—which are arguably harder to earn honestly than votes—provoke much hand-wringing, notably among academics themselves who like to worry about things that would make ordinary people happy.

To put it simply, some people like using their titles, and others don’t. Those who do believe that they deserve it, having worked their posteriors off to gain them. Those who don’t apparently think that it’s unseemly to earn an exalted degree like a PhD and then to wear it on your T-shirt so nobody forgets to address you by your honorific, “Doctor.” The only “PhDs” I know who are above all this are those who got them for being, say, a generous taipan, and who feel elated to be called “Dr.” for the rest of their lives.

As it happens, I have a PhD in English, which I got more than thirty years ago from the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, after my Master of Fine Arts from the University of Michigan. As soon as I say that, I feel like I’m boasting, which I suppose I am. But I only brought it up to make the point that, well, I hardly ever bring it up. Nobody ever calls me “Dr. Dalisay” or “Prof. Dalisay” except in an academic or professional context (they do call me “the Prof” at my favorite poker hangout, where I play with guys going by monikers like Daga, Todas, Hot Sauce, and Paos). I pull it out now and then when I suspect it will enhance my credibility and maybe even my paycheck by 200 percent. But most of the time I’m quite happy to be just “Butch” or “Sir Butch” (or “Ho-zay” when I’m in the US, to save myself the long explanation for why my father Jose Sr. chose to call his first-born “Butch”). 

So for me, it’s entirely situational, and no one should be made to feel immodest if he or she insists on being called “Doctor,” as Dr. Jill Biden does. The only caveat I’ll make is that, among writers, nobody seriously gives a hoot about academic degrees, unless you plan on teaching, which is really what the PhD is for, practically speaking. In UP these days, particularly in the sciences, you can’t teach for long without a PhD—the idea being that going through a doctoral program pushes you beyond your practical experience and innate talent toward some appreciation of theory and into research. 

In the Philippines, for many reasons, it’s still easier for teachers in many universities to become professors before finishing their PhDs, and so there’s a tendency to value the “Dr.” above the “Prof.”—which is not the case in UP and in most foreign universities, where the title “Professor” (meaning a full professor and not an assistant or associate professor) remains one’s ultimate career goal. The presumption is that a PhD should be an entry-level qualification for higher teaching, an early step in one’s ascent to full professorship. (Which reminds me to say that there’s no such degree as “PhD cand.” or “MA units”, as I’ve seen on some CVs—you’ve either done it or you haven’t.)

Why do we fuss over these titles? Because, in a society that offers few material rewards and consolations for academics, they can assume inordinate importance, and invest their holders with an intellectual and moral authority that demands or at least deserves respect—never mind that academia, like the rest of our institutions, is home to any number of crackpots and charlatans in togas, as corruptible as every other traffic cop. Let’s not forget that Hitler’s propaganda minister, Joseph Goebbels, had a PhD in Drama from the University of Heidelberg, and that PhDs from Stanford and Harvard, among others, greased the wheels of Marcos’ martial law.

But lest we think we’re the only ones seemingly obsessed by the trappings of imagined power, there’s at least one other country more retentive down there when it comes to academic titles, perhaps for the opposite reason—not because they’re rare, but because they’re part of such a long and prolific tradition that an elaborate hierarchy has to be put in place. 

That place is Germany—where, until 2008, and thanks to a Nazi-era law, you couldn’t call yourself “Dr.” unless you secured your PhD in Germany itself or was the kind who could fix broken bones. Ian Baldwin, a molecular ecologist from Cornell, found himself charged with “title abuse” when he put “Dr.” before his name on his card, as were at least six other American PhDs working in Germany. The law was later relaxed, but you get the point—when it comes to degrees, Deutschland still thinks of itself as being über alles.

The Germans make one more formal distinction—the precedence of the professor over the PhD, again on the assumption that while PhDs can be had for a dime a dozen, professorship is a career-capping accomplishment achieved only by exemplary research, publication, and mentorship. And thus, if you were teaching at, say, Humboldt University of Berlin (which as of 2020 had 57 Nobel laureates and almost 3,000 PhD students), your full title would be “Prof. Dr. XXX.” And because some people can’t find happiness and fulfillment with just one PhD, they would be called “Prof. Dr. Dr. XXX.” (I kid you not—go ahead and Google it. The Guinness record stands at 33 PhDs for a guy from Hyderabad, whom I don’t even want to begin to address.) Some titles would include variants like “ir” for “ingeneur” or engineer, and “hc” for honoris causa (often conveniently forgotten by hc recipients). The Austrians, I’m told, can be even more particular than the Germans, and can legally use their titles on their passports. The Dutch, by the way, have a “Drs.” degree which can be a bit confusing—it’s short for doctorandus, which means you’re studying for your PhD.

But who cares, other than the title-holder? Certainly not the Quakers, who value equality between people to the point of eschewing all titles, including (until recently, and only in America) “Mr.” and “Mrs.” If you’re familiar enough with each other, you can use first names. If not, then full names will do. When I visited the Quaker HQ in Philadelphia many years ago, I was “Jose Dalisay.” British Quakers were said to have referred to the late Queen as “Betty Windsor.” 

But something tells me that notion of equality won’t work here, where calling people “Digong,” “Bongbong,” and “Sara” won’t bring you any closer to the kingdom of heaven (or some such dominion). 

Qwertyman No. 31: A Homecoming for Anwar

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 6, 2023

TODAY WE pause our fictional forays to focus on some happily factual news—the visit last Thursday of Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim to the University of the Philippines, which conferred on him an honorary Doctor of Laws degree.

I’ve been missing many university events especially since I retired four years ago, but I made it a point to attend this one because I’ve long been intrigued by Anwar’s colorful if mercurial political career—one that witnessed his meteoric rise from a student leader (who majored, at one point, in Malaysian literature) to minister of culture, youth, and sports, then of agriculture, and then of education, before being named Finance Minister and Deputy Minister in the 1990s.

As Finance Minister during the Asian financial crisis of 1997, Anwar imposed very strict measures to keep the Malaysian economy afloat—denying government bailouts, cutting spending, curbing corruption and calling for greater accountability in governance. His zeal and effectiveness gained him international recognition—Newsweek named him Asian of the Year in 1998—and put him on track to succeed his mentor Mahathir Mohamad as Prime Minister. 

However, his growing popularity came at a steep personal price. In what he and his supporters denounced as political persecution, he was imprisoned twice following a fallout with Mahathir. In the meanwhile, Malaysia sank into a morass of corruption under the since-disgraced Najib Razak, making possible the brief return to power of Mahathir, who enabled the release of his sometime protégé Anwar. Anwar’s eventual accession to the prime ministership in December 2022 was for many a just culmination of decades of near-misses (in our lingo, naunsyami).

His visit to Diliman last week was actually a homecoming. Anwar had visited UP more than once as a young student being mentored by the late Dr. Cesar Adib Majul, our leading specialist in Islamic studies. Like other Malaysian scholars, Anwar has also had a deep and lifelong appreciation for the life and work of Jose Rizal, with whom he shared the notion of a pan-Asian community of interests.

Most instructive was the new UP President Angelo Jimenez’s summation of Anwar’s political philosophy, in his remarks welcoming and introducing the PM:

“Beneath Anwar Ibrahim’s sharp sense of financial management lies a deep well of moral rectitude, a belief in right and wrong that seems to have deserted many of today’s political pragmatists. Much of that derives from his strong religious faith—which, unlike the West, he does not see as being incompatible with the needs and priorities of modern society. To him, this is a native strength that can be harnessed toward an Asian Renaissance.

“Like Jose Rizal, who self-identified as ‘Malayo-Tagalog’ and who was a keen student of the cultural and linguistic connections between Malays and his own countrymen, Anwar appreciates the West as a source of knowledge but cautions against neglecting or yielding our cultural specificity.

“At the same time, he has championed a more inclusive and pluralistic Malaysia, arguing—and here I quote from his book on The Asian Renaissance—’not for mere tolerance, but rather for the active nurturing of alternative views. This would necessarily include lending a receptive ear to the voices of the politically oppressed, the socially marginalized, and the economically disadvantaged. Ultimately, the legitimacy of a leadership rests as much on moral uprightness as it does on popular support.’”

In his talk accepting the honorary degree, Anwar argued strongly and eloquently for the restoration of justice, compassion, and moral righteousness to ASEAN’s hierarchy of concerns, beyond the usual economic and political considerations. He was particularly critical of ASEAN’s blind adherence to its longstanding policy of non-interference in its members’ internal affairs, noting that “ASEAN should not remain silent in the face of blatant human rights violations” and that “non-interference cannot be a license to disregard the rule of law.” 

Extensively quoting Rizal, whom he had studied and lectured often about, Anwar urged his audience to free themselves from the self-doubt engendered by being colonized, while at the same time remaining vigilant against subjugation by their “homegrown masters.” I found myself applauding his speech at many turns, less out of politeness than a realization that I was in the presence of a real thinker and doer whose heart was in the right place. (And Anwar was not without wry humor, remarking that as a student leader visiting UP, “I was under surveillance by both Malaysian and Philippine intelligence. Now I have the Minister of Intelligence with me.”)

Speaking of honorary doctorates, I recall that UP has had a longstanding tradition of inviting newly elected presidents of the Republic, whoever they may be, to receive one, as a form of institutional courtesy. As soon as I say that, I realize that many readers will instantly recoil at the idea for reasons I need not elaborate upon. But let me add quickly that not all Malacañang tenants have accepted the honor. Some have had the good sense to find a reason to decline, knowing the kind of reception they will likely get from Diliman’s insubordinate natives, beyond the barricades that will have to be set up for their security. For everyone’s peace of mind, I humbly suggest that it may be time to retire this tradition, which agitates all but satisfies no one. 

For the record, UP has given honorary doctorates to less than stellar recipients, including the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaucescu and the martial-law First Lady Imelda R. Marcos. Even some recent choices have stirred controversy and dismay. 

As a former university official, a part of me understands why and when a state university dependent on government funding employs one of the few tools at its disposal for making friends and influencing people. But as a retired professor who has devoted most of his life to UP and its code of honor and excellence, I find the practice unfortunate if not deplorable. 

I don’t make the rules, but if I did, I would automatically exclude incumbent Filipino politicians, Cabinet members, and serving military officers from consideration. This is not to say that they cannot be deserving, as some surely are, but that they can be properly recognized for their accomplishments upon leaving office. This will also leave much more room for the university to hail truer and worthier achievers of the mind and spirit—scientists, artists, scholars, civil society leaders, entrepreneurs, other outstanding alumni, and fighters for truth, freedom, and justice in our society.

Qwertyman No. 30: Alternatives to Cha-cha

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 27, 2023

WE PINOYS know—as night follows day—that every time a new administration comes to power, a fresh initiative emerges to amend the 1987 post-EDSA Constitution. Fidel V. Ramos tried it with his ill-fated PIRMA campaign, followed by Joseph Estrada’s “Constitutional Correction for Development,” the attempt of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s congressional allies to form a constituent assembly without the Senate, and even Noynoy Aquino’s reported openness to giving the President a second term. Rodrigo Duterte included “charter change” or cha-cha in his platform and tried to push it until Covid came.

Most Filipinos, let’s admit it, don’t even know what the Constitution contains, but a few of us seem hell-bent on changing whatever is in there. Never, of course, for selfish reasons like extending term limits (now why would we even suspect our politicos capable of such nefarious designs?) but for “economic provisions only” (although extending one’s term limit is a very healthy economic provision, as far as I can tell). 

Cha-cha is in the air once again, fellow citizens, going around the House and Senate like a marching band, despite President Marcos Jr.’s public disavowal of support for the proposal. 

Even the National Economic and Development Authority’s estimate that cha-cha—the convention and the plebiscite—could cost as much as P28 billion (yes, that’s a B) isn’t likely to deter its proponents from advancing their cause. With more than five years to go under BBM, a lot of plausible reasons could be found for coughing up that money. Why, even the President could change his mind over that period, persuaded perhaps by a groundswell of demand for cha-cha that he can’t possibly ignore. (Why am I suddenly thinking of that pool resort in Cavite with the artificial wave machine that we so enjoyed last summer?)

Perplexed by this insistence on the need for cha-cha now, I turned to my favorite chatmate, sounding board, and political counselor—ChatGPT—for some answers and explanations. (I know what you’re thinking—I’m just making all of this up—but no: I actually paid good money for this app, so I’m going to get  my money’s worth. If you don’t believe me, try asking it the same questions.) Here’s a transcript of my conversation with ChatGPT:

ChatGPT: Hello, How can I assist you?


Qwertyman: How important is cha-cha to the Philippines?


ChatGPT: Cha-cha is an important dance to the Philippines, as it represents their culture and traditions. It holds a special place in the hearts of many Filipinos and is regarded as a national dance. It is often performed in public gatherings and celebrations to bring people together and express joy and happiness.

(Hmmm, I don’t know where you got that, ChatGPT. Pinoys who remember Nestor de Villa and “Dancetime with Chito” might have a hankering for the cha-cha, but I don’t see any great demand for it from millennials or even their parents. Are you sure it’s that special to us?)


Qwertyman: Why cha-cha? Why not the twist or the shingaling?


ChatGPT: The cha-cha is a distinctive Latin dance with an easily recognizable beat, which makes it easy to follow. It’s also more graceful and flowing than other partner dances, making it well-suited to more formal events. In addition, its pattern of three steps forward and two steps back is easy to learn, making it a great choice for beginners.

(That’s what worries me, ChatGPT. As you say, it’s “a great choice for beginners,” which is probably why a rookie senator is on top of the process. Some of us are also worried that cha-cha will mean two steps forward and three steps back.)


Qwertyman: But what if people just want to sit down and not do the cha-cha?


ChatGPT: That’s perfectly fine! There are many ways to have fun and enjoy one another’s company without having to do the cha-cha. You could play board games, cards, watch a movie, listen to music, engage in conversation, etc. Whatever makes you and the people around you comfortable and entertained is the best way to go!

(Totally agree! Someone should tell our esteemed lawmakers that they can do this, too—play board games, cards, watch a movie, listen to music, engage in conversation—rather than tinker with the Constitution, especially if it’s beyond their comprehension.)


Qwertyman: What are the dangers of doing the cha-cha?


ChatGPT: The dangers of doing the cha-cha include: 1. Potential for pulled muscles or sprains due to improper form, which increases the risk of injury. 2. Risk of slipping and falling since the cha-cha can involve quick, sharp movements. 3. Risk of strain on the joints due to the fast, jumping nature of the dance. 4. Risk of overheating due to the amount of movement required for the cha-cha.

(To which we can add: 1. The potential for a further decline in the quality of our leadership, by the extension of political dynasties into future generations of inbred politicians, raising the genetic potential for imbecility. 2. Risk of slipping and falling back into old ways and faces of governance. 3. Risk of strain on the national budget. 4. Risk of overheating the political climate.)

Qwertyman: Is it better to do the cha-cha today or some other time?


ChatGPT: That depends on what you have planned for today. If you have other commitments or would like to save the cha-cha for another time, it is best to choose an alternate date.

(Other commitments? Hmmm, let me think. Defending our patrimony in the West Philippine Sea? Achieving price stability for basic commodities? Fighting corruption? Raising the competencies of our children in STEM? Dispensing justice, especially in long drawn-out cases like the Maguindanao Massacre, the tokhang murders, and Leila de Lima’s incarceration? Providing housing, livelihood, and adequate social security to the poorest Filipinos? Is this list long enough?)


Qwertyman: What are the best alternatives to the cha-cha?


ChatGPT: 1. Bachata 2. Salsa 3. Merengue 4. Cumbia 5. Samba 6. Paso Doble 7. Tango 8. West Coast Swing 9. Bolero 10. Contemporary Latin Dance.

(I have to admit you got me there, ChatGPT. I’ve never heard of the bachata—unless you mean “ban charter talk”?)

(Image from The Adobo Chronicles)