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Qwertyman No. 223: Lessons from America

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Qwertyman for Monday, November 9, 2026

LIKE MANY liberals—heck, like most people with any sense of sanity and decency left in them—I rejoiced at the total repudiation of Donald Trump and his Republican Party in the November 3 midterms. As one of millions of Filipinos with children, siblings, and other kinfolk in America, and one of the billions of earthlings injured in all kinds of ways by one man’s megalomania, I had been praying hard for this moment, if only to remind myself that divine justice remains possible in this sordid world.

All in a few weeks, we saw Lula push back the fascist right in Brazil, a student-led anti-corruption coalition win in Serbia, and Netanyahu stalemated in Israel. And now this. At this moment of giddiness, can we Filipinos be faulted for imagining that we, too, are due for epic change in the Philippines?

With our presidential elections coming up in two years, are there applicable lessons to be learned from the American experience to ensure the triumph of democracy and the return of accountability and good governance?

We can feel tectonic shifts happening belowground as VP Sara Duterte’s impeachment trial advances, likely to be resolved before the year ends. Whether she’s shut out of 2028 or somehow qualifies to run, the Dutertes remain a formidable force. And while a bruited Baste Duterte-Robin Padilla ticket seems designed to make us gag, it won’t be a joke if and when it happens, taking note of survey findings that 60 percent of Filipinos remain unconvinced that Sara is guilty of corruption, a mountain of evidence notwithstanding.

It’s no comfort that President Bongbong Marcos, who’s been getting a free pass from middle forces for trumpeting a noisy but sputtering anti-corruption drive, just showed his true colors by looking away while his allies in Congress cooked up a pork-heavy budget and then lately by appointing a baggage-laden Chief Justice whom critics expect to provide the Marcoses with political insurance. We’re definitely not feeling that “reform” vibe that we thought, for a feeble instant back there, PBBM himself was interested in stoking.

What’s a good and smart Pinoy democrat (small D) to do? Herewith, some propositions from this pedestrian kibitzer and his equally non-pundit friends, whom I polled for their ideas. They’re not graven in stone, and I could be somewhat off or dead wrong, but these could be starting points for a longer and deeper conversation among Pinoys sick and tired of seeing Marcoses, Dutertes, and the same old dynastic names in their future.

1. Build a big tent. This will mean sharing platforms and maybe even beds and breakfasts with some people you’d rather not be seen with, but tolerance and cooperation will be key. Those partners could and should include “soft” and persuadable Marcos and DDS supporters whose allegiances are anchored less in any kind of ideology than in unmet needs.

The Democrats didn’t win just because of their registered base. Especially in the red states, they were buoyed up by millions of disaffected Trumpers who felt ignored or betrayed by their marmalade hero, who splurged billions on wars and decorative pet projects while ordinary Americans suffered at the gas pump and the grocery. Here, we can’t win if we can’t pull over some of the 60 percent who still believe the evidence vs. Sara is weak. We need to ask the BBM and DDS faithful: What have they done for you? Are your lives any better now?

A broad alliance will include extremes, but it should be firmly driven by the moderate core, lest it lose its way in infighting, which some progressives are particularly good at. If you’re the kind of activist who’d rather lose at the polls than compromise or concede 1 percent of your preciously inflexible agenda, then we might admire your steadfastness, but electoral, united-front politics clearly isn’t for you. Principles are important, but your insistence on absolute correctness could lose you the whole project, and leave the common enemy rolling on the floor.

2. “It’s the economy, stupid.” This was Bill Clinton’s mantra when he took on and won over George H. W. Bush in 1992, but it clearly remained relevant in the 2026 midterms, and will continue to do so, the worse things get.

For Pinoys, this means prioritizing economic and welfare issues over ideology: food on the table, gas in the tank, education for the children, and affordable drugs and care for the sick. The candidate who can’t promise these and show how they can be delivered will be irrelevant.

We need to tie corruption to poverty, and dynastic politics to corruption—reduce big talk to gut issues, plot the short line from bad politicians to popular hunger and misery, and above all, craft concrete solutions that offer hope.

3. Organize well and communicate well. Translate that big tent to strong, broad, ground-level organization. Involve faith-based groups, which have large, committed constituencies. Connect to the local—Senate hearings get the headlines, but local needs and issues get the votes. Everywhere across the US, and again especially in hostile territory, Democrats made deep inroads through skillful organization and reaching out to the disaffected. (Also take a page from Lula’s super-effective digital blitz in Brazil.)

And of course it helps enormously to have a solid, capable, and personable candidate like Texas Sen.-elect James Talarico, possessed of a sharp mind, a good heart, and a compassionate voice, all indicative of an inner strength. We need someone of his likeable kind to deflate the showy bluster of a Robin Padilla by offering a more attractive and substantial alternative.

Victory in 2028 isn’t the end or the ultimate objective. It should simply be the beginning of expanded opportunities to get the right things done, and to undertake what was near-impossible in a previous administration, like leaving the budget totally pork-free, prosecuting and punishing the corrupt, and putting public money where it’s most needed and where it matters.

All that said, the most outstanding prospect remains the obvious one: Leni Robredo, who exemplifies the best of good governance in both substance and style. If only she could think of the country as a bigger Naga (in a far different way from how Rodrigo Duterte thought he could turn it into a greater Davao), many of these initial concerns would vanish, and we can all focus on getting her and us across the finish line.

(Meme from Threads)

Qwertyman No. 221: The Fil-Am Midterm Vote

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 26, 2026

NEXT WEDNESDAY (Tuesday, November 3 in the US), Americans will troop to the polling stations to cast their votes in what promises to be a historic midterm election, by all accounts a referendum on the tempestuous first half of President Donald Trump’s renewed White House lease. Millions of Filipino-Americans will take part in that exercise, and how they vote could very well affect everything from how much the Pinoy jeepney driver will be paying for diesel to how China will behave in the West Philippine Sea—not to mention outcomes in Ukraine, Gaza, Iran, and other global hotspots.

According to US immigration sources, over 4 million Filipinos or people of Filipino ancestry now live in the US, of whom almost 400,000 are undocumented. About 2.5 million of these Filipino-Americans are eligible voters. With the US population currently standing at about 350 million—of whom 210 million have registered to vote in 2026—we can see that Fil-Ams roughly represent 1 percent of both the total US and voting population. That may not look like much on the national scale, but their concentration in several states—mostly in California, Hawaii, Texas, New York, and Washington, in that order—amplifies their political importance, particularly in key battleground areas. California alone accounts for over 1.5 million Fil-Ams.

A number of Filipino-American candidates are on the ballot. Running for reelection to the New York State Legislature is Steven Raga, who became the first Fil-Am to sit in that body in 2022. If successful, they will be joining many other political leaders of Filipino ancestry, some serving in the state legislatures of California, Wisconsin, Alaska, Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, New York, North Carolina, and Tennessee. Bobby Scott, a Democrat representing Virginia, is the only Member of Congress with Filipino roots, serving in Washington since 1993. San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria is also a Fil-Am, and the first openly gay person in that capacity. Many other Fil-Ams serve on city councils.

But it will be more than ethnic representation at stake for Fil-Ams—and indeed, all Americans if not the world at large—on November 3.

Why does any of this matter to us? Because millions of Filipinos have relatives in America—I have a daughter in California and a niece in Michigan (both Democrats but independently minded women who married into Republican families, to give you an idea of how complex these relationships can get)—and also because any flatulence from Washington impacts our noses here in Manila.

Filipino-Americans are voting primarily for their own national and local concerns, as they should, but inevitably they’re also voting for the kind of global order their leaders will seek to forge. The old order based on rules and respect has been effectively dismantled by Trump, replaced by military power and a disdain for human rights domestically and around the world. So the Fil-Am voting in Kalamazoo for lower prices at their gas pump isn’t doing that just for Michigan but for the world as well.

Fil-Ams have historically leaned and voted Democratic (68 percent blue vs. 31 percent red among self-identified registered voters in 2024, according to a Pew poll), but there’s been a recent rightward shift noted in the polls, which has been true as well of other ethnic groups like Latinos, especially in 2024. However, this shift will be tested in these coming midterms, with issues like affordability, inflation, health care, jobs, and social security ranking topmost among voter and particularly Filipino-American concerns.

Fil-Am voters do need to come out more to the polling booths to make themselves heard. Overall, 90 percent of Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPI, the rubric under which Fil-Ams are usually grouped) have signified that they will vote in these midterms, but only 54 percent and 63 percent of eligible Fil-Am voters actually cast their ballots in 2020 and 2024, respectively. (In 2024, 54 percent went for Kamala Harris and 44 percent for Donald Trump among Fil-Ams nationwide.)

This is why both parties have been actively wooing Fil-Am voters to support them in the midterms, because their votes could mean victory or defeat in key races like Nevada’s, where Filipinos are the largest AAPI ethnic group at 44 percent.

Nevada is a particularly interesting story. The state doesn’t figure in our migration maps as much as California, Hawaii, or New York do, but Filipinos moved to Nevada in droves in the 1990s and 2000s, attracted by its lower cost of living and jobs in the gaming and health care industries. Today about 200,000 Fil-Ams live there, representing 60,000 votes being courted by Democrats and Republicans with karaoke and kamayan parties.

How did it go in Nevada the last time? A report from the Washington Post dated October 30, 2024—just a week before the election that put Trump back in power—shows how pliable the Fil-Am voter’s mind could be:

“While headlining a Las Vegas rally advertised as a celebration of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Trump told the crowd that he would build an economy that supports the Asian American community. ‘So many amazing Nevada Filipinos, right?’ Trump told the crowd, earning boisterous cheers. ‘… You all are the greatest people, hardworking people, and we’re going to take care of you.’

“Harry Cheng, 57, arrived at the rally an undecided voter. ‘I just wanted to hear what people had to say,’ said Cheng, who immigrated from the Philippines to the United States in 1989.

“By the end, he was convinced.

He knew Trump had made anti-Asian comments—including referring to the coronavirus as the ‘Chinese virus,’ ‘Wuhan virus’ and ‘kung flu’—in the past. But the former president and fellow Republican speakers made a strong case for closing the border and improving the economy, he said.

‘The number of migrants crossing the border has turned into a crisis, Cheng said. Meanwhile, he had immigrated ‘the right way.’

“Besides, he said, ‘Trump also made statements that were pro-Asian. I just heard it firsthand.’

“He stood near a lifelike cutout of the former president as the crowd filtered out of the rally and glanced at campaign T-shirts for sale. He planned to register as a Republican when he got home, Cheng said.”

Thanks to voters like him, Trump won Nevada by a sliver of a margin, at 49.8 percent against Harris’ 48.3 percent. I wonder what Harry Cheng is thinking now, and how he’ll vote on November 3rd.

(Image from Bilyonaryo News Channel)

Qwertyman No. 193: Evil Incarnate

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Qwertyman for Monday, April 13, 2026

BACK IN the early days of martial law, when I went underground, among the books I read in our safehouse in Makati was William Shirer’s monumental The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, a comprehensive account of Adolf Hitler’s and the Nazis’ rise to power. While academics have critiqued its journalistic treatment as not being scholarly enough, the 1960 work remains an important contribution to modern political history, if only as an eyewitness account, with Shirer having been stationed in Germany from 1934 to 1940. I was particularly intrigued by his thesis—since much debated—that the German people, from ordinary farmers and workers to the most powerful industrialists, enabled Germany’s descent into totalitarianism, stemming from their Lutheran deference to secular authority. 

That book and its implications for us, then just beginning to confront and comprehend dictatorship, instilled in me, as a playwright and fictionist, a fascination with complicity and collaboration. I also dug deeper into the history and culture of the Third Reich, particularly its propaganda. Even today, YouTube is rich with visual documentation of that dark period, from the burning of the Reichstag to the Nuremberg parades and, in that same city, the trials that laid bare a regime’s methodically murderous mind.

Its parallels to our time cannot be overemphasized. In the 1930s, the so-called “Hitler Myth” was sold by Nazi-leaning newspapers to promote Hitler as the restorer of German pride from the shame of Versailles and the economic ruin that followed the First World War. Germany could be great again. But Hitler also needed scapegoats to  blame for the country’s woes, and so he singled out the Jews and the Communists for that purpose. 

Like today’s American ICE, the Gestapo and the SS conducted raids to round up these enemies of the State, and Hitler launched wars to expand German territory and to proclaim the superiority of German arms. (When his troops invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, he proudly announced that “The German Wehrmacht is the strongest in the world!”) To celebrate his early victories and mythologize his legacy, Hitler planned to transform Berlin into Welthauptstadt Germania (World Capital Germany), invoking ancient Rome and Egypt to include a People’s Hall with a dome 16 times larger than St. Peter’s, a 100-meter Triumphal Arch, and a 120-meter-wide Avenue of Splendor for military marches. Donald Trump’s shameless renaming of the Kennedy Center and of a city airport in his own honor, his conversion of the historic East Wing into a ballroom, and his cheesy gilding of the White House furniture seem modest by comparison, but they betray the same Napoleonic grasp for imperial grandeur, though with much shorter reach. 

By the time the last prisoner walked out of the Nazis’ concentration camp, the Second World War had claimed 40 to 50 million lives in Europe alone, causing untold misery and devastation to the many more who survived.

In all these, Hitler was supported by what we would call today the “billionaire elite”—familiar names that included Krupp, Thyssen, Bosch, and even a carmaker named Porsche. (A book should be written about carmakers—hello, Elon—and their politics. Henry Ford was rabidly anti-Semitic, even compiling his articles into a book titled The International Jew, and was admired for it by no less than Hitler, citing him in Mein Kampf as the example of a great anti-Jewish industrialist and awarding him in 1938 with the Grand Cross of the German Eagle.) Historian Alan Bullock would later excoriate the German right wing (hello, Republican Party) for forsaking “a true conservatism” and making Hitler their partner in a coalition government. 

If there was ever any doubt that Donald Trump is the closest reincarnation we have today of Adolf Hitler (and, to his erstwhile ally Tucker Carlson, the Antichrist), that should have been cast aside by Trump’s recent threat that “A whole civilization will die tonight” unless Iran yielded, alongside his earlier statements that Iran deserved to be bombed “back to the Stone Ages where they belong” and that ordinary Iranians would be happy to be bombed to secure their freedom. 

The horror of an American president making these outrageous pronouncements in utter ignorance of everything we value in (yes, let’s use his word) civilization—law, justice, culture, and common decency—is trumped (yes, let’s use that word) only by the continuing acceptance and magnification of his thoughts by a base on whose shoulders he rode to power. While some on the right finally denounced him as a “genocidal lunatic,” many others did not. Asked about the “civilization” quote, a Republican politician shrugged it off as “Trump just being Trump.” “Go into war to win,” said a MAGA supporter on Reddit. “Not drag it out like Vietnam. Y’all may not like the phrasing, but I like that he’s going into this with an ‘in to win at all costs’ perspective.”

The trouble is, the Iranian people whose freedoms Trump claims he champions (while decimating the same freedoms at home) are paying with their lives in bombings that don’t distinguish between Revolutionary Guards and dissidents. And we—7,000 kilometers away from Iran—are paying for those costs, much like the rest of the world that had nothing to do with Trump’s idiocy in launching a war he doesn’t know how to end. The rich will weather this storm like they always do, but mothers feeding their children with scraps of fish and jeepney drivers weeping at the end of a 14-hour workday are paying for a distant despot’s insatiable vanity. 

When I think on these, and look at our world today, I marvel, aghast, at how easily people continue to succumb to a form of mass hypnosis, of enthrallment to a strongman figure like Donald Trump or Rodrigo Duterte, of deluding themselves into believing that their hero’s extremism would save the planet from some imagined social menace (i.e., people unlike themselves, a.k.a. aliens) at all costs. 

What made Hitler and his horrific crimes possible? The assent and consent of his people, the initial indifference of the international community to his misdeeds, and the despot’s ability to weave lies stronger than the truth. Adolf Hitler and Donald Trump may be evil incarnate—but their enablers should be equally accountable to God and humanity.

Qwertyman No. 185: A Joke for World Peace

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 16, 2026

U.S. President Donald Trump places a note in the Western Wall in Jerusalem May 22. (CNS photo/Jonathan Ernst, Reuters) See TRUMP-JERUSALEM-HOLY-SEPULCHER May 22, 2017.

I JUST love it when a piece of mine about the goings-on in the US gets a rise out of some MAGA expat—and you’ll be surprised how many of them have chosen to reside here, forsaking what I would have thought would have been the sweet comforts of life in Fortress America. 

A message from a guy we’ll call “Bob” reacted to my recent column on “What I Told the Fil-Ams” by suggesting that I had imbibed too much “Cali water,” referring to that state’s trenchant liberalism. I responded by sending him a joke about an American President in the Holy Land, which I hope he appreciated. (I’ve resolved that this is how I’ll deal with my critics from now on, as long as they remain friendly enough—which to his credit Bob was—kill them with kindness, or at least with corny jokes, of which I have a barrelful. I’ll save a special section for MAGA Pinoys, who keep telling me to butt out of their business but who can’t help doling out prescriptions for their ex-countrymen to find their way to the light.)

I’ve often wondered if our world can get much worse than it already is, knowing all the while that the answer can only be yes, yes, emphatically yes. Still, it comes as a rude shock every time fresh confirmation arrives of a new Marianas Trench in human greed, crassness, and stupidity. 

All by himself, Donald J. Trump accounts for more than half of every week’s lows, and I’d like to think that I’ve become immune to further aggravation by this man, only to be roundly disabused. Last week, Trump outdid himself in crudity by putting out a meme on his social network depicting Barack and Michelle Obama as monkeys. 

When called out by even his own, usually docile partymates for the patently racist post, Trump passed it off to some unnamed “assistant” who supposedly made the mistake, which Trump claimed to have been too occupied to pay close attention to. Why the President of the United States would leave his personal account open to some junior flunky is ludicrous enough; that he would expect anyone to believe his lame excuse is beyond laughable. His spokesperson derided the ensuing protest as “fake outrage” and called for renewed attention to “the things that truly matter to the American people,” as though racism, decency, and honesty no longer mattered.

But Trump isn’t even the issue here any longer; the man is irredeemably vain, vile, and vicious. (Let’s not even mention—but heck, let’s—his offensiveness to beauty and good taste, with his insistence on gilding the White House, plastering his name all over the place, and picking Kid Rock over Bad Bunny.) Like our own Rodrigo Duterte, he has long cast his lot with Darth Vader & Co., not even pretending to be good, or to be aiming for such banalities as truth, freedom, and justice. In the words of one of his chief lieutenants, Stephen Miller, the age of “international niceties” is over; the only things that count today are “strength, force, and power,” which Trump & Co. have liberally deployed—not against global bullies like Vladimir Putin, but chiefly against the American people themselves. 

But again, let’s put the Orange Man aside for a minute. The real danger is that there are tens of millions of people who think the way he does, and who probably thought that way even before he gave Trumpism a face, a voice, and a name. These are people for whom daily doses of falsehood have become the norm, and I really couldn’t care less if they believe that Satanic Democrats drink the blood of kidnapped children, except that their weirdness creeps up to the White House and into the kind of domestic and foreign policy that makes life difficult for us 8,000 miles away, and emboldens other despots.

I’m not saying here that we don’t have our own version of Trumpers to deal with (and I’m adding this paragraph for the MAGAs who’ll remind me to stick to the local, a description I expect them to extend, in MAGA logic, to Greenland). Our DDS, in many ways, offer a parallel constituency; like many MAGA members, their grievances are rooted in historical neglect and a sense of displacement in rapidly changing times. They pinned their hopes on a man who was supposed to improve their lives—but who didn’t, distracted by a megalomaniacal drive to reshape society to his grim vision. 

This is why I haven’t given up on Digong’s faithful; there’s a valid cultural dimension to their disaffection in terms of Mindanao and Manila-centrism, but their issues can be addressed by attentive and equitable governance. The corruption issues that have gutted the country have devastated them as well. Except for the shrillest and most invested in a Sara succession, I feel that many can yet be persuaded to choose responsible leadership. 

In this respect—and this may not be shared by many, given the lows to which our own politicos have fallen, with some in need of growing a spine and others a brain or at least a heart—I feel more hopeful for the Philippines in the medium term than I do for America, and I think that’s saying a lot.

Now let’s wait for the MAGA backlash; I have lots of Trump jokes lined up to brighten their day, restore their sense of humor, and maybe help bring about world peace. 

Qwertyman No. 184: What I Told the Fil-Ams

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Qwertyman for Monday, February 9, 2026

LAST WEEK, at the Executive House of the University of the Philippines where he officially resides, UP President Angelo “Jijil” Jimenez graciously hosted a delegation of about twenty Filipino-American business and community leaders from San Diego, California, led by our honorary consul there, Atty. Audie de Castro. 

I was happy and proud to have helped facilitate this visit, having some close personal and professional ties myself to San Diego. Our unica hija Demi married a San Diegan, and has happily lived there with her husband Jerry for almost 20 years now. My wife Beng and I visit her nearly every year if we can afford it. 

San Diego also happens to be where a dear friend of mine, Mrs. Julie Hill, lives in a lovely home in Rancho Sta. Fe. Julie stayed in the Philippines for some years many decades ago when her husband was the Ford Foundation representative here and fell in love with the country and its people, and despite having traveled and served all over the world, the Philippines retains a special place in Julie’s heart. The last time I dropped in on her a year ago, Julie (who’s approaching 90) announced that she was donating what came out to more than P20 million to help the poorest of UP students. Atty. De Castro helped to formalize that donation as our consul in San Diego, cementing our relationship.

Professionally, but through Julie’s recommendation, I also served as Pacific Leadership Fellow in 2014 at the University of California San Diego, where I had previously lectured on Philippine-American affairs. Beng, meanwhile, observed operations and state-of-the-art techniques at the Balboa Art Conservation Center.

In other words, we’ve established rather close ties to this sunny and vibrant city in Southern California, where many generations of Fil-Ams have taken root, mainly because of the US naval base there, where thousands of Filipino sailors recruited from the Philippines have served. That’s how Demi’s in-laws came to San Diego from Bicol, their children born as Americans but deeply mindful of their Filipino heritage.

Many of our visitors never saw the Philippines until they were grown up, and I think most were setting foot on the UP campus for the first time. So we gave them the warmest reception and the best orientation we could, and engaged them over lunch in a lively discussion.

One of them asked: “What is the Filipino dream?” My UP colleagues responded to that in various ways, coming from different technical and academic disciplines. I tried to give a pedestrian answer: “The Filipino dream is actually a fairly simple one: a roof over one’s head, food on the table, a good education for the children, peace and justice in our communities. We dream for our families. But like all seemingly simple things, achieving that dream is difficult and complicated.”

The visitors had earlier asked President Jimenez about UP’s role in national leadership, and beyond citing how many presidents, senators, and Supreme Court justices we’ve produced—which, to be honest, has also contributed to the ruination of our nation—Jijil emphasized the value his administration places on service to the Filipino people, which can manifest even from beyond our shores. He spoke of UP sharing its knowledge and resources with other SUCs, of UP assuming its responsibilities as the country’s national university—a concept perhaps alien to the American situation but entirely relevant to ours. (I was aware, of course, that UP has many internal issues and priorities of its own to sort out—it always has, regardless of administration.)

A more challenging discussion was one that I had on the side with two ladies who admitted that they represented two ends of the American p0litical spectrum, but had managed to remain friends despite their differences. Their question for me was, what did I personally think of what was happening in America?

No longer in UP spokesman mode, I could have answered as bluntly as possible, but I wanted to give them the more nuanced answer their friendship deserved. 

I began by saying that I considered myself an exemplar of American colonial education, having gone to a private elementary school in the 1960s where I learned about “heifers” and “mackinaws” long before I ever got to see real ones, and even memorized American states and their capitals, to the dismay of my future American friends when we played Trivial Pursuit. I shed off much of the mystification as a student activist in the 1970s and took a far more critical view of the American influence over our history, economy, and politics. 

But the indoctrination was so effective that I retained a fundamental affection and even admiration for many aspects of American culture and technology, and maintained a lifelong and ultimately professional interest in the US. I studied and worked for five years in the Midwestern heartland, in Michigan and Wisconsin, I taught American literature—not just in UP but in America itself, to college students who seemed surprised that I seemed to know more about their country than they did. Not just because our daughter lives there, I continue to follow American affairs keenly, starting my day with the digital editions of the New York Times and the Washington Post (the latter now sadly degraded).

What I told them was that this America was no longer the America I once thought I knew and looked up to, despite its excesses. I said I thought I understood, at least in part, where MAGA was coming from, in the neglect of the American working class and their anxieties in a rapidly changed world. At the same time, Donald Trump had ridden on those grievances to empower and aggrandize himself and the billionaire elite, trampling on the very liberties that had once defined American democracy, imposing his racist and imperialist vision of America, and endangering global peace and security. The shootings in Minnesota were profoundly shocking and depressing. I said that as much as it saddened me, with loved ones in the US, I did not plan on visiting America again until this madness had passed. If even American citizens could be dragged by masked men into vans and summarily deported to El Salvador, then I did not want to risk an encounter with the American Gestapo.

I could have added that both Americans and Filipinos, as polarized as we have become, need to find some common ground, as we share problems that cut across our differences. Bu the time was short, and we sent our guests off with a smile.

Qwertyman No. 149: American Idiocracy

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Qwertyman for Monday, June 9, 2025

IN HIS controversial but surprisingly popular 1987 book The Closing of the American Mind, the philosopher Allan Bloom lamented what he saw to be the decline of intellectual inquiry in America, indicting its universities for failing their students by promoting “relativism” over the time-honored values embodied by the “Great Books” of Western thought. “The consequences of the abandonment of the quest for the best are far-reaching and destructive,” Bloom intoned. 

Bloom was no flaming liberal; in fact, he was anything but—a true conservative who disdained rock music for its overtly sexual messages and its narcotic effects on the young (imagine what he would have said about TikTok). But his book and its arguments struck a responsive chord in many Americans—half a million of them bought hardcover copies—who were worried that the counterculture that had crept across American society since the tumultuous 196os had weakened it from within and had dulled the blade of American exceptionalism—the rock-solid article of faith that America was, or had to be, No. 1 in everything, because of its unique history and attributes.

That sounds a lot like “Make America Great Again,” although MAGA wasn’t driven by a longing to study Plato, but by deep-seated, grassroots-level grievances and prejudices. One wonders how Allan Bloom, who died in 1992, would respond to the political situation today, which on the surface mirrors some of his concerns, but only just so: a conservative President has declared war on America’s liberal universities, for all the wrong reasons, leading up to the “far-reaching and destructive consequences” that Bloom bewailed. 

Of course, Donald Trump is no Bloomian or even Reaganite conservative; all he seems to be about is unbridled power and money, and testing the limits to where they can go. “Trumpism” has been described as a mash of nationalism, populism, and industrialism, with a generous dollop of pettiness and egotism. 

Sometime last April, messaging on Truth Social (with a shift key typically gone berserk), Trump attacked Harvard University, claiming that “Harvard is an Anti-Semitic, Far Left Institution, as are numerous others, with students being accepted from all over the World that want to rip our Country apart. The place is a Liberal mess, allowing a certain group of crazed lunatics to enter and exit the classroom and spew fake ANGER AND HATE.” 

Shortly after, he ordered the federal government to withdraw more than $2 billion in funding for research grants to Harvard, and sought to cancel its ability to enroll international students. Trump wasn’t alone in declaring war on American academia. Years earlier, his VP-to-be JD Vance had told the National Conservatism Convention that “Universities in our country are fundamentally corrupt and dedicated to deceit and lies, not to the truth…. We have to honestly and aggressively attack (them).”

Not surprisingly, Harvard and a cohort of other leading universities have fought back, taking the administration’s tack as a frontal assault on academic freedom—and, more strategically, on America’s albeit waning intellectual leadership.

MAGAworld’s anti-intellectualism is interesting, because it draws on a long and dark tradition of tyrants from Franco’s Spain to Pol Pot’s Cambodia waging war on scholars—to cite only the most visibly horrifying examples under which hundreds of thousands of intellectuals were massacred. Mass murder makes the withdrawal of grants and visas seem benign, but they come from the same deep mistrust of critical thinking, contrary opinion, and the alien element. Dictatorships thrive on herd mentality and unquestioning obedience, both anathema to academia.

It’s not as if Trump and Vance never went to good schools. Trump went to Wharton and Vance to Yale Law; whether they learned something worth their tuition is another matter. Political instinct, not intellect, drives these men. 

Right now, that instinct is telling them that culture (or its reversal) is more important than anything else—specifically “woke” culture, the greatest threat to the hegemony of straight white men: civil rights, women’s empowerment, abortion rights, gay and gender rights, minority representation, affirmative action, Black heritage, environmental protection, and internationalism, among other values espoused by the liberal Establishment and its bastions like Harvard. 

The collateral damage of this insane and reckless urge to reshape America in Trump’s own image has included truthfulness, justice, accountability, sound science, and, ironically, America’s own long-term economic and academic well-being. MAGA’s success will be America’s diminution from the intellectual powerhouse that has accounted for more than 70 percent of all Nobel Prize winners (about 30 percent of them immigrants to the US) to the fools’ paradise contemplated in the 2006 movie Idiocracy—a comedy that won’t be so funny when it materializes.

Trump’s insistence on characterizing foreign students as potential terrorists and troublemakers will be particularly counterproductive, as it will banish many of the world’s best young minds to more receptive climates, and erode America’s influence on global thinking. 

That may not necessarily be a bad thing, as it reminds everyone that the US has no monopoly on excellence, and never really did. But as a two-time Fulbrighter who, like thousands of other pensionados to America, look back with gratitude and not a little pride on that opportunity to imbibe not just new knowledge but America at its welcoming best, I cannot imagine anything stupider than this willful squandering of American goodwill and soft power for the price of a few missiles. 

It will not even be Donald Trump & Co. who will pay that price, but generations of Americans down the road who will recall this period of infectious lunacy with bewilderment and regret. They will have no one to blame but their red-capped grandparents, who thought that trusting a despotic dunce with all that power was a bright idea. (And I know how much that statement smacks of the elitism that Trumpers hate, but tell me it isn’t true.)

Qwertyman No. 139: Filipinos for Nothing

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 31, 2025

THERE’S A part of me that wants to stop beating up on the Dutertes, lest I be accused of being part of the Marcos propaganda machine (which stands to benefit from all this anyway, whatever I say), but like the gift that keeps on giving, the D’s and their people just won’t let me let them be. Being no lawyer, I’ll have nothing to say on the legality or otherwise of the former President’s arrest and forced departure for the Netherlands—except to opine, as others have, that justice sometimes works in mysterious ways.

My beef for this week is how the Duterte Agitprop Department (let’s call it DAD, like Elon Musk’s DOGE) has spun the whole ICC affair in the public sphere. These days, you never expect people to stand on the truth and nothing but the truth in these political matters. But you do hope for s0me degree of sophistication, for the kind of professional finesse that will justify the multimillions that any PR crew tasked with saving Rodrigo Duterte’s skin—or barring that, at least his reputation—will have been budgeted.

There are three propositions by the Duterte camp that I want to focus on, among many others that have arisen since the arrest.

First, his supposed global allies and endorsers. 

Donald Trump, for example, reportedly took precious time out from dismantling American democracy to declare that “We will protect Rodrigo and the Filipino people from the oppression you are facing…. I and the United States will not allow any of our allies and friends to suffer, and we will impose sanctions against the Marcos Administration for the unlawful act they did.” Why, he had even called Xi Jinping—not about tariffs, not about Taiwan, not about American forces in the Philippines—but about the “serious matter concerning our good friend Rodrigo.” For his part, Xi Jinping—who on a state visit to Manila did say “Our relations have now seen a rainbow after the rain” in response to Duterte’s more prosaic “I simply love Xi Jinping!”—supposedly brought up the Duterte arrest and the ICC in his opening address to the Boao Forum for Asia. Not to be outdone, another Duterte hero, Vladimir Putin, was reported to have threatened (someone—not specified) with “grave consequences” for Duterte’s arrest, as it violated the Rome Statute (which Russia incidentally pulled out of in 2016).

It’s all good when a national leader of superlative virtue and achievement has been so badly wronged that the world takes notice and his peers rise up in alarm to protest the injustice. But really—Donald Trump, Xi Jinping, and Vladimir Putin, all of them prime candidates for the ICC’s hospitality (Putin already is, along with Benjamin Netanyahu)? Never mind that all these supposed endorsements turned out to be fake; they still elicited applause from the DDS faithful, which I suppose was the intended effect. Q: Would it have been too much to expect an endorsement from the likes of Pope Francis? A: Yes.

Second, that call for OFWs to stop remitting their earnings home in a “Zero-Remittance Week” protest.

Our overseas workers contributed nearly $40 billion to the Philippine economy last year, so someone at DAD must have figured it would be brilliant to prick that bubble in the name of remitting Duterte home. But yet again, really? 

Granted, PRRD created the Department of Migrant Workers and the OFW Bank, and brought home hundreds of thousands of OFWs during the pandemic. Former OWWA chief Hans Cacdac even called him “the father of OFWs.” I don’t doubt that the Duterte name has a lot of traction in our expatriate communities, and that flexing a bit of their economic power in a week-long protest will ring some alarm bells, but you might as well ask people to chop off a finger to prove their fealty. For how long do you imagine will Pinoys postpone housing amortizations, tuition payments, maintenance meds, and grocery expenses to protest even the crucifixion of Jesus Christ?

Lastly, and perhaps closest to my propagandist’s heart, there’s that inexplicably vague “I am not a Filipino for nothing” slogan.

Sure, it sounds brave and bold—like it actually says and means something. But does it, really? I’ve been turning the statement around and around in my head and maybe I’m extraordinarily dense and unreceptive but I just don’t get it. In rhetoric, double negatives are often used to suggest or even emphasize the opposite (the technical term is “litotes,” as in “That’s not a bad idea” or “She’s hardly destitute”). 

Rarely do double negatives make good copy for T-shirts and streamers, if you want to rally the masses. Well, there was Winston Churchill’s “We shall never surrender” (arguably a double negative) speech on the occasion of the Battle of Britain in June 1940, but that statement was preceded by a string of powerful positives: “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall never surrender.”

Ninoy Aquino—who must be rolling in his grave at being compared to Digong Duterte—famously said “The Filipino is worth dying for,” a slogan ironically made all the more resonant by the fact that it turned out to be self-fulfilling. I doubt that Duterte will carry his emulation to that extreme, but he or his handlers can learn from its clarity and brevity, which contribute to its emotional appeal. “I am not a Filipino for nothing” means, well, nothing. It says nothing about freedom, justice, peace, love, patriotism, godliness, courage, or integrity—none of the grand ideals and ideas that our heroes exemplified. Might it be because these notions were never really associated with a president whom we best remember for his crude expletives and constant exhortations to kill? 

“Sampalin ang ICC!” sounds much more honestly him. It still sounds lame, especially given where he is right now, but it seems more purposeful, and should look good on a green T-shirt.

Qwertyman No. 135: Fighting the Truth

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 3, 2025

BEAR WITH me as I begin this Monday’s piece with a quotation about last week’s celebration (or non-celebration, from another point of view) of the 1986 EDSA People Power uprising. It really doesn’t say anything we haven’t heard before, but I want you to read it slowly, giving it the full benefit of its sincerity and passion. If you were at EDSA as I and my family were, and no matter how distant a memory those four days in February may seem to be now, these words should still provoke even a flutter of patriotic fervor, and a wistful thought that, perhaps, the EDSA spirit does live on in these troubled times. 

“Martial law, declared by Ferdinand Marcos Sr. in 1972, left a dark legacy; countless lives were lost, freedoms were stripped away, and power was concentrated in the hands of a few. As we remember those who suffered and fought for our liberties, we must remain vigilant, especially now, when the threat of authoritarian rule once again looms over our nation. People Power was more than just a revolution; it was a testament to the collective strength of the Filipino people in demanding truth, justice, and accountability. It is also a reminder that we must remain united against any form of oppression…. Let us honor its legacy by ensuring that history is never distorted, our rights are never trampled upon, and our democracy remains intact for future generations. May the darkest times in our history never happen again.”

Just the kind of resonant exhortation you’d expect from a staunch defender of civil liberties and human rights, right? 

But would your appreciation of these words change just a bit if you knew that they were spoken not by the likes of a Leila de Lima or a Kiko Pangilinan, but by Davao City Mayor Sebastian “Baste” Duterte, whose EDSA Day message this just happened to be?

Truth? Justice? Accountability? “United against any form of oppression?” Where were these noble words when the good mayor’s dad was president, and announcing blatantly on various occasions that ““My order is shoot to kill you. I don’t care about human rights…. Let’s kill another 32 every day. Maybe we can reduce what ails this country…. I will assume full legal responsibility…. My mouth has no due process.”

That “legal responsibility,” of course, has yet to be assumed, full or otherwise. Instead, once he fell out of power, that man (and, last we heard, lawyer) who flaunted his wanton disregard of the law suddenly found religion, and the gumption to say this when his buddy Apollo Quiboloy and his cult followers were raided by the police:

“Our country has never been in a more tragic state as it is today. Rights have been trampled upon and our laws, derided…. We call on the remaining decent and patriotic members of our government not to allow themselves to be used and to be abusive and violent in enforcing illegal orders…. We call on all Filipinos, regardless of political persuasion, to offer prayers for peace and justice, and to spare our people of the unwarranted tension brought about by the reign of fear and terror by people sworn to uphold the law and protect the citizens of this country.”

It makes sense that this statement was published rather than spoken, because I can’t for the life of me imagine how The Great Punisher could say “unwarranted tension brought about by the reign of fear and terror” with a straight face and not burst out laughing—or maybe his listeners would, if they weren’t seized by, well, fear and terror.

Not to be outdone, on a recent sortie to Cebu, embattled Vice President Sara Duterte reportedly declined to answer questions about her impending impeachment trial in the Senate, preferring to leave the matter to her lawyers, but was quoted as saying that she was banking on her “loyalty to truth” to see her through. Ummm, okay…. Now can we please hear the truth, and nothing but the truth, about Mary Grace Piattos?

I suppose it’s a sign of how low the value of words like “truth,” “freedom,” and “justice’ have fallen when the very people accused of spitting them into the garbage now spout them like nobody’s business. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that they’re doing this, given the success of Donald Trump at doing the very thing he says he hates, e.g. weaponizing the justice system. There must be pages of advice in the 21st century edition of Playbook for Politicians for just this kind of brazenness, maybe under the Chapter “Reversals of Fortune.” What’s surprising—and scary—is how they continue to be believed by followers such as “Ging C.” whose fervor led her to gush, on PRRD’s FB page, “By God’s favor VP Sara you will win this fight. God of truth is on your side and those people who fight the truth!” (Ooops….there’s a “for” missing there somewhere, but really, does it matter anymore?)

And lest we think only the Dutertes have mastered the art of dissimulation, let me leave you to guess who the character implicated in the following quotes is.

On Independence Day in 2018, someone posted on Facebook that “Freedom is every human being’s birthright. But to claim that right, the time always comes when we are called to fight for and defend that freedom. The Philippines and her people fought long and hard, sacrificed life, limb, treasure and more to achieve our independence 120 years ago. The call for liberty and sovereignty was answered by our heroic ancestors, sacrificing their all at the altar of honor and freedom and country.

“Today we remember, and in remembering, we consecrate that memory of all the courageous and selfless Filipino patriots—our heroes—who gave their lives for that freedom, and to whom we forever owe our status as a free, independent and sovereign nation in the community of nations. Let them long live in our minds, our hearts, in our very souls, the heroes of our great country, our beloved Philippines.”

In a speech before the Kapisanan ng mga Brodkaster sa Pilipinas last November, the guest of honor declared that “Now, more than ever, our democracy depends on an informed and vigilant citizenry…. With the 2025 elections ahead, I am committed to protecting our journalists in championing fearless and credible reporting. Together with KBP and our partners in media, we will stand firm against disinformation, ensuring that every Filipino has access to voices of truth.”

I would love to cry “Amen!” Wouldn’t you?

Qwertyman No. 129: The Punishment Theory

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 20, 2025

LOS ANGELES is burning as we speak, with raging fires consuming an area larger than the whole of San Francisco—or, in our terms, about seven times the size of Makati. I’m sure you’ve been just as horrified—and, let’s admit it, mesmerized—by the TV coverage showing huge swaths of what used to be thriving California communities crumbling in flames. 

Particularly compelling for onlookers is the awareness that many of those homes belong to Hollywood’s elite—people with millions of followers on social media but who, in their moments of personal distress (as in their divorces and run-ins with the law), often find it difficult to generate genuine sympathy. Not necessarily meaning to be unkind, pedestrians like us like to see the mighty (or their houses) falling; misery is a great democratizer. Even as the mansions of the rich go up in smoke, our first urge is to think that (a) they can always afford to build a new one, followed by (b) they’re just being punished for something they did wrong.

Indeed the “punishment theory” for the Great LA Fire has gained a lot of traction in social media, both within and outside the US. In Middle Eastern media, the fire was quickly seen as divine retribution for America’s support to Israel’s destruction of Gaza. As one Qatari journalist wrote, “The American aid squandered by the occupation [i.e., by Israel] in its Gaza war amounted to about $60 billion. The damage caused by the recent US fires has reached about $150 billion. Trump said a few days ago that he will bring hell upon the region, yet hell has arrived in the heart of the US, with hundreds of thousands of Americans displaced and thousands of homes and mansions lost. I trust in the vengeance and in the victory of the One and Only Almighty God.”

Not at all, said others—the fire had nothing to do with Israel but with Los Angeles, indeed California, itself. Again invoking the Almighty, Christian evangelicals rushed to proclaim the disaster “God’s punishment” for liberal licentiousness and its adherence to the false religion of “wokeness.” For being the land of hippies, Democrats, legalized marijuana, and Hollywood, California was now being chastised by an angry God. (Don’t believe it? Check Genesis 19:24-25, Amos 4:6-11—sayeth the FB and Reddit faithful. I myself suspect that if God was fair and a keen follower of American politics, he would’ve swept Mar-a-Lago away in a tsunami or a hurricane. But then I believe in an indifferent God who doesn’t take sides in wars or football games.)

Whatever, there seems to be a palpable compulsion here to go and punish the wicked, who have only themselves to blame for their calamities. Never mind that the fire has ravaged both Democrats and Republicans, blacks and whites, Christians and Muslims, Asians and Europeans, rich and poor. To those outside looking in, it’s the “other” whose tragedy we celebrate, with the innocents as collateral damage.

The word often trotted out in these situations is that old German standby, “Schadenfreude,” meaning the delight we take in the misfortunes of others. It’s all over social media when you read about the LA fires, almost to the point of gleefulness over a kind of divine justice befalling the deserving (most notably, that of a fellow named Keith Wasserman—an Elon Musk fan and Cybertruck owner who had railed against paying higher taxes, and was now begging for private firemen to save his home). 

Of course, there’s nothing like crisis to bring out both the best and the worst in people, from heroes to heels. Harder to read and more difficult to assess than these extremes is the slow and steady burn—rather than the raging inferno—in our societies.

All this talk of retribution leads me to an odd and totally unscientific theory about people. I wonder if, in fact, there’s a more proactive form of Schadenfreude that goes well beyond a smug snicker at the missteps of the perceived elite to an active courtship of their downfall.

I’m speaking not as a political scientist or sociologist, neither of which I am, but as a sometime playwright who likes to look into the darkest and strangest of human motivations. That’s normally the job of psychologists, for whom I have a healthy respect, but if psychologists could put all their patients together in a room and find a way to make sense of their nightlong chatter, then we playwrights and fictionists would be out of business.

Here’s how it goes: 

We get bad laws like the pork-laden GAA because we elect bad lawmakers. And we elect bad lawmakers because we fancy that voting for people we think we know (like entertainers and dynasts) makes us matter. With the vote being the only utterance left to the voiceless citizen, choosing the familiar becomes an act of assertion, of participation in national affairs. “He may be a lousy leader, but I put him there.” Call it the revenge of the bobotante, a term we Pinoys coined for supposedly ignorant or forgetful voters. My theory is, they’re more cunning and deliberate than we think.

Many MAGA voters didn’t so much vote for Trump the man as for the grievances they bore that he had the smarts to amplify and articulate. A convicted felon, habitual liar, bully, and egomaniac, Trump was after all the very antithesis of the righteous and virtuous leadership that evangelicals especially like to uphold (not that they don’t have their own crooks and pervs in their uppermost echelons). If they were true to themselves, even his most ardent supporters would have acknowledged—and looked past—his monstrously obvious character flaws.

They voted for him nonetheless, because—on top of the price of gas and groceries—he embraced and legitimized their consternation and disgust with a world gone far beyond their comfort zone, peopled by neighbors who don’t speak English, who have sex with the same pronouns, who kill their babies, and who run races against runners with different genitals (and go to their bathrooms). How could Donald J. Trump be worse than these? 

Today DJT takes his oath as America’s 47th, as Los Angeles continues to burn. I wonder who is being punished for what.

Qwertyman No. 128: Been There, Done That

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Qwertyman for Monday, January 13, 2025

I WAS trying my best to sound sober and diplomatic in last week’s column about Donald Trump’s impending return to the presidency of the world’s most powerful country, the United States of America, due to happen next Monday. I was still vacationing with family in California then, and didn’t want to get into an argument with some Americans (and Fil-Ams) who would’ve sent me packing home the moment they heard me raising a stink about their Chosen One.

The fact is—whether out of deference to my liberalism or just because of fatigue—few people I spoke with, whether from the left or right, seemed eager to talk about Trump, and it’s something I fully understand, and even appreciate. You can only hear and make so much commentary, most or all of which, at day’s end, will amount to nothing, except for more bruised or broken friendships.

Typical was a friend’s reaction from San Francisco: “Shrinking my world in the next four years to just my family and like-minded friends. (Just text me when the war has started!)”

I remembered what it was like in 2022 when our presidential candidate—who seemed (and was) superior to the alternative on all counts except financial capability—lost, and how distraught and upset we were, convinced that, surely, massive fraud accounted for her defeat. Even then, I opined—unpopularly, for sure—that despite the ever-present likelihood as in all Philippine elections that some electoral sleight-of-hand had taken place, more Filipino voters preferred the winner for their own reasons, disinformation and all. 

We’ve been living with and under that winner for almost three years now—and, perhaps surprisingly, we’ve all survived so far; the sky hasn’t fallen—yet. I did say then, like many other observers, that BBM was facing a fork in the road: to continue down the path to perdition that his parents took, or to boldly go up the hill of redemption. “Redemption” might not necessarily mean a full-blown admission of guilt in exchange for forgiveness of sins, or even the restitution of ill-gotten wealth, although all of the above would have been ideal if well-nigh impossible. I think most of us would have been pleasantly surprised if he simply led an honest, just, and competent administration, which is what all of us have been praying for.

Almost halfway through his term, has any of that happened? Which path did BBM choose? Is it possible that he has been straddling both, or hopping from one to the other? Very interestingly, both in the US and here at home, I’ve been asked a lot of questions about BBM, and what I’ve told people is this: 

He’s made some very popular decisions, which has raised his acceptance if not approval among many; but he continues to run fast and loose with the way public money is used, seriously undermining whatever credibility he’s been building up. His positions on tokhang, China, and POGOs have generally gone over well (although criticisms persist that extrajudicial killings and political imprisonment have continued). Perhaps above all, he has politically profited immensely from his war with the Dutertes, deftly positioning himself as sober and presidential versus the theatrics and the crudity of the Dutertes, who have done themselves no favors. 

On the other hand, neither has the Marcos administration endeared itself to the people by brazenly abusing its fiscal authority with the problematic Maharlika Fund and its diversion of key departmental budgets into an election-year pork barrel for lawmakers. Just when you thought it had miraculously gotten its ethical notions right, the old wolf bares a greedy fang or two and reminds us that old habits die hard.

Which brings me back to America and its expectations of Trump 2.0. Unlike BBM who can at least claim a generation’s distance from his father, Donald Trump has only himself to be compared with, and anyone hoping to see a more sensible, more contemplative, and more compassionate Trump enter the White House after he won over the truly sensible, contemplative, and compassionate Kamala Harris is in for a rude reminder of the man America spat out in 2020. 

In the weeks before his second inauguration, the President-elect has already threatened to pressure Denmark into selling Greenland to the US, punish its closest neighbors Canada and Mexico with crippling tariffs, rename the Gulf of Mexico into the Gulf of America, and repossess the Panama Canal. As a Fil-Am friend of mine in Georgia says, “It’s like hiring a CEO to turn our ailing and cash-strapped business around, and on his first week he tells us his strategy is to buy three companies and rename our firm.” An old Turkish proverb puts it more colorfully: “When a clown moves into the palace, he doesn’t become a king. The palace becomes a circus.”

The lunacy of Trump’s ideas would be hilarious if he weren’t who he is, a man whose every fart is now taken as God’s own wisdom by his retinue of quaking sycophants. As a man incapable of accepting criticism and prone to doubling down on the certifiably wrong, President Trump will run his government as he is ruled by his ego, and for the sake of our relatives and friends in that country, we can only pray that America emerges whole and healthy enough in 2028 to find its way back to sanity and decency.

On Monday next, when the inmates officially take over the asylum in Washington, DC, we Pinoys will be watching with the smugness of people who’ve been there and done that. We have our own pot of troubles to worry about, our own idiots and idiocies to deal with—like our propensity to force people with the same surnames, grade-school diplomas, and missing morals to become Senators of the Republic. So help us God.

(Photo from msn.com)