Why I’m Not Totally Convinced of Today’s Nationalism

Nationalism nowadays is a trend. This is apparent by the t-shirts with art-ified Philippine flags, Jose Rizal, and fish ball prints. It is obvious by the way the Filipino people bemoaned Jessica Sanchez’s failure to be the next American Idol, and Pacman’s lose against Timothy Bradley despite apparently dominating the 12-round bout. This is obvious by Twitter hashtags #proudtobepinoy and posts on the wonders of the Philippines last June 12.


Sure, okay, let’s say you say you’re proud. I’m not totally convinced, though.


Like I said: a trend. Not unlike flair jean and those atrocious butterfly clips that every popular girl wore when I was in elementary (the horror).


People nowadays seem to wear their nationality like they wear those clips: you love the Philippines just because you’re wearing a nationalistic shirt, or you’re sporting painful fingers because you were on an online debate for hours, arguing against Bradley’s suspicious victory.


This is not to say these are superficial, worthless evidences of Nationalism. Merely, that I am not convinced by them.


We lack the action to back the words

Manila is noisy, full of pickpockets, and sleazy people. Traffic is hell. Many places smell literally like crap. You look down from a plane, and you see more slums than civilized suburbs. The government is mostly a legion of corrupt bastards who do almost nil for the people. The Philippines is a poor country, where a lot of people live off food from garbage. We’ve heard all the complaints, and when it is spoken by a brown-skinned, black-haired Pinoy, most Filipinos would tend to nod their heads in silent agreement.


But when a dude coming from another country complains mildly about our beloved nation, all hell breaks loose. Twitter and Facebook wars commence, hate-mails are sent, death threats float around the poor idiot’s head for daring to besmirch our beloved country’s name. “How DARE he say that he hates it when prostitutes run after him, offering the many heavens of sex for dollars? Racist idiot.”


I am against racism, but the truth isn’t racist. Manila is noisy, full of pickpockets, and sleazy people. The government is mostly a legion of corrupt bastards who almost do nil for the people. The Philippines is a poor country, and a lot of people do live off food from garbage. You can start sending me death threats, but if you’ve been around, if you’re not looking through the world with rose-colored glasses, you won’t be able to disagree with me.


So: It’s ok when Filipinos criticize the Philippines, but when a foreigner does, we go ballistic.


What is more appalling is that we are pretty much aware that our faults and flaws are blatantly observable, yet we do absolutely nothing about it. We complain that the country is dirty and smelly, but we still throw our crap everywhere without any consideration that it is our crap that that causes the dirt and the smell.


We complain too much, get self-righteously infuriated when non-Pinoys complain about us, but we stand in the sidelines doing NOTHING to better the situation. To summarize, we bastardize logic.


We still prefer the Twilight Saga over Philippine books



Of course literature are interesting and well-made. I must admit that I am a fan of several authors including J.K. Rowling, Stephen King, and Neil Gaiman. Foreign literature is interesting and well-made, but this does NOT mean that Filipino-created ones are inferior. I refuse to believe this, and anyone who has actually taken time to read them would most certainly agree with me.


Why is it, then, that people would only pick up a Filipino book (and grudgingly so) if they are threatened with Failure by their Filipino teachers if they fail to submit a book report? Seriously, I used to translate stories written in English just for me to fulfill this then particularly arduous requirement. According to a bulk of my students, Filipinos don’t read Filipinos because of several things, and the most innocent of which may be the lack of advertisement and exposure. After all, Hollywood has the alleged hot and sexy Rob Pattinson for the Twilight series, and when some thirteen year old reads the books, he or she has the image of this apparent piece of hunk tattooed on her mind. Whereas, there isn’t really a poster boy for stuff like Dekada ’70, or Bata, Bata…Paano Ka Ginawa. Unless, of course, you count Governor Vilma Santos.





Other reasons, however, include finding works written by foreign authors to be refreshing, because plots are very original, and the culture intertwined with the story is interesting. Suuure, a vampire who falls in love with a human and makes little vampire babies with her is indeed a novel plot. And who would want to read about the bacunaoa and our own babaylan if we have literature about being "irrevocably in love" with a dude with "incandescent chest" and "scintillating arms" to devour?


Seriously, though. What was the last piece of Filipino literature you’ve read just for fun?


We Want Miriam Defensor Santiago Off the ICC, etc.

Some people don’t have anything better to do with their lives apart from protesting that Miriam Defensor Santiago – THE Miriam Defensor-Santiago, the most academically-ready politician today, A+ student of the University of the Philippines, and more Filipina than Jessica Sanchez could ever hope to be in terms of blood- off the International Criminal Court. Why? Because she got pissed at a member of the prosecution during Former CJ Corona’s impeachment trial –and rightly so.

The dude was covering his ears because his team was being berated by the senator for being dunderheads and wasting the people’s time and money. Such childish antics should get him voted off the prosecution panel. Luckily, he had the decency of resigning.

Crab mentality has all but left our system. It seems as if Filipino talents need to prove themselves in the international field before we actually acknowledge them. And even then, we still find nasty, sometimes irrelevant, things to say about them. I mean, who cares if Charice Pempengco still has baby fats and opted to sport short, spiky blond hair? Does her fashion sense affect her ability to hit the high notes?

On dates and doubts, on questions and answers

We just celebrated the emancipation of the Philippines last June 12. We displayed Philippine flags in our homes, schools and workplaces, and many social media people put up Facebook status messages, used nationalistic Twitter hashtags, and even wrote blog posts about being a proud, independent nation. But it seems that, despite the freedom we are apparently enjoying now, we are still prisoners of our apathy and the lack of true pride for our culture.

With these things still very much alive in our society, are we really as free as we thought we are?#