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Sentimentality and Naivete

One of our strengths as a people is our capacity to empathize. We Filipinos, just like other humans, form friendships with people of different nationalities and cultures as a result of immigration, travel, work or schooling. However, we unfortunately tend to confuse friendships between individuals and people, and “friendship or special relations” between our country and another, specifically as applied to the so-called “special relations” between the Philippines and the United States. This confusion is a continuously great and disastrous mistake for us as a nation or people. Because no truly independent and self-respecting country defines its socio-economic and political policies -domestic and foreign- on friendship. Its relations with other countries is based on its own national interests.

To hope, to apply and to expect a nation-to-nation relationship as one would expect between personal friends are pure sentimentality and naivete. We feel “utang na loob” (endless and servile gratitude) to the Americans for “granting” us an apparent independence; when all the while the roots and structures of colonialism or more precisely, of neocolonialism were established and embedded in the economic and military agreements, i.e. Bell Trade Act (Parity Rights), US Bases Agreement, etc. imposed on our country as preconditions to the granting of national independence and war reparations.

Throughout our “independent” post-WW2 years, these Agreements have greatly contributed to the deterioration of the national economy and therefrom continued poverty of the majority of the Filipinos. The first occasion for national economic bankruptcy almost came about within 5 years of “independence”. These facts are difficult to appreciate because they are not obvious and overtly blatant [demonstrating the efficiency of neocolonialism]. However, the adverse effects to the Filipino people are the same.

American and Filipino politicians always talk about “US and Philippine Special Relations” most especially when July 4(so-called “Filipino-American Friendship Day”) approaches. Little that we know and appreciate that we are not that special to the USA as a country. Here are a few facts:

After WW2, America completely rehabilitated Japan, its Asian enemy that smacked her hard in Pearl Harbor; while its ever-loving Filipinos, many of whom suffered or died during WW2 for America, were continuously gullible and forced to swallow the Parity Rights and Bases Agreements (among many others) just to get the equivalent of $500 each for war reparations; and the bulk of the reparations money actually went to the local American businesses, the ruling elite, their relatives and friends in the Philippine Congress/Senate.

When, during the late1950’s, President Carlos Garcia pushed for “Filipino First” and imposed foreign-exchange control to help native industrialization and minimize importation of luxury items, American foreign policy-makers helped Diosdado Macapagal defeat Garcia since Macapagal promised to remove the exchange control.

When Marcos imposed martial law to perpetuate his presidency beyond the two-term limits of the Philippine Constitution, America disregarded the “showcase of democracy” in Asia and instead supported Marcos -because he promised to send Filipino troops to Vietnam and let her use the miliitary bases in bombing Vietnam. Filipino politicians continue to practice and show mendicacy by talking brave while having one eye–awaiting approval –at the United States.

No wonder other Asian countries do not respect the Philippines; no wonder American policy-makers do not respect us. Any thinking Filipino who has experienced being in America knows whether a fellow is honest or just bullshitting. Sadly, many Filipinos in the United States, the Philippines and elsewhere still have not learned that all the public relations, in the Philippine or American media, about the Filipinos/the Philippines as having “special relations” with the United States, as being special to America, to put it again in street lingo, is plain bullshit.

Truly independent countries and nationalistic leaderships primarily define their relationships with other nations only in terms of selfish, national interests, i.e. the common good and welfare of its own citizenry. If the national leadership or government does not pursue the common good of its people, it ought to be removed, either peacefully or forcibly. The government has to be of the people, by the people and for the people. We seem to have forgotten this fundamental fact - a government is formed to provide essential needs and welfare to its constituents in society.

“The HISTORY of an oppressed people is hidden in the lies and the agreed myth of its conquerors.” - Meridel Le Sueur, American writer, 1900-1996

“Nations whose NATIONALISM is destroyed are subject to ruin.” - Colonel Muhammar Qaddafi, 1942-, Libyan Political and Military Leader

“We shall be better and braver and less helpless if we think that we ought to enquire, than we should have been if we indulged in the idle fancy that there was no knowing and no use in seeking to know what we do not know…” - SOCRATES

“Upang maitindig natin ang bantayog ng ating lipunan, kailangang radikal nating baguhin hindi lamang ang ating mga institusyon kundi maging ang ating pag-iisip at pamumuhay. Kailangan ang rebolusyon, hindi lamang sa panlabas, kundi lalo na sa panloob!” - Apolinario Mabini La Revolucion Filipina (1898)

- BERT http://thefilipinomind.blogspot.com/

“To read the destiny of a people, it is necessary to open the book of its past” - Dr. Jose Rizal'’.