This entry is based on the ongoing blogger project, The Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs in 2007, of Janette Toral. Influential is a ticklish thing to define, so let’s just say influential ranges from the personal (hey, I like reading such-and-such a blog) to the tangible in terms of link love… Anyway.The blogs speak for themselves. I’m not 100% sure they’re all post-August 2006 blogs, though.
1. Ricky Carandang Reporting
2. The Patsada Karajaw Nation
3. Tingog.com: The Voice of the Filipino
4. CAFFiend
5. Dispatches by Jesus Llanto
6. smoke
7. The Bayanihan Blog Network
8. Placeholder
9. The Magnificent Atty. Perez
10. Puckering Time
And on to being tagged for various memes.
Macaula.com and Feels Great to be Pinoy: well,
1. In San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, a hacendero’s son once took me around a property they were developing. It was a small residential village. He pointed to the various homes under construction: “here, is a seaman’s home, over there, a home built by a nurse in Texas, there, a caregiver from London’s home, and that one is the home of a carpenter in Saudi.” Each of these people, upon further investigation, had parents who were sakadas; in one lifetime, they’d made the leap from the peasantry to the middle class. This is remarkable and will eventually have long-term, positive, consequences.
2. The students I’ve met in so many places around the country, and how they teach me, every time, to look at problems and solutions with fresh eyes. While I worry that much is being lost by way of traditions and a shared culture, because of the breakdown in our institutions, I admire the sense of freedom, the lack of being limited by these things, that these students show. Literally, nothing will be impossible for them.
3. The way it’s still possible, sooner or later, to engage in productive discussions even with those whose views I strongly disagree with.
Two from baratillo @ cubao:
Six weird things about me meme.
1. I like peas microwaved with butter.
2. I am convinced that even if only a few drops of rain fall on my head, I’ll end up sick.
3. I tend to consume cigarettes very quickly.
4. I have a horror of drafts.
5. For some reason, I used to be unable to work without music; now, music gets in the way of thinking when I work.
6. When I am a passenger in a car, I end up subconsciously stamping my feet on the floor, miming braking as if I’m the one driving.
Tagging: anyone.
and that postcard meme, Only in the Philippines!
Tagging: anyone.
Technorati Tags: Blogging
“This sites Alexa since the Tag Fiesta has been steadily rising:
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=quezon.ph
Hm.”
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You’re right! But that is really nothing compared to a rickey.org. owned by a pinoy living in nyc. I guess people just wanted more to be entertained
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?url=rickey.org
“the masa was not the driving force. it was tito sotto and all the rest egging the people on to ‘retake’ malakanyang. and seriously, do you really think that that was anything than a staged ‘mass movement’ gone awry? you really think that the masses who were there understood what was going on beyond the ‘eat the rich’ frenzy whipped up by people who wanted to be restored to power? ”
For that matter, anyone who keeps latching on to this overly romanticised notion that the masa “drive” anything needs to modernise a bit.
It is IDEAS that drive change in society. Communism and Democracy are ideas. Turning these ideas into slogans, taglines, placards, TV ads, rivetting speeches, and other instruments of mind control (they work mainly on the masa) is a SCIENCE that is well-honed by the best of politicians (or at least those that are the most thick-skinned).
So we should stop propagating this foolish notion that the masa are the driving force of anything. They drive jack squat in my opinion. Revolutions of the masa were fueled mainly by empty stomachs. But it took talented people who could turn IDEAS into half-witted SLOGANS that simpletons could relate with to “drive” change.
Even in the corporate world, you will see lots of executives requiring their analysts to summarise stuff in PowerPoint slides using 3-5 bullet points before they could present complex ideas to the rank-and-file.
what animal is “edsa tres? i understand there was an erap loyalist mob that attempted to storm malacanang shortly after PGMA assumed the presidency in 2001 to put him back to power. edsa tres? no wonder the authentic edsa 1 and 2 have lost their magic. edsa as a symbol has been debased.
bencard, here’s two articles i wrote:
the first, on the various edsas that co-existed within edsa dos:
http://arabnews.com/?page=7§ion=0&article=91322&d=24&m=1&y=2007
the second, my account of edsa tres:
https://www.quezon.ph/columns.php?view=article&id=15
Rom, it only looks like i’m romanticizing EDSA Tres if you compare it to the elite and middle class’ purely cynical viewpoint. I believe that the masa (just like the middle class) is always on the look out for a wise and just leader. As Tito Sotto eventually found out last May, it is not tied to something as shallow as celebrity status. We can choose to view EDSA Tres as a huge shabu session and they in turn can view EDSA Dos as a Globe/SMART text party but that would be missing the essence of what brought our respective groups together by the hundreds of thousands (or even millions) to the streets.
For the middle class boycott, you can read the previous blog entries of Manolo as well as John Nery’s entries in Inquirer’s current blog.
Benign0, it is presumptuous to think that the masa does not have any ideas. You may be materially better off but, on the average, they are equipped with the same intellectual faculties and many of them have a superior set of values when compared to you. If you cannot see this, it is no one’s fault but your own. For example, Mao’s revolution derived its strength from China’s peasants. The defeated nationalists led by Chang Kai Shek realized this much which is why they immediately instituted genuine land reform in Taiwan after they landed there in 1949. In a corollary fashion, vacuity (as Rom demonstrates in her blog) also cuts across class lines. Anyway, as Rom also shows, vacuity and deep thought are not mutually exclusive. We all have our moments.
One more thing Benign0, regarding your remark:
In my more than eighteen years in the Corporate World, from first hand experience i can tell you that more often than not, it is actually the rank and file who summarizes their complex points into 3 to 5 bullet points for the consumption of the Executives. (Of course, a lot gets lost in the translation, but that’s another story.)
cvj:sorry to say this, but you didn’t really say anything, did you? we’re not even talking about how the masses are on the look out for a leader (i agree), and how celebrity is no longer a great determinant of political victory (i agree, but only with regard to show business celebrity. there are other kinds, like political celebrity which escudero and cayetano both milked to perfection). but all of that is beside the point. We were referring to the actual tres event that you say reflected the will of the majority. not necessarily, it did not. in fact, not even likely that it did. The incontrovertible fact is that people like sotto (and yes, this is the context i was referring to him in, not the misrep’ed context you tried to create by tying up the reference to the elections) goaded the masses into storming the palace. It was a manufactured phenom, therefore, and being so, how can it be said to accurately reflect the will of the masses. If anything, it reflected the will of just-ousted-desperate-to-get-back-power bloc as manifested through the masses. If, however, it did reflect the will of the masses (and sotto’s hate mongering was just a catalytic spark) as you so insist, then we should have seen more sympathetic uprisings all across the country than we actually did (did we see any at all?).
as for the boycott, yes i know what mlq3 thinks. and what john nery thinks. but why do YOU think they are right. passing off the ratiocinations of others as a substitute for one’s own is not a practice i agree with, unfortunately. and i really really want to know why YOU think the middle class boycotted the elections.
Rom, the actual tres event did not start with the march to Malacanang. Rather, it started a few days earlier and, at that point, the crowd’s outrage at their President Estrada’s arrest was genuine enough. It can only be called ‘manufactured’ in the sense that Civil Society provoked such a reaction by its callous disregard for Erap’s constituency. After May 1, the movement fizzled out because there was a backlash against that day’s violent events. The elections a few weeks later which brought victory to the administration senatorial slate also provided a measure of legitimacy to the EDSA Dos takeover. Nevertheless, the elections of May 2007 and 2007 prove that the spirit of EDSA Tres is alive and well while that of EDSA Dos has withered to the point that it has to rely on Mike Arroyo’s corrupt Generals for survival.
If you can, try to look beyond the incontrovertible fact of our political leaders’ manipulations. That’s almost a given. Rather, look into the people’s reactions as even our cynical politicians know that it is the latters’ aspirations that is the real source of power. It may eventually turn out that Escudero and/or Cayetano have been acting all along, but we the voters certainly were not.
Regarding my belief in the Middle Class boycott, i have read and evaluated Manolo and John Nery’s line of reasoning and anecdotal evidence and find them satisfactory. I’m puzzled by your insistence in ‘originality’ as if that makes or break my argument when it is normal to often rely on others for these things. Even Newton admits that he had to stand on the shoulders of giants.
(On your accusing me of misrepresentation, it would have been more polite if you sought clarification first. After all, maybe i just skipped over some steps in my chain of reasoning.)
Correction: The above should read “…the elections of May 2004 and 2007…”
cvj:as you said, the outrage at Joseph Estrada’s arrest was natural. but to make the leap from that to saying the whole thing as it played out reflects the will of the majority is to squirrel the argument in the worst way. as you said, the elections in 2004 went mostly GMA’s way and that totally invalidates the theory that the tres crowd held any sort of majority.
the assumption – even if just for the sake of argument – that the 2004 polls were dirty holds water only for the presidency. [and even then, no one has yet to claim that if the cheating had not occured, gma would have lost. as a matter of fact, all major exit polls – exit, not pre – at that time (conducted by abs-cbn, radyo veritas, even sws)showed that gma won, and by the margin proclaimed by the comelec.] so i fail to see the relevance of this part of your argument.
as for pointing to the opposition’s win in 2007, this was no longer the result of outrage against the arrest of Estrada, but outrage against Gloria, and the outrage did not come solely from the Erap crowd but also from those who decided they made a mistake with GMA in 2004. the majority in 2007 is simply not the same handful of people who reacted so strongly to Estrada’s arrest; and those who joined the opposition bandwagon do not all necessarily wave the flag for Estrada either.
And so again, the results of the 2007 polls cannot possibly be interpreted as an extension of the tres spirit you are trying to characterize as the will of the majority.
I do not insist on originality so much as i insist on seeing that you have some basis other than what this person said or what that other person claimed. especially when what that person said or that other person claimed is based solely on anecdotal evidence and their “line of reasoning.” if you rely only things like that, then someone might come along someday and be able to convince you, by dint of clever reasoning and convincing story-telling that the moon is made of green cheese.
of course, you’re never gonna be convinced of that because you know from volumes of empirical data easily available on the net and through the judicious application of math that the moon is NOT made of green cheese, but that’s exactly my point. you don’t have empirical data to prove that the middle class boycotted the elections. mlq3 and nery may believe so, but what they believe has no inherent advantage or greater validity over what someone else might believe who believes otherwise.
having said that, i am going to have to accept that you BELIEVE the midclass boycotted. but that assertion cannot be considered proven. not by a long shot.
but it was a misrep, and no offense meant either. you may have had a reason for framing it that way, but without explaining why – or skipping the links in your chain of reasoning – you made it appear that that was the context in which sotto was mentioned. if you had explained your reasoning, it would not have been a misrep. and i was under no obligation to ask you to clarify. you should have made sure you were clear from the get go. otherwise, how is an argument ever to be resolved if either protagonist could always say “but wait, what i meant to say was …”
although of course, maybe i could have said it more politely. And so, if this puck has offended, Gentleman, do not reprehend. If you pardon, we will mend. 🙂
mlq3, as you suggested i read your edsa “tres” article. with due respect, i’m not impressed. just one question: how did estrada accumulate his “fortunes”, supporting multiple families of his, with no visible means of support, financing candidacies and reported power grab attempts even from detention? it was not from show business, was it? you are not contending that all the reasons for edsa dos were false and contrived by his “enemies”, are you?
i’m not a historian like you but i’m old enough to know the score, aside from being an avid student of philippine contemporary political history. i know a revisionist account when i see one.
Rom, in terms of aspirations, the crowd that went to the streets in EDSA Tres is largely the same crowd that formed FPJ’s base in May 2004 and voted Opposition in May 2007. Even Benign0 understands that. To characterize this EDSA Tres crowd as a ‘handful’ is not historically accurate. It is true that disenchanted supporters of Gloria Arroyo (like me) have joined them in the last elections but we are no more than a small minority. Anyway, i’m glad someone from the pro-Arroyo camp finally [but belatedly] accepted that the elections was not about Erap but rather about Gloria Arroyo.
Regarding the May 2004 elections, it is not true as you claim that “no one has yet to claim that if the cheating had not occured, gma would have lost“. Manolo’s, Winnie Monsod’s and Tony Abaya’s contention that Gloria Arroyo actually won (even without cheating) stand out because they are contrarian. As for the exit polls that you refer to, as John Marzan, among others, points out, there were major anomalies especially with the discrepancy between the NCR Exit Poll and Actual results. (SWS predicted that GMA would win by 500K votes, but the actual count subsequently showed that FPJ won by 500K votes.)
On the matter of the Middle Class boycott, I agree that more data in the form of surveys or official COMELEC figures is needed to establish whether or not such an event did take place. However, the absence of the above should not stop us from making an informed judgment especially when anecdotal evidence (which is after all a form of empirical data) is available. At the very least, the anecdotal evidence presented serves as a basis for our null hypothesis which could then be subjected to confirmation or rejection upon arrival of properly collected statistics.
On the alleged misrepresentation on my part, you put the burden on me making sure that i was “clear from the get go”. I strongly agree that we all have the responsibility to make ourselves clear. However, i do not yet possess the ability to read minds so i am unable to anticipate with 100 per cent accuracy what would be clear or not clear to you.
cvj:again with the unfounded speculations.”the crowd that went to the streets in EDSA Tres is largely the same crowd that formed FPJ’s base in May 2004 and voted Opposition in May 2007.” care to substantiate that?
contrarian? contrary to whose opinion, cvj? and maybe the survey results should be reviewed again in their totality, without preferential emphasis placed on what is traditionally an opposition bulwark.
anecdotal evidence is not empirical data. and as you said, the hypothesis is subject to confirmation and should therefore not be held up as gospel truth. which is what i’ve been saying all along.
no one can read minds that well, uncle (which explains all the condescension), but in the interest of clarity, one must always assume that one needs to be always 100% clear, regardless of who one talks to.
and one last question: is labeling someone pro-arroyo (mostly on the basis of disagreement with those who proudly calim to be anti-arroyo)a way of discounting their arguments? it seems to me to be a disturbing trend hereabouts, to dismiss disagreement as coming from someone anti-arroyo and therefore not worth engaging. if that were true, then whose disagreements will you engage? will you entertain disagreement at all? two words come to mind. “circle” and the other one rhymes with …. “-erk”
bencard, de gustibus… and so, on to your estrada-related question. he had, going into politics, an advantage others didn’t -a fortune gained from his own work and career.
thereafter, the growth of his fortune was related, i suppose, to his being mayor of san juan. as president, he seems to have stuck to a small-town mayor’s mentality when it came to fund raising and worse, he ignored the well-established conventions of maintaining discretion, etc. so he paid for it, politically and so on.
his crookedness is not in dispute. it will probably be proven in court. neither is the antipathy felt towards him by the middle and upper classes.
as i said in one of the links i provided, my view is that there were two edsa dos: the first was the spontaneous outpouring of public outrage over the second envelope, an outrage stoked by the steady -and validated- opposition to estrada in the wake of the “i accuse” speech. the second edsa dos was a latin american style coup with people power characteristics.
the same distinctions should apply to edsa tres. there was a spontaneous, genuine, aspect to it, however manufactured the rest might have been.
and really, it’s the closest i’ve ever seen to a bastille moment in our country. when it failed, the long-term effects were, to my mind, quite interesting. since those participating in edsa tres viewed what they were doing as people power, but the middle and upper class vetoed it, saying it wasn’t genuine people power, those in edsa tres gave up on people power altogether.
Rom,
what I will say will by no means be empirical data, though at least I can attest to the truthfulness of it. I belong to the middle class, and everyone I know, friends, family, co-workers, did not vote in the last election. the number of people I know may certainly not be representative of the middle class (certainly not all of them belong to it) but I being in this group, would certainly follow the logic that I would be moving among this group, and that the majority of people I know, would belong to it as well. You can take this as a “rough sampling” of your “data.”
What shocks me is not that they did not vote. What shocks me are their reasons for it. many of those I asked, are annoyed whenever I posed this question. many would frown angrily and say: what’s the use?
and many would add: me pagpipilian ba?
and if I did not persuade my wife to vote, I would have known no one who voted last elections.
and that is the truth.
mlq3,
yes, it was the closest to a bastille moment we’ve ever had. but it was too small, and those who led it didn’t feel the same outrage as those they’ve led. the leaders were all fake, and they failed to attract more who would’ve joined them if they were more genuine.
but i believe this moment would still come. and that this moment is inevitable.
bencard,
Estrada unlike many other politicians, was already rich even before he became a politician. compare that to those who started out dirt poor and suddenly became rich once they were in office. in this regard, it is difficult to say, how much ERAP stole.
These guys stole more shamelessly than ERAP did.
devilsadvoc8: yes, i’ve often said, if the leaders of edsa 3 had led from the front and not the rear, the government would have fallen. if they’d moved before the gov’t pressured iglesia ni cristo and el shaddai to back out, it would have been a revolution to rival 1986.
but i don’t know about it being inevitable: edsa 3 proved a warning to those in edsa 2, that they didn’t have the monopoly on people power anymore. whether consciously or unconciously, the result has been to accelerate migration abroad or disengagement from politics at home, and pursuit of “alternatives” like gawad kalinga.
on the part of the edsa tres constituency, it’s a withdrawal from politics, too, and participation in democractic processes only on a mercenary basis (and i’d argue, more mercenary than ever before). so status quo for everyone, and ironically, the status quo prevents anything more extreme from emerging.
devilsadvoc8:thanks. personal knowledge counts big.
Rom, any information that is obtained through observation and experience (including the one Devils presented above) is empirical data. (It is contrasted with information that is derived from the reasoning process.) You may question its quality or sufficiency but not its categorization.
In everyday reality, more often than not we have to deal with probabilities since gospel truths are few and far between. We often have to form working hypotheses with the data available and proceed from there. That is why there is such a thing as epistemic probability.
Waiting for something to become gospel truth is neither practical nor logical. Witness the self-evident ridiculousness of Bencard’s assertions. Of course, the awareness that we are working with probabilities and not with ‘Gospel Truths’ should always make us open to changing our minds and keeping the lines of communication open (no matter how seemingly ridiculous the other party sounds).
My belief that the crowd that went to the streets in EDSA Tres is largely the same crowd that formed FPJ’s base in May 2004 and voted Opposition in May 2007 is based on such empirical observations which i’ve taken in over the years. It is hardly unfounded speculation as many facts corroborate it.
In my comment above, i specifically referred to Manolo as being contrarian among the opposition (in believing that Arroyo won the 2004 elections) so i don’t see why we bring non-oppositionists into the picture as you suggest.
Regarding what you tell me about clarity, you make it sound as if i’m arguing against the very concept, which in light of what i just wrote, is a misrepresentation of my position.
As to classifying you as pro-Arroyo, for all practical purposes, you are. You write like you’re the daughter of Bencard and Sassy Lawyer and you are able to shift between the two positions with agility. As to using this label as a way of discounting arguments, i have so far spent a couple of hours of my life responding to you, so i don’t believe that applies to me. (I had to google ‘circle jerk’ – new phrase for the day, thanks.)
cvj:you speak of facts, and i presume that you presume i know what these facts are. and yet, none have been presented – i.e., no facts have been shown to point directly to your assertion that “the crowd that went to the streets in EDSA Tres is largely the same crowd that formed FPJ’s base in May 2004 and voted Opposition in May 2007.”
“Regarding what you tell me about clarity, you make it sound as if i’m arguing against the very concept, which in light of what i just wrote, is a misrepresentation of my position.” I really don’t know where this came from. I don’t think you’re arguing against clarity, just that you’re not being clear. and it cannot be a misrepresentation of an idea if that which makes it a misrep comes AFTER the presentation of the idea in a particular light or context. so, “what you just wrote” cannot possibly make what i said previously a misrep because i could not have possibly known “what you wrote” when I made my statement. the most that you can hope for is to point out that i was mistaken. which i wasn’t.
and as to your final crack, maybe you think i am pro-arroyo because i don’t automatically dismiss everything she does as wrong. and because i demand more solid proof than anecdotes, theories, righteous umbrage with which to crucify her. which probably also leads you to say that i shift positions with agility (implying what, I wonder).
and yes, uncle, you do use this label to discount my arguments – not by ignoring them as you pointed out – but by refusing to meet them head on with statements like this: “If you can, try to look beyond the incontrovertible fact of our political leaders’ manipulations. That’s almost a given. Rather, look into the people’s reactions as even our cynical politicians know that it is the latters’ aspirations that is the real source of power. It may eventually turn out that Escudero and/or Cayetano have been acting all along, but we the voters certainly were not.”
That’s a long and roundabout way of saying that if-i-could-only-see-it-your-way-then-i-would-realize-that-i-was-wrong. well, the only way i can see it your way is if there is reason to. and so far, all i have from you are protestations of the acceptability of anecdotes (which are intrinsically unreliable as they are particularly susceptible to mutation into pure fiction over several retellings), insistence that one need not demand provable truth if probabilities are available, and a boatload of condescension.
unfortunately, it seems we have reached equilibrium, uncle. you are convinced that i am a dyed-in-the-wool arroyo-ite who refuses to be convinced that the woman can walk on water; and i am convinced that your anti-arroyo position has you absolutely convinced of the rightness of your theories.
ironically, we didn’t even start this thread arguing about arroyo, but whether or not the edsa tres crowd reflects the will of the majority. you haven’t proven that, and i no longer expect you to.
cheers! 😀
“but i don’t know about it being inevitable: edsa 3 proved a warning to those in edsa 2, that they didn’t have the monopoly on people power anymore. whether consciously or unconciously, the result has been to accelerate migration abroad or disengagement from politics at home, and pursuit of “alternatives†like gawad kalinga.”
It is inevitable Manolo. And the only way to avert it is if serious poverty alleviation happen. and the accelerated migration will contribute more sharply to this. this will empty the Phils of a great number of people who would’ve been a great help in nation building. the population pyramid would suddenly have no barrier bet the rich and the poor (as mostly, only middle class families have the greater and the most chances of emigrating) the wealth gap would increase greatly. even alternatives like GK would be hard put to cope and cover for the deficiencies of govt service. by then, many of the people working in these NGOS would be afflicted by a severe case of hopelessness, and either they have already left the Phils or will then be planning to. collapse of these same orgs would precipitate this bastille moment. even if GMA steps down and somebody else becomes president, this event has all the possibilty of happening if wealth is not spread around more evenly.
btw Rom, you’re welcome. and just to give you an idea of how many these people whom I know did not vote…
I have 6 siblings. 4 are old enough to vote. both my parents are still alive. i have 26 classmates when i was in college, one of them became my wife. i have 4 very close friends. our maid and her family i can include too. a lot of friends in my town as well. i don’t kow abt members of their family, but if they are any indication, their family members might’ve cared less as well.
all of them i asked. you know the answer. either i belong to a group of very apathetic people, or there is something very wrong with me.
sws should make a survey at how many people voted last election and to what social class they belonged to. perhaps this would paint a picture of how bloated the voter’s list was, and how many votes were manufactured out of thin air. (and how many registered voters, who did not vote, had their votes used nonetheless)
Devils, Halalan Marangal (halal.interdoc.org/halal/) has some of the figures that you are looking for in their Audit Report #4.
tnx cvj
Rom, i did not presume that you knew what my facts are, only that i formed my beliefs on the basis of observations i’ve made. I’ll explain them for you in my blog as and when i feel like it.
Your second paragraph is not clear to me so i cannot respond to it.
I do not believe you are pro-Arroyo for the reason you stated. I believe you are pro-Arroyo because just like Bencard and Sassy Lawyer, you have chosen to act as a lawyer for her position. In addition, you have chosen to ignore cheating in Maguindanao and support Zubiri who is Gloria Arroyo’s ally.
Just the same, my statement that you quoted in your fourth paragraph has nothing to do with you being pro-Arroyo. I’m just asking you (and others) to look at the EDSA’s and elections from the point of view of the aspirations of the people who joined these mass actions.
Many tend to look at EDSA Two as a conspiracy by Mike Arroyo, Chavit Singson and the Generals while EDSA Three as a rabble-rousing exercise by those who want to take power back. Focusing on these previous plot and counterplot is useless except to historians and gossips.
I think it’s more useful to examine the grievances of the crowds that supported them because those grievances still exist and can be used as a basis for dialogue and potential reconciliation.
ROM,
Good argument, but when it comes to politicians, generalizing and quick judgments, I beleive, are key. These are not regular people on the streets. That’s why it’s so difficult here in the Philippines. You really have to judge politicians characters, almost all of whom have, well, a politicians’ personality and character. In “better” countries politicians are scared of people’s wrath. Not here. Here the people are easily manipulated, easily pacified and easily blackmailed. That’s the problem: the most basic of checks and balances is not even in the picture.
ROM,
Have a confession. Been reading Smoke. Are you in advertising by any chance? Like the little Mastercard copy.
cvj:it’s sad, really, how you try to always bring everything down to the level of pro and anti. and this – “Rom, i did not presume that you knew what my facts are, only that i formed my beliefs on the basis of observations i’ve made. I’ll explain them for you in my blog as and when i feel like it” – this is classic. Hahaha.
cvj thunders from the sky: I have facts, but I will only reveal them at the proper time, and only when I’m good and ready! In the meantime, let my insinuations percolate through your consciousness until you convince yourself that i am right, so that maybe, i won’t have to present my facts at all because, just between you and me, I don’t really have any. Bwahahaha!
Just kidding, uncle.
Well, just a little.
Ok.
Not really.
LOL
and it’s pathetic that you have to bring in zubiri. what? can’t substantiate why the tres crowd reflects the majority will that you have to marshal all the stock arguments about cheating and whatnot? haha. and if you think i lawyer for arroyo, you know not whereof you speak.
brianb: i don’t recommend generalizations and quick judgments of anybody – even politicians. in fact, i have an issue with cvj indulging in generalizations and quick judgments about me. but then again, that’s just me. and i’m not in advertising, uncle. 🙂
Rom, i made that statement not as a thunder from the sky but in the spirit of i owe you an explanation. To do this however, i have to figure out a way to de-familiarize what to me is obvious and self-evident.
For example, to me it is obvious that the EDSA Tres crowd can by no means be described as being a “handful” (especially since they are bigger than the EDSA Dos crowd), yet that’s the quantifier that you used.
You also assert that it is not the masa that was the driving force but rather Tito Sotto and other pro-Erap politicians. To me, it is obvious that what drove the masa were its aspirations for a democratic order which was taken away from them in the previous months. Tito Sotto and other politicians were just[cynically] tapping into this source of energy not unlike the way oil companies drill for oil. When Tito Sotto broke moved away from the source (i.e. the masa’s aspirations) and relied on his own celebrity pull as he did in May 2007, he failed to reach his objective.
You are of course free to accuse me of intellectual dishonesty if that’s what you feel like. Good faith tends to be the casualty of contentious discussions.
ROM,
I repeat. We have a right, a duty to generalize and judge quickly when it comes to politicians.
Yes Edsa Tres was genuine. I actually felt that it had been good for our society. The elite finally learned to fear the masses.
edsa “tres” was a copy cat exercise. just because it worked for edsa 1 & 2, it didn’t mean that if you manage to congregate a few hundred thousand unthinking mob (or even a ridiculous “count” of 3 million), you could topple a government. the cause must be worthwhile enough to capture the heart and mind of a decisive portion of society, certainly not to restore to power a disgraced leader whose alleged sins were almost visible to the naked eye
Cvj said, “I believe you represent the sizable apathetic sector (which is what many of the EDSA Dos people have become). As such, you are a friend of the status quo which is precisely what needs to be changed. “
what do you mean with your above statement? it’s too quick and easy for you to judge other people. Rom, is right in painting your character, a typical mindset of those people frequenting ellen’s blog. what made you think anyway that we belong to the apathetic sector? and which sector do you belong by the way (or you’re a jury and judge combined?) just because you are critical here in this blog against the arroyo administration and to those people you call pro-arroyo, you think you’ve done already the country a great service? if that is your gauge for being non-apathetic, I can tell you I have done far worst than what you’re doing now.
and what is this change that you’re talking about? you mean another edsa? please, enough of your obsession. sorry to disappoint you, but I have my own analysis and judgment too. you should know by now that without the element of the military (which I think the reason why ellen has been very busy trying to hype up the ongoing brouhaha involving the military) any uprising by the masa will not prosper.
Cvj said, “You should not mischaracterize the thinking people at Ellen’s as they are way ahead of the politicians in terms of sense of justice and nobility of aspirations. They are the ones who are shaping tomorrow’s leaders to the horror of our traditional politicians.â€Â
shaping tomorrow’s leaders? tell me what have they done so far, other than the cursing of Gloria and those they deemed as Gloria paid hacks and asslickers? do you really think they represent the majority? those people who are mostly out of the country and as DJB said are just visiting the site for their “scream therapy†sessions? I even bet majority of those 20 or so people did not bother voting in the last election. the thinking people my ass! with too much hatred and foams in their mouth, they can’t even think clearly and identify who’s the enemy and who’s not.
Cvj said, “Our nation can only move forward if both sections of our society engage in an honest dialogue, but that can only be built on an atmosphere of mutual respect.â€Â
wrong. our problem mainly is due to lack of patriotism (love of country) amongst the people. Lack of patriotism from our leaders, lack of patriotism from those big businesses who runs the country’s economy and lack of patriotism from ordinary citizens. Everything is about self interest. Patriotism is what our country needs to move forward.
grd, if it’s true that you’ve done ‘far worst’ than me then i stand corrected and apologize for calling you apathetic. However, i can only judge you by your current online persona and from what i have read, you are a supporter of the status quo which to me is as good as being apathetic. As for people power, the military are people too so they are part of that equation.
I’m proud that you consider me as being typical of the people frequenting ellen’s blog.
I strongly agree with you on the need for patriotism which i see that in abundance among the commenters that frequent Ellen’s site. However, the issue for this decade is the cleavage between the middle class and the masa. Both camps mean well but the trust is not there. As BrianB said above, with EDSA Tres, The elite finally learned to fear the masses. This former EDSA Dos crowd (and the rest of the elite) has let this fear combined with deep-rooted condescension get in the way.
thanks for including my site on the list (although I rarely update my blog).I appreciate it.
cjv, judging from what I have read, I am certain that you are one of those people in elllen’s blog.
I didn’t realize there’s a new meaning now for patriotism.
so let me rephrase my previous statements. our problem mainly is due to lack of bigotry amongst the people. Lack of bigotry from our leaders, lack of bigotry from those big businesses who runs the country’s economy and lack of bigotry from ordinary citizens. everything is about self interest. Bigotry is what our country needs to move forward.
as for you and your kind, exactly the kind of people our country needs. you are the new patriots. so when are you going to make your move?
Thanks… but I see my blog more as an affront to good taste and “civil society” more so with my penchant for prolixity and “colorful” language. But still, Thank you.
My blog isn’t post Aug 2006, it started much earlier by several months. Actually, under the same Heading in a different site about a year earlier still but had to shut it down for reasons I have buried deep within my subconscious.
john marzan said:
“if i were her, i would have banned the likes of “anthony scalia†and “proudtobepinoy†AKA MR. OFF TOPIC (and his numerous alteregos) a LONG TIME AGO.”
BUTI NA LANG HINDI IKAW SI ELLEN!
And obviously you are not reading ellen’s blogs more often than i do.
The original ‘insultador’ ystakei is the one who gets away with the insults. And Ellen is letting her do it, without any censorship.
Why? Because ystakei accounts for 1/2 of the million hits of Ellen’s blog. Censor ystakei and to vapor goes the 500,000 hits of Ellen’s blogs.
“all the personal attacks coming from the pro-arroyo alternics were really disgusting (lalo na noong palapit na ang election period)”
Excuse me? personal attacks? from pro-arroyo alternics? Are you sure you REGULARLY (as in DAILY) visit Ellen’s blog?
By the way I am already banned from Ellen’s blog. Why? BECAUSE WHEN YSTAKEI INSULTED ME AGAIN, I INSULTED HER BACK!