The total rejection of the status quo
After all the ranting, the shedding of tears of regrets, and the gnashing of teeth, people in the USA and the Philippines should learn many valuable lessons from both the earth-shaking defeat of Hillary Rodham Clinton, which is comparable to the election debacle of Mar Roxas in the May 2016 elections here. The stronger and the more powerful do not always win. Sometimes, the outcasts, the often-rejected outsider from the peripheries of Mindanao and the Atlantic coastlines may have their own times and seasons too. "Weather weather lang yan" to borrow that famous quote from Erap.
We now comprehend the meaning of those two monumental defeats. Most of the forgotten folks out there in the boondocks and the villages hate imperialistic Manila. They hate the trapos who rob them of their hard-earned money in taxes, making themselves filthy rich. The small guys hate the rich and powerful decision makers because they see these people responsible for making their lives miserable. And both Hillary Clinton and Mar Roxas represented continuity of their predecessors' legacy "business as usual."
The reasons why Hillary lost, which has finally dawned on me, is not really because of those mishandled emails, not even because of the allegations of fraud involving questionable donations to the Clinton Foundation. it was rather due to the fact that the former secretary of state represented the status quo, the imperialistic impositions of the White House and the often unpopular and ivory tower policies concocted by the capital and imposed on all the people whose realities are completely unknown to the politicians in DC.
They opted for Trump not because they love him more, but precisely because he represented change. Clinton represented resistance to change. He challenged the establishments and attacked the excesses and impervious indifference of the status quo. His message resonated because what he was preaching about. What he was pontificating on are precisely what the forgotten people in the peripheries wanted to say and wanted to do. Donald Trump heard the persistent cry of the people is for change, and he represented change.
By way of some uncanny analogy or parallelism, if you will, between Hillary and Mar Roxas, they both represented just more of what their predecessors and sponsors had been doing all along. Hillary was a quasi-incumbent because she closely associated herself with President Obama. Her candidacy, which was strongly endorsed by President Barrack, would only be OBAMA III. The same way, Mar Roxas lost because he was mouthing the hackneyed, largely rejected slogan of Daang Matuwid. In a sense, Clinton lost because of her ties with Obama. Roxas lost because of his closeness to PNoy.
The people want change and both President Duterte and Donald Trump mean change. Change is what matters most to the angry, neglected, forgotten, and ignored "hoi polloi."
- Latest
