Weekly Brief
Back to the fundamentals. Nations' capacity to kill and extract is what ultimately matters.
In review and in prospect
It’s not as if there is much to learn from chatter coming from the Opposition camp — at least the subset of it traditionally associated with “thought leadership” that revolves around “human rights”, equality, giving a shit about the poor, sugar, spice, and everything else that is nice. None of that won an election and none of that ever won a war.
The latter is an important point. Cold War II (a term I first raised in our previous Weekly Brief), which we find ourselves in today, is a reminder that none of that nice stuff is what ultimately drives historical events of consequence. It is really the human condition that predates not just liberal ideology and all of its 300-odd year history but human civilisation itself to the tune of hundreds of thousands of years that continues to set our long-term trajectory as a species.
We humans share a handful of fundamental behavioural drivers with our primate cousins:
Securing resources
Acquiring power
Maintaining a strong collective
These drivers are millions of years old (far far older than our advanced sapient minds which most days luxuriate in the pondering of woke ideals over mugs of latte). The third one is what makes us a social species; ones that suffer — and enjoy (depending on the circumstance) — a dependence on a community that behaves as a unit to survive and procreate.
In the old days, failing in even just one of these three meant certain annihilation both of individuals and entire tribes. From that perspective, it becomes easy to understand why these behaviours are so deeply-ingrained in most social animals’ psyches to the point that these motivations handily overcome what we regard as “rational” thinking. Failure along these three endeavours meant extinction. The fact that we are here today is because our ancestors succeeded at all three. Mulling over what it means to be “good” is out the window when facing an enemy intent on eating your lunch.
So at the core of Cold War II (and any shooting war that did or did not eventuate from such sabre rattling preludes) is a confluence of the above three motivations that drive primate behaviour. Filipinos’ and their governments’ appeal to the world to consider their quaint plight as a small and powerless nation does not figure in a world where — despite all the technological, cultural, and social achievements — the basic human condition had not changed at all.
The confronting task at hand for Filipinos and their governments, therefore, is to stop thinking and acting like victims. In the geological scheme of thing, victims die and their entire ilk goes extinct. Winners go home and fuck the Prom Queen. Filipinos better serve themselves by evaluating their existence (and prospects of continued existence) along those three fundamental drivers of success and come to terms with the results of that evaluation. From there, the best courses of action that serve long-term goals emerge.
Last week’s blog posts
Brain drain runs deep in the Philippines
May 15, 2023 by The Unpopular Opinion
"The past 50 years has shown that Filipino politicians don’t want to engage in painful economic reforms because these entail sacrificing political capital, specially that built off support from landed elites and oligarchs."
Leila De Lima’s acquittal ultimately counts for nothing for the Philippine Opposition
May 13, 2023 by benign0
"De Lima herself whose 'victimhood' was fodder for this dysfunctional campaign was part of the very collateral that failed to deliver results to the Yellowtard-Communist Axis in that last 'important' election."
Did Babe Romualdez forget that the US Killed Millions of Filipinos?
May 10, 2023 by Ramon Ortoll
"Romualdez has been busier shuttling back and forth between Washington and Manila, mostly lobbying for American interests in the Philippines, instead of the other way around as his job requires."
May 10, 2023 by benign0
"They failed to unify, failed to put up a competent leader, failed to come up with a campaign pitch based on an accurate reading of public sentiment, and refused, as the campaign progressed, to learn from insights described by data published by reputable polling firms."
May 8, 2023 by benign0
"Twitter user 'sher-anne' who, according to her Twitter profile, is Secretary-General of Kabataan Partylist Marikina in a tweet called Balagtas a 'predator' who persistently invited her to 'hook up'."