Tag: Philippines

Pride & Rage

At 36 with hypertension and a baby on the way, I feel I’m too old to be filled with rage; and yet, for the past 2 weeks, I’ve spent inordinate amounts of time on Twitter wrestling with paid trolls in virtual mud fights where I’ve used every curse and swear word to try to hurt my opponents, all the while knowing fighting with fake accounts with zero followers is the same as punching a brick wall with bare fists.

Practically all my tweets have been about the injustice of having the spawn of a dictator and the most brazen plunderer of all time be my country’s next president. I’ve stopped using Facebook because its twisted algorithm promotes fake news for cheap engagement. These days, they call this type of online behavior “toxic.” Well, to me, it’s the only rational emotion and reaction in response to the Marcoses returning to power.

I’m too old for this, I would tell myself during the brief moments when my head clears up and I can let out a sigh. What can I realistically do? I’m safely sequestered here in the peaceful province of Angono, taking care of my wife whose belly is ballooning every day, and I’m waist-deep in work from sun up ’til sun down in my little personal office at home. No protest marches for me; and I haven’t really participated in one since college. I joked to my wife that she might see me on TV getting sprayed by a fire hose and hit in the head with a truncheon. She said I should probably stop tweeting because Marcos’ men might break into our house and put me in a body bag.

It’s all hyperbole, of course. Aside from one or two tweets criticizing the state of things that have gone a bit viral, I’m nobody on Twitter. Besides, Marcos Jr. doesn’t have the balls.

I haven’t been this enraged in a long time; not even when Duterte caused ABS-CBN to shut down due to trumped-up charges of tax evasion, and freedom of expression and the respect usually accorded to journalists for reporting well-researched facts seemed to die with the network; not even during the gross mishandling of the pandemic by Duterte’s administration. Every day, he would do something morally inexcusable or say something that flies in the face of basic decency expected from a publicly elected official–but I’m far more infuriated now even compared to those days.

So what is it that ticks me off so bad?

I think it’s pride. A slight to pride hurts but even more so when you understand it never needed to happen in the first place. Not in a world where we are all rational, anyway.

The Philippines was given a simple choice in these elections: vote for someone who has a flawless track record of public service or someone whose family stole billions of dollars from the central bank, and murdered and tortured citizens calling for a return to a working democracy, and who himself owes hundreds of billions of pesos in estate taxes to the government. The answer couldn’t have been easier. Even a child wouldn’t make the same mistake if somebody put down the choices on paper and asked the kid to select who’s better, A or B. Filipinos, apparently living in another dimension where logic and reason are nonexistent concepts, inexplicably, overwhelmingly chose the latter.

This, I think, makes my blood boil. This willful self-debasement of a nation where I belong in. The kind that makes you seriously question how deep this pit of shame goes, and how we can even move on from here.

Admittedly, this has probably hit me harder as an alumnus of UP, widely known as a bastion of scholarly dissent, and more so having closely studied social phenomena such as authoritarianism and fascism as a student of sociology. In UP, Marcos is not an obscure hero in urban legends and tall tales, but a traumatic fragment of memory–a clear warning of what Philippine society can descend into again if people stop speaking out against everyday institutionalized injustices, and checks on government power are made to disappear.

And so, to me, the Marcoses returning to Malacanang despite their unforgivable crimes against the Filipino people, is a deeply personal issue. Sometimes, I feel like it’s the culmination of all education my parents paid for with blood and sweat. Maybe the only real, universal lesson to pick up after all is said and done: I know what goodness is and I believe in it because I know what wickedness is. Evil is Marcos. Marcos is evil.

To watch people I know turn their backs from the truth–even after they are presented with an overwhelming barrage of facts–is almost like witnessing the last rays of hope for this nation get engulfed by the darkest of clouds.

If we are unable to make the simplest of distinctions between what’s good for us and what’s bad for us, then what hope is there for the future?

More importantly, for the present, what degree of respect do we even reserve to ourselves?

Pride is drawing a line. On one side of that line lie tolerance, forgiveness, and understanding. On the other side, there’s only outrage. Self-respect is only possible because we are able to draw this line.

And anybody’s pride can be hurt. We all have different thresholds when we think enough is enough. We rarely even talk of pride and self-respect in our day-to-day dealings with local government to secure an ID, to file requests and such, even if we expect corruption to be part of the normal processes. Sure–corruption is a fact of public office and it’s endemic in virtually all forms of state bureaucracies. Granted, we’ve all paid our share of “lagay” and “pangkape” and these concepts are already inextricable parts of everyday life no matter how much we rail against them. But what the Marcoses did and are still–shockingly–doing are on a completely different level.

Words fail to describe the magnitude of $5 – $10 billion of plundered wealth.

Here’s an excerpt from a book about the Marcoses’ ill-gotten wealth I’ve been reading with information based on documents found on the plane bearing Marcos’ possessions when he and his family fled to Hawaii, as well as those found in Malacanang in the aftermath of EDSA People Power:

“Until Marcos came along, the top ‘kleptocrats’ were Latin American dictators like Rafael Trujillo of the Dominican Republic, Juan Peron of Argentina, Fulgencio Batista of Cuba, Marcos Perez Jimenez of Venezuela and Miguel Aleman of Mexico. The reported fortunes of the five caudillos between 1952 and 1961 was between $1.8 to $2.6 billion, which is still much lower than the $5 to $10 billion that just one dictator in Asia, Marcos, was alleged to have amassed.” – ‘The Philippines Under Marcos’ by Belinda A. Aquino (no relation to Corazon Aquino)

So if these astronomical figures denoting unlimited pillaging and looting of their own money over a span of 20 years can’t make Filipinos draw their line of pride–then how and where do we draw it? Can it even be drawn at all?

We shouldn’t even be talking about Marcos Jr.’s 203 billion pesos in taxes owed and if that can get him disqualified or cancel the validity of his victory because nobody should be able to get past the brazen criminal acts of his parents.

No logical conversation should even take place until after we’ve all agreed that our pride as a people has been insulted forever. Trampled to the ground by this family of thieves and murderers.

So this is where my fountain of rage draws from: an abyss of hopelessness.

I Read Sartre and I Think There’s No Such Thing as Forever

Young Filipinos have a popular saying, “Walang forever (translated: There’s no such thing as forever / Forever is impossible).” It’s a decidedly pessimistic and mocking view of love and romantic relationships popular on social media where it’s been expressed through innumerable memes. A girl actually coaxed Bill Nye to answer the question whether forever really existed or not, to which Bill Nye answered, yes, forever possibly exists if by “forever” one means time as a property of the universe. Bill Nye was trolled, of course–like all old folks online. The question was not really about time but the permanence of love.

Thankfully, I think I may have found a better answer from my nightly readings. It turns out, Jean-Paul Sartre, French existentialist philosopher extraordinaire famous for confusing the daylights out of students, had something to say about permanence or rather its opposite–“fragility,” which I think we can extend over our analysis of love and relationships.

Destruction and Fragility

In his book Being and Nothingness, Sartre explained that “to destroy” is human. Without human beings, there would be no such thing as “destruction.” You can’t say for example, that a bolt of lightning destroyed a tree in a forest because without man to define what happened as such, the concept of “being destroyed” wouldn’t exist. In fact, there wouldn’t even be any “change” at all. There would just be Being and outside that, nothing.

In relation to this, “fragility” is also a human thing. Nothing in the world is fragile except those which man defines as such. But if man is the one who posits something as “fragile,” didn’t he, in essence, also cause its own destruction? For if he never defined that something as “fragile” in the first place, then it cannot possibly be destroyed.

Sartre says:

“And what is fragility if not a certain probability of non-being for a given being under determined circumstances. A being is fragile if it carries in its being a definite possibility of non-being… Thus it is man who renders cities as destructible, precisely because he posits them as fragile and as precious and because he adopts a system of protective measures with regard to them. It is because of this ensemble of measures that an earthquake or a volcanic eruption can destroy these cities or these human constructions. The original meaning and aim of war are contained in the smallest building of man.”

I personally love this line: “The original meaning and aim of war are contained in the smallest building of man.” Sartre appears to be saying that once man gave birth to the concept of “fragility,” everything that concept touched was doomed to be destroyed precisely because fragility “carries in its being a definite possibility of non-being.” A fortress–no matter how strongly built, no matter how well-defended, is doomed to fall because as a fragile object, it always had the definite possibility of being nihilated.

Throughout history, men went to war because they knew there were fragile things in the world that they could destroy to achieve their goal. We always knew things are breakable, so we broke them–just as planned.

Sartre continues:

“It is necessary then to recognize that destruction is an essentially human thing and that it is man who destroys his cities through the agency of earthquakes or directly, who destroys his ships through the agency of cyclones or directly.”

Once an object has been posited as “fragile,” it was always going to be destroyed directly or indirectly by man. Earthquakes do not destroy cities; it is man who defines and limits the meaning of destruction, and so he is the one who made that earthquake’s destruction possible. It’s actually just a different way of expressing that old philosophical question: can the color red exist for a blind person? No, because he doesn’t have the capability to create that concept in his mind. How could destruction be possible if we didn’t have the ability to conceive of something as fragile?

This takes us now to the concept of love.

There’s No Such Thing as Forever?

Something always taken for granted dawned on me while I was reading Sartre. To say one “loves” hides an unspoken fact people conveniently forget or fail to discuss; namely, “to love” is only possible because it’s possible “not to love.” That is, loving something presupposes that one does not love everything or one can choose not to love.

You say “I love this person” only because you don’t love all the persons in your life–just this one particular member of the human race.

But the scary thing? The statement “I love this person” is possible because “I don’t love this person” is also possible.

As Sartre says, nothingness lives “in the heart of being–like a worm.”

“Not to love” lives in the heart of “love” like a worm.

Love is a fragile thing because we adopt “a system of protective measures” to keep it from falling apart, to keep it from descending into “not loving.” But here is where all lovers, even the most passionate of them all, may have already doomed their relationships if not teetering on the edge of their ruin, because it seems that if we believe Sartre, then to love is to enter into a contract with a disclaimer at the end that says “I can choose to destroy this love if I wanted to because love is a fragile thing and it can and it will always be destroyed by me or someone or something else if they wanted to or if circumstances permitted it to happen.”

Is there no such thing as forever? How could there be one if we’re talking about a thing as fragile as love? It’s a thin sheet of something weak, something that breaks when you pound it with a hammer, or roll it over with a bulldozer, or crush with the weight of the entire world–it doesn’t matter. It is breakable and if it’s breakable, then it’s not a thing made for “forever.” Love presupposes its own destruction.

So we guard against all the forces that could break that “precious” thing apart (love is, in fact, precious because it can be shattered and taken away from you). We do all we can to protect this little magical thing from the pressures of other parties, of our work, our daily lives, the economy, of whatever else in the universe that threatens to annihilate this gift that we have. But the funny thing is that we, ourselves, made it feeble and frail because we posited this thing between us as “love” in the first place–and unfortunately, love is fragile.

Wait, what of “True Love?”

But isn’t there such a thing as “true love?” And isn’t “true love” not fragile?

Adding the word “true” to “love” is more a play on words than anything substantial. It doesn’t contradict the fact that true love is also only possible because there’s a definite possibility not to be truly in love. Thus “true love” itself is haunted by its nothingness, that is, that inside its being lives that worm of “not being truly in love.”

Let me put it this way: you say you two are “truly in love?” Then that must mean you’re not truly in love with everything and everyone in your life–just this one specific person. That must also mean you’re walking on eggshells; you two are adrift in a sea of people not being truly in love with one another, and you two can drown anytime, sinking into that deep sea with all the others.

So what is one to do in the face of potential doom?

Nothing, really, but to accept the ultimate responsibility of the choice in front of you. You can love but to do so, you must accept the fact that it can be fractured and pulverized anytime. You step into all the wonders of it knowing full well that they can spin around and shape-shift into nightmares.

There’s no such thing as forever or maybe there is but the odds are hopelessly against it. What we do have is a responsibility to keep a fragile thing from exploding into smithereens; and, moreover, a bigger responsibility to deal with the consequences if and when it does.

“Man is condemned to be free; because once thrown into the world, he is responsible for everything he does. It is up to you to give [life] a meaning.” — Sartre

Justice Be Done: A Petition to Burn Off Half of Manny Pacquiao’s Mustache #BurnPacstache

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In light of recent remarks by eight-division boxing world champion and Filipino congressman Manny “Pacman” Pacquiao against LGBT, calling them “worse than animals” because animals are supposedly better since they know that bolts only go into nuts, we are calling for three sanctions against Pacquiao in the name of justice and to advance affirmative action, namely:

(1) His declaration as a nuisance candidate in the Philippine senatorial elections

(2) The boycott of all his remaining endorsements after Nike’s withdrawal of their support; and last but not the least–

(3) The symbolic burning of half his mustache (official hashtag #BurnPacstache).

Now, we would love to expound on items one and two on our list but according to our research team, Facebook is already flooded with passionate theses about these rational and righteous causes by your own friends who are only too glad for an excuse to  practice their almost-forgotten essay-writing techniques, so let us move on to number three; that is, the burning of half of Pacquiao’s mustache.

We know the big question on your mind right now: Why? Why call for the burning of half of Pacquiao’s mustache? Why not the full mustache?

As concisely as we could, please let us explain our position as regards this matter of tremendous consequence for the future of gender equality here in the nation–and Pacquiao being an international celebrity–around the world.

Any kind of punishment must be commensurate to the crime, and since Pacquiao said homosexuals are worse than animals, clearly with the intent of proclaiming the unfounded superiority of heterosexuals, he deserves only partial upper-lip facial-hair incineration as opposed to full upper-lip facial-hair incineration. The reason being that it has long been established that animals are in fact better than humans, and human beings are nothing less than the dregs of life’s evolution here on earth. The bases of this argument, both scientific and philosophical, are quite solid. To cite just a few examples: animals never caused climate change (the dinosaurs definitely never produced enough poisonous gas through their farts that they caused global warming and their eventual extinction; an asteroid did it for them), animals never made wonky, jam-packed trains that broke down 5 days a week, and animals never savaged their kind on social media through semi-vague passive-aggressive posts day after day.

Clearly, animals are way better than human beings–all human beings–not just homosexuals. So taking this proposition into account, we can confidently say that Pacquiao was only half-wrong in his statement.

Had he said that both heterosexuals AND homosexuals are better than animals, then we would be aggressively calling for the searing of his entire mustache, not just half of it.

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Pacquiao in his younger years had light mustache indicating normal, mild religiousness.

Take note: this cause–while admittedly quite common and so subtle that it may be mistaken as uninspired–is strongly symbolic at the very core. Pacquiao’s mustache is not like any other facial hair worn by your average Joe. A cursory look at the boxing legend’s history reveals that the growth of his mustache runs parallel with his unhealthy obsession with his faith. Before Pacquiao turned into a raving born-again Christian pastor with outrageous ambitions of being the President of the Philippines (which may still be possible looking at how bad things are in this country), he was a normal, moderately worshipping, totally mediocre Catholic who balanced praying with equal amounts of gambling and womanizing. He was perfectly all right back in those days when it could be remembered that his mustache was only light and sparse like those found in boys just hitting puberty.

Manny Pacquiao and Shane Mosley address the media at a press conference to promote their upcoming fight in New York
Pacquiao in his older age has grown a thick mustache signalling his destructive fanaticism.

However, as his mustache grew thicker and fuzzier, Pacquiao transformed into an insatiable and violent gay-bashing machine who calls in his sleep for the automated eradication of gayness via smart machine guns in an Avenger Helicarrier. This metamorphosis is truly shocking considering that Pacquiao was previously known as some sort of a philanthropist who may have helped a lot of people, especially in Mindanao. Fast-forward to the present time and Filipinos would rather celebrate Christmas with Floyd Mayweather Jr., another sporting icon who pioneered the use of women as punching bags and speed balls.

We therefore call on all citizens, not just of the Philippines, but of the civilized world, for the half-burning of this prickly symbol of bigotry, so that everyone may know the seriousness of the issue at hand. However, we do clarify that this method of protest cannot and must not be undertaken without the full consent of Pacquiao. If Pacquiao cannot find it in his broken conscience to allow us the just execution of this punishment, then the burning of half his mustache in all posters and images showing his smug Christian mug would suffice.

Sound off if you agree with this petition and use the hashtag #BurnPacstache. Remember: global gender equality hangs in the balance.

Emilio Aguinaldo’s Barber: “I am the One to Blame for the President’s Many Mistakes”

Newly unearthed letters from Emilio Aguinaldo’s ancestral home in Kawit, Cavite reveal that the first Philippine President’s barber was the one to blame for every questionable and downright disgusting decision Aguinaldo had made throughout his life.

The trove of correspondences yellow with age and of priceless historical significance sheds new light on the murkier side of our country’s history from the Spanish to the Japanese occupation era. The letters were penned by Aguinaldo’s barber himself and were anonymously signed “Your loyal barber.”

The team of local historians and archaeologists who discovered the letters released some of the shocking excerpts today, such as this one written around the time Aguinaldo was retreating from the advancing American forces in Northern Luzon in 1899.

“Dear El Presidente,

Word has reached me that you and your troops, in a word, have your boots stuck in unbelievably deep excrement with your hopeless guerilla warfare against the gringos. I warned you long ago that this would happen if you keep your ridiculous and evil flattop. Please let me cut it; I will go to your location even if it costs me my life…”

According to the team’s lead historian, the key word here was “evil.” It appeared that Aguinaldo’s barber firmly believed that the iconic haircut (arguably the flattest flattop ever documented) had supernatural, almost “occult” influences on the President. Another excerpt reads:

“I tried and tried to convince you to adopt a more conventional hairstyle, perhaps a wavy, side-swept one like Dr. Rizal’s or a tidy brush-up like Apolinario Mabini’s, but you insisted on this weird, taboo flattop that my barber family has refused to offer our customers for decades.

You even went absolutely nuts when I suggested Andres Bonifacio’s neatly parted mop had more appeal to it, and suggested I was committing treason against the Republic. Your insecurity towards that man was truly boundless.”

Aguinaldo_ang_aglipay
President Emilio Aguinaldo’s hairstyle was so rare, he’s actually kind of funny-looking in this photo taken 1904.

The team’s investigation into the haircut trends in Aguinaldo’s time shows that the President sported an extremely rare hairstyle that both made him into a legend and the constant butt of jokes of Katipuneros during secret meetings.

The barber even remembers the very moment he completed cutting the infamous crown:

“I remember it like it was yesterday. As soon as I lifted my scissors, your eyes literally glowed red. It was as if the innocent boy bursting with selfless bravery turned into a conniving, power-hungry man who will stop at nothing to conquer the country for himself. All because of that cursed flattop.”

“Yes, the hair gave you immense strength and tactical knowledge that allowed you to win key battles in Cavite while Bonifacio embarrassed himself with his losses, but those victories came with a price: your soul.”

The barber’s beliefs–while truly extraordinary–were not without merit, said the team’s lead historian. Aguinaldo’s top was so distinctly flat that he stood out like a sore thumb in the battlefield, allowing every soldier to recognize him even far away, with the unintended effect of boosting troop morale. It was like Aguinaldo gave an inspirational dugout speech every time he took off his hat.

The shock of shocking flatness also unified Cavite revolutionaries–the “Magdalo” faction–like no other conceivable force could. The straightness of the top and the uniformity of the strands, in the eyes of revolutionaries, symbolized strength through unity. The lead historian even went as far as to suggest the flattop was the key determining factor in the 1897 Tejeros Convention at the end of which Aguinaldo was elected the first president of the Philippines and Bonifacio was relegated to the pathetic post of Director of the Interior (so much for starting the whole revolution). As is now famously known, Bonifacio deemed the elections unjust and tampered with, and his subsequent condemnation of the process resulted in him being accused of treason, and eventually being executed.

But Aguinaldo’s barber had a more interesting take on the whole event:

“I witnessed first-hand how your initial decision to commute Bonifacio’s death sentence was immediately overturned when he screamed in your face that ‘your hair was flatter than your unbelievably flat personality’ and that “no wonder we’re losing the war because our enemies are using your head as crosshairs to aim for our soldiers.'”

Apparently, the brilliant general Antonio Luna was also the recipient of Aguinaldo’s ire stemming from his crop of square hair.

“Poor Luna once broke his serious character to make an admittedly tasteless joke about what the difference was between Apolinario’s legs and your hair. The answer being that your hair stands. The savage look on your face afterwards told me that that man–as important as he was tactically to you–was as good as dead. And sure enough, a month later, Luna had more holes in him than Manila.”

Aguinaldo and Quezon during Flag Day, 1935. The first President sported the flattest flattop even in old age.
Aguinaldo and Quezon during Flag Day, 1935. The first President sported the flattest flattop even in old age.

The one-sided correspondences between the first President and his barber continued throughout the years as the hairstylist tirelessly implored his rogue customer to cut his hair and end the curse once and for all.

“Shame on you for surrendering to the Americans! Miguel Malvar was still fighting his heart out while you were taking an oath of allegiance to the invaders and making a secret pact to spread your laughable hairstyle among the young generation of Filipinos who will be reared in American culture. You were the one responsible for this revoltingly bad hairstyle being prescribed in our schools.”

“The demon in your hair was also whispering in your ear when you cooperated with the Japanese as you made speeches on their behalf, even radioing an appeal to Gen. Douglas MacArthur in Corregidor to surrender! If you had only let me nip your mane even an inch, you would not have uttered such unpatriotic nonsense!”

Emilio Aguinaldo never listened to his barber but he nevertheless collected some of his letters, presumably to remind him of the supernatural origins of his ‘do. Whether the barber was speaking the truth or not, it is now undeniable that one man’s bad hair changed the course of history and its ripple effects will be the subject of fierce debates in universities and scholarly journals for years to come.

My Thoughts on Tiffany Uy (Or the Clone War Against China)

I can’t say I know Tiffany Uy that much but nevertheless, I have many thoughts about her because I’ve been seeing her on my Facebook Newsfeed a whole lot these days.

First off, I think Tiffany Uy is smart. Like really, really, really smart. I mean I heard she broke the record for the highest grade in the University of the Philippines that was standing since World War II. She must have been a real hardcore beast of a bookworm for her to nuke that record into smithereens. Like, if it’s true that knowledge is power, she would be nothing less than the Hulk. Or She-Hulk. And she’d be like “TIFFANY UY SMASH!” and she’d be all green and cranky but really, really, really smart unlike the real Hulk.

I know she’s a biology student. Or I guess a full-fledged biologist now, right? And of course, she can now go on and create human clones… because biologists create clones, right? I frankly don’t know of any other function of biologists except to manufacture clones in a laboratory.

So I expect her to manufacture clones of herself within a year of graduating from UP. She’ll have her own hidden laboratory underground their house like Dexter and it will have rows and rows of sleeping Tiffany Uy clones in capsules. These clones will all have her perfect genes that will allow them to break UP grade records for a hundred more years. And they will all be equipped with bubbly personalities… and have her perfect bobbed hair impervious to split ends.

Tiffany Uy will probably have her own army of clones like the Star Wars Galactic Empire except she won’t be on the dark side. Binay and his ilk will be on the dark side as always, and Tiffany Uy will be like the Chosen One destined to bring balance to the Force in this country. With the help of her clone army, the people of the Philippines will be able to EDSA IV (it’s four, right?) Binay’s ass back to where it belongs (because of course he’ll be our next President, just give it up). And then since there clearly will not be any other person more qualified to take the presidency, we will happily make substantial changes to the Constitution, and gladly install Tiffany Uy as the youngest President of the Philippines–the youngest president in the history of the world.

She will make drastic changes to this country, that President Tiffany Uy. Don’t worry; we won’t be calling her PnUy because that would be just dumb. But on the first quarter of her reign of excellence, she’ll drive a same-sex marriage bill into law–and be like “Fuck the CBCP!” because biologists are atheists, right? I mean, how can you make human clones if you’re not an atheist? So President Tiffany Uy will be a kickass liberal atheist president and she will allow LGBT to marry like they should. In return, the LGBT will willingly join her clone army and fight for her in the Philippines’ war vs China.

That would be the defining event of her term–the Phil-China War to finally end once and for all the tyranny in the seas committed based on ancient Chinese maps frankly nobody gives a fuck about in modern times. But since Tiffany Uy is like partially Chinese or something, there will be a controversy stirred by the now marginalized CBCP about where her loyalties lie. But Filipinos will all be like, “Nah, stop with your bullshit, CBCP. We love President Tiffany Uy and know in our hearts she’ll fight for the country as ferociously as she once studied to get a weighted average grade of 1.004 in UP! Besides, we’re all atheists now. We don’t care anymore what you think of national issues.” And all will be good.

So the war will go on but it will be short-lived. China will think they can bomb the shit out of us with their cheap plastic destroyers made in China but they will never see Tiffany Uy’s biologically enhanced clone army descending upon Beijing from the skies. These clones–aside from being equipped with bubbly personalities and split-end-resistant-bobbed-hair–will have the strength of a Tamaraw, our national animal, and large wings of the monkey-eating eagle, our national bird. And they’re all really, really, really smart. So smart they can fashion super weapons out of everyday things like rocks and sticks. So this mutant army will bring China down on its knees and they’ll finally let us keep the Spratly Islands, which will of course be renamed Tiffany Uy Islands and will host an all-female community of Tiffany Uy clones like Amazons.

We will never have a need for any other president again. When the original Tiffany Uy expires, we simply awaken another one from her underground lab and pass the presidential responsibilities to her, which she’ll earnestly take for the pride of our nation. Corruption will end. The Binays will be deported to China where the Chinese won’t give a shit about what they’ll say because they can’t understand Tagalog. Poverty will be reduced to zero. We won’t have to dream of Duterte cracking down on crime because it will be eradicated by the clone army. And Jiro Manio will have a home once more and win an international Oscar after being inspired by Tiffany Uy’s great deeds.

I can’t wait for this to happen. The future shines bright with that kid out there.