In stating a categorical position on the matter of the reinstatement of mandatory military service in the Philippines, administration vice presidential candidate Sara Duterte effectively made the character of contemporary Philippine society an election issue. It pits the culture espoused by the Opposition led by Yellowtard presidential candidate Leni Robredo — pink, effeminate, and supposedly pacifist — versus the strong one nation masculine rhetoric of the administration camp.
Since President Rodrigo Duterte’s ascent to power in 2016, much “analysis” had been done around the question of why public sentiment in the Philippines had strongly shifted to the “populist” end of the political spectrum. This was after 30 years of domination of the national rhetoric by Church- and leftist-backed narratives that deeply-ingrained a debilitating and fatalist victim mentality into contemporary Philippine society. It is only in recent times that Filipino voters have shunned the personas of prayerful politicians and their pretense of being “helpful” to “the poor” to the extent of “sacrificing” their personal well-being and even their very lives. This habitual pandering to the “ang mamatay nang dahil sa iyo” (literally “to die because of you”) passage of the Philippines’ national anthem had become hopelessly obsolete in recent years and political “analysts” are wracking their brains trying to figure out why.
Unfortunately for the Opposition, Robredo’s campaign is thematically hinged on this sacrificing-servant-rescues-hapless-victimised-Filipino trope. Worse, Opposition “thought leaders” are busy focusing on itemising the imagined “evils” that they believe are behind the failure of this campaign when they could have spent their time better understanding what it is about the public sentiment they may have missed when they crafted their strategy.
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For example, the headline “Marcos network tries to take over Twitter with freshly-made accounts” bannered a recent “report” published by Opposition “social news network” Rappler. This was as if to explain away the failure of the Opposition to hold onto and gain ground on social media on “evil forces” invading a platform they presumed to own — basically admitting that the Yellowtards delivered an inferior fight to the war to dominate social media. This crybaby reaction over a failure to play the game competently highlights the problematic core of the Yellowtard psyche — their habitual belief in their entitlement to success on the sole basis of the idea that they represent the “good” in Philippine politics.
A healthy dose of militarism in Philippine society could potentially cure this perverse sense of entitlement. Military training instills not just personal discipline but a sense of a purpose that is bigger than one’s self as well as a grasp of the reality that, in order to achieve big things, some degree of subjecting one’s self to the interests of the collective is required. More importantly, military training produces soldiers. Soldiers fight for their country. They don’t just “die for country”. They fight at risk of death. This is fundamentally different from the Yellowtard notion of simply “dying for country” which is how they had taken a snippet from the national anthem and made it — in all its out-of-context glory — a cornerstone of their rhetoric.
A quote attributed to the great American general George Patton captures the essence of the broader frame within which a true solder operates…
No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making some other poor dumb bastard die for his country.
Dying, after all, is easy. If death makes one a “hero” then every human being who’s ever lived may as well be called a “hero”. And yet, the simple fact that the late former Senator Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr ended up dead on the tarmac of the then-named Manila International Airport (MIA) in 1983 went on to become the heart and soul of the Yellowtard “cause” illustrates the vacuous nature of said “cause”. According to the Yellowtards, there are many more amongst their ranks who are willing to do the same (so we are told ad infinitum). What’s so special about Ninoy then if there are a thousand others like him who possess this special human ability to die?
Indeed, the outcome of this year’s elections will spell the difference between the Philippines remaining host to today’s pussy society and this great nation getting on the path to becoming a society of true fighters. Pussies pretend to be heroes by simply dying. To make dying to be a “hero” the be-all-end-all of being of “service” to country is, at the end of the day, utterly useless to other people because it altogether discounts the possibility of winning a fight. Real soldiers who fight at risk of death see winning as the return on the risk of death they expose themselves to. Military service is all about the latter — to understand what a real fight is and what it means to be a true soldier in a real fight.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
Mandatory military service will cure the Philippines’ sissy culture
Source: Filipino News Bulletin
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