So I have collected impressions from various listening posts scattered across the Philippines and around the globe, a spider-web of observation and deduction. And I have put them together to form a picture, not as surrealistic as it may seem if we consider Russia’s deep fingernail scratches on the recent American presidential election.
This is my picture, the broad, sweeping strokes.
1. China thinks long term, acts with amoral determination, and pushes relentlessly out and past Western ideals of law, order, and limits imposed by humanistic thinking. Fairness is irrelevant. Truth is what you make it. Winning is everything.
2. What we have seen in the seas west of here is the way China works. The master plan is for China to take her rightful place as the dominant nation on earth. The method is utilitarian: diplomatic at best, military if necessary, economic for sure, and spacial, the latter being conquest, hard or soft, of those lands and seas in the way. Or useful.
3. The Philippines is both in the way and useful for the human and natural resources that can be deployed to advance China’s global conquest.
4. The Philippines is an American outpost that must be crushed, one way or another.
5. The Chinese conquest of the Philippines follows no single path. It is fluid, a mix of diplomatic, military, economic, and spacial persistence. Time is fluid. The initiative started long ago, well before the Philippines took up its UN arbitration case, a largely futile spit at a gigantic borg power stretching its assimilation across the globe.
6. There is no hurry, in Beijing. There may be bend, and delay, and reconfiguration. There is no going back.
7. China got Duterte elected. Chinese officials visited the Philippines prior to the elections and Rodrigo Duterte and Bong Go visited China. They were not tourists. Now President Duterte and Chinese officials walk hand-in-hand.
8. The Duterte/Arroyo/Marcos political alliance is a domestic front that conveniently hides the real force behind the alliance. China.
9. Duterte is not the driver of anything. Had Mayor Binay been elected, or Senator Poe, then China would have persisted to rid the Philippines of the American socio/political blockade. Had Secretary Roxas been elected, the venom that spewed for six years against President Aquino would have been louder, sharper, even more angry, and perhaps even physical.
10. President Aquino was trusted by Filipinos, he was earnest, not-corrupt, and successful at building democratic integrity and economic promise. He had to be stopped. He WAS stopped by ruthless demolition work against him, against Roxas, and against the “yellows”.
11. The “yellows” are Filipinos, your neighbors, relatives, friends. Your fathers and brothers, your kids. They serve in the army and PNP, they are lawyers and teachers and nurses and rice pickers. Why the hostility? If you are the person spewing it . . . why so much anger? Why the need to curse other Filipinos?
12. Who, really, is pushing your buttons?
13. Dividing the nation has been a monstrous success; it has ended democracy and eroded what little patriotism may have previously existed. The Philippines is now a utilitarian nation, an opportunistic conglomeration of incompetent privileged puppets, and nothing more. It is the flightless dodo among nations seeking to soar.
14. Filipinos are a gullible sort, with poverty, disenfranchisement, envy, and angers opening people’s minds to propaganda, sleazy journalism, rumors, and vengeful attacks on the establishment culprits, no matter how fictional the accusations. The riper the accusations, the more believable they are to needful Filipinos looking for someone to swing at.
15. Duterte trolls are in effect agents of China. Nothing more, nothing different, no matter what they think. They are China’s trolls pursuing China’s agenda.
This is not a game. It is big power and big money at work.
China is betting that the blind emotional and material needs of Filipinos far and wide, up and down the social and economic ladders, will keep them distracted. Keep them malleable. Keep them gullible.
I’m betting that China is not stupid.
Then there is the Philippines, and Filipinos. I’ll admit I’m surprised at the lack of self-reflection here, the inability of people to look inward to see their gullibility and the reasons for it. I’m surprised at the lack of passion for freedom and fairness. I’m surprised at the willingness of people to be played like pawns, easily led to attack other Filipinos.
All of that does seem just a tad . . . . well . . . not the best critical thinking.