A long week out of blog.
I can just imagine the developments in the last week (Nov25 to Dec5)... Fast-paced, full of changes and challenges. Fcuked up.
Perhaps the best thing that happened was my most recent Awakening: Angels in America.
Like any other Filipino, I have been confused throughout my adolescent life of how I view Americans. I remember learning from grade school the appreciation of the public educational system introduced to the Third World by the Americans. Education for all.
I even speculated that if we have been colonized by the big US of A, we could have been like Hawaii or Guam. It occurred to me, Filipinos can not stand on its own. We could have been better if we submitted to American rule. Tutal, give and take man lang na.
I was also amazed by the American lifestyle and culture (especially teens answering back their parents, hehe), living through Nickelodeon and MTV for the last 8 years of my life. Even until now, I watch HBO, CNN, NGC, channels that showcase (well, most of the time) -- America.
I was also taught the American Dream. The land of the Free. The greener pastures. The green money. I loved the America. I daydreamed about it. Who doesn't love America?
BUT for the last week, the cynic and skeptic in me rose above my dreamy self. I secretly hated (from the root word envied) America. It was and still is an empire. Crushing its way around colonies and neo-colonies (like the Phils), misleading, deceiving, and exploiting the "lesser" countries.
Who gave us the colonial mentality anyway? Who invented globalization?
Now I see that the Americans have become the supervillains (sorry for that so-negative word), or perhaps the Rich who becomes Richer. I see their power and my insides churn at it.
And I do not want to submit.
My American hypnosis was fortunately interrupted. I thanked God (the Philosophy not the Deity, even Him is often Americanized) that I have been disturbed from my Sleep. I now wake up and face the ugly countenance of America.
Credits shall go to where they are due. Thanks to the Wesneco Torch, for injecting the journalistic approach to this Awakening. Thanks to the PADEPA (Pambansa Demokratikong Paaralan) in Bacolod, headed by LFS Negros Organizer Mike de la Concepcion, for sharing to me the secrets of the American education. Thanks to the Adbusters magazines that I loved - they taught me anti-American capitalism and showed to me how sick these American corporates are. And finally, thanks to HBO for Angels in America.
The 6-hour movie series showed me what America really is. (personified by Al Pacino, ehem)
The show deserves a separate study (let me just find that script somewhere) and I will have to to do that analysis on the AIDS-homosexuality-Mormon-or-not theologies side of the production next time. But for now, I must tell anyone, who by any very unlikely twist of fate, is reading this.
Angels in America proved to me there are no "angels" anywhere New York or LA or even Utah.
Fcuk the Americans. It's good I have been awakened in shit. Indeed, it's deep shit now in this country. Blame the Americans. So what if that's finger-pointing?
It's better than pointing my finger up.
