You can’t destroy Mocha Uson by dragging her through the mud — because she’s already been there

The amount of time and space being given to the “issue” that is the awarding of distinction to Assistant Secretary Mocha Uson by the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Alumni Association is amazing. I may not be a big fan of the current Philippine Opposition and, specifically, the bloc of bozos who currently lead them, but neither can I say that I am a big fan of Mocha Uson whose work I don’t really read. But what interests me is how so much huffing and puffing goes into a sustained campaign to diminish both her work and her person, and how this effort, itself, serves as the fuel that propels her fame and influence to even greater heights.

As usual, the Opposition Liberal Party leadership (the Yellowtards) fail in basic strategic thinking. The Golden Rule of public relations (PR) is bad publicity is better than no publicity. As long as Uson gets publicity, whether good or bad, she wins. The thing with Uson is she is one of those rare antifragiles — people and things that are not only resilient in the face of adversity, they thrive in it. I explored that remarkable property of her and her personal brand in my article Attacking Mocha Uson only makes her stronger and her influence more powerful…

When you are the Opposition and you go up against Mocha Uson, you end up in a futile shooting match with Doomsday — that big beast at the end of the movie Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice that simply grows stronger the more you zap it with any sort of weapon that works by discharging energy.

Mocha Uson is a good example of an antifragile personality. You can’t destroy her using traditional Filipino mudslinging and slut-shaming methods because there is no dirt you can dig up about her that she hasn’t already laid on the table for public consumption. The important thing about influence that the “disente” crowd fail to appreciate is that her mass appeal was actually built upon the very dirt that her detractors foolishly throw at her. She was, after all, a sexy star — and built her now-formidable following around that persona — before she became a political force.

If Uson’s detractors think that depriving her of the graces of her alma mater and her own community of alumni will stop her in any way, they are sorely mistaken. Uson’s key career milestones are all about being an outsider, even a social pariah — a person shunned by “polite society” because of life choices she made that were unconventional. Her previous incarnation as a performer in the adult entertainment industry serves as the backbone of her critics’ case against her — which is laughable, because this is where her power actually comes from.

Indeed, if there is something to credit Uson for, it is her courage to beg to differ to Philippine society’s judgemental conservatism — which is ironic, considering that those who make up the noisiest of her critics are self-described “liberals”. Filipino “liberals” are a confused lot that way. The same bozos amongst them who rail against the “oppression” of people who are bullied because of who they are are amongst the most “prayerful” Catholics — curiosly aligned to a Roman Catholic institution that remains intolerant of “deviants”. This profound inconsistency in thinking is what keeps Filipino “liberals”, their Yellowtard leaders, and, as a result, the entire Philippine Opposition in a sustained state of ideological weakness — they have long failed to build a true opposition platform on a solid foundation of modern intellectual capital.

This is the reason they go after easy targets like Mocha Uson — because they perceive her as the Achilles heel of the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte. Unfortunately for them, their obssessive focus on her belies the ascendancy of the Philippine Opposition in its current form as a political force of consequence. The reality that they operate on a foundation of obsolete ideas and primitive thinking is all the more revealed.

Unlike the pompous cast of characters that make up the key “influencers” of the Philippine Opposition, Mocha Uson does not pretend to be anything other than who she is. For that consistency and for that honesty, she does not need to be beholden to any institution that forms part of an Establishment that has failed Filipinos nor rely on any “awards” given out by these to affirm her position in the Philippines’ real society — the one that exists outside the “polite” and disente one the Opposition’s leaders have cocooned themselves within.

benign0

benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.