New Year and New Decade resolution for Filipinos: MOVE ON from Yellowtard rule

And then what? It’s time we practice what we preach and be really clear about what happens next now that the Yellowtards, the shrinking partisan bloc within the current Opposition loyal to the Aquino-Cojuangco feudal clan, have been soundly crushed. The close of the 2010s marks the end of a decade that saw the crash of the once-mighty Yellow Narrative. What Filipinos do next is the important question of the new decade.

Filipinos once lived and breathed Yellowtardism. It had virtually become canon law within the Roman Catholic Church and a generation of Filipinos educated in chi chi Catholic private schools were indoctrinated in a mind-numbing memetic cocktail of necropolitics, Messiah Complexes, and victim mentalities. Yellowtardism enjoyed no less than two political zeniths, the twin ascents to power of an Aquino-Cojuangco mother and son tag team — Cory Aquino in 1986 and Benigno Simeon ‘BS’ Aquino III in 2010 respectively.

Both Aquinos campaigned on the back of what would and had respectively become the three pillars of Yellowtardism: necropolitics, Messiah Complex, and victim mentality. Over this intellectually-stunted period, entire governance strategies would be built on the Yellowtard ideology — one that failed to evolve beyond licking old wounds and picking on encrusting scabs made out to be the “scars” of the “Martial Law Era”. Indeed, Yellowtardism is, at its very essence, Martial Law Crybabyism. Blanketed by such a depraved national narrative, there was no looking to the future nor aspiring for national greatness built on achievement. There was only remembering.

It is fitting that 2019 exhibited clear affirmation that the Yellowtards are political toast. This was the year that a hastily-rebranded Yellowtard bid to seize power in the guise of the so-called Otso Diretso coalition suffered a catastrophic electoral loss. Small tweaks in political messaging could hardly disguise the deeply yellow-tinted DNA of Otso Diretso. Even parading in supposedly politically-neutral white failed. The Yellowtard “L” hand salute remained so hardwired into these sorts’ muscle memory that the losing gesture continued to be flashed.

Very few of many important lessons that could have driven much-needed evolution within the Yellowtard bloc (and extended to the broader Opposition they presumed to lead) were learned by their key leaders thanks to a penchant for ignoring and, worse, blocking people who challenged their hallowed notions of what is good and “evil”. Thus Yellowtardism became progressively irrelevant and profoundly ridiculous as it became increasingly disconnected from reality.

Many saw the dysfunctional administration of BS Aquino III as the final nail in the coffin of Yellowtardism. In hindsight they were mistaken. What ultimately killed the Yellow brand was the way its members and leaders conducted themselves as an Opposition bloc to the incumbent government of Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte. Rather than propose alternatives to his approach to leading Filipinos, the Yellowtards took the same adolescent path of lame obstructionism. Rather than show what Filipinos could be, they pontificated about what they must not be. They sought to destroy rather than inspire. They acted like spoilt brats deprived of what they see as an entitlement to power supposedly secured by their ironic ownership of the very Yellowtard narrative that now poisons their legacy.

The pathway forward is for Filipinos to start thinking outside the Yellowtard square and get it into their heads that the only way to become a great people is to achieve things. For Filipinos to take their place in the world stage befitting the size of their population and the bluster of their national rhetoric, they need to compete in what is, in most instances, a rigged game officiated by unfair umpires. The Yellowtard rhetoric, which focuses on whining about the unfair, is therefore sorely incompatible with that important imperative. As soon as Filipinos accept that the world is unfair and deal with that fact in a stoic forward-facing manner, they will do great.

The new year, 2020, and the new decade ahead is an era where much needs to be built. To build on a solid foundation, the relics of bygone thinking need to be demolished. Yellowtardism is a formidable pillar of dysfunction that is crumbling and, as the political bloc built upon it is reduced to rubble, a new era of constructive conversation in the political arena opens. It is important that this conversation be kept honest by keeping ears — and not just shrill mouths of traditional “activists” — open and receptive to a diversity of views. Key to that is an openness to be proven wrong and courage to be original. The future looks bright for Filipinos. This is a future that cannot be taken away by a discredited political bloc that aspires to nothing beyond owning narratives, dictating what people ought to be thinking and presuming to police the technology platforms that would enable Filipinos to make up for lost time.

benign0

benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.