Bongbong Marcos has pulled the neoliberal narrative rug from under the Philippine Opposition

Filipino neoliberals seem to be obsessed with the victim mindset. In his recent Inquirer column, Randy David describes Americans voting for former President Donald Trump as flirting with one-man rule because of the possibility that Trump might win again in 2024. “This,” David writes to punctuate his point, “is how dictatorships are born—often on the back of a popular vote.”

The former president is outpolling all his rivals, so much that even if the latter united behind one of them, their combined votes would not come close to denting Trump’s dominance. At the national level, Joe Biden’s approval ratings have been abysmal. Between him and Trump, the votes are evenly split, signifying a deep politico-cultural divide within the American polity itself.

American media has long hidden the truth about the divide between north and south, which was the cause of the civil war and the fact that, up to today, racial discrimination still exists in American society. Then there’s the military-industrial complex which has been tagged as being behind the assassination of President John F Kennedy in 1963. For years, we were led to believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was the lone gunman despite the Zapruder footage showing Kennedy was successively shot twice; the first hitting him at the throat and the second, at the back of his head. No trained marksman can get off two shots that quick with the target on a moving vehicle.

It was easy to brainwash people then into believing America stood for good while the rest of the despots in the world were evil. There is conclusive proof that most of the wars, after the last two great wars, were American-instigated. This is substantiation that America’s divisive wounds never completely healed after the civil war. Conservative Americans constitute the bulk of its military. Recruitment sources the warm bodies from the youth of the Midwest and the South, the two regions far removed from the glamour and sophistication of the major cities on the West and East Coast.

The 2020 election was tumultuous to say the least. America is financing another war right after it pulled out of Afghanistan. It suffered the fate of other hegemons which tried to subjugate the Afghans. Miserable failure. The last American military victory was its defense of Kuwait and Saudi Arabia. Its latest incursion in the Middle East since 2001 ended in defeat. The world isn’t a better place with American hegemony as it continues to pressure Russia and China to bend to its will.

What’s funny about national democratic Filipinos like David is their penchant for siding with hegemons in the defense of democracy. Trump isn’t a communist but is branded as a potential dictator. How for god’s sake? What David and the rest of the neoliberals across the world are afraid of is the rise of conservatism and rightist tendencies in Europe and other countries. David has nothing to fear in the Philippines because Marcos is adhering to the dictum of the “rights based international order.” They won’t get what they exactly want but their American and European principals will have to live with it because they need a lackey in the region and that is us with the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) and the Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA).

The opposition’s conundrum is President Bongbong Marcos has co-opted their agenda which leaves them scratching their heads because he has adopted their cause as his own. Subliminally maybe this is what David is referring to. Look at the leftist-militants being virulently anti-China but also being anti-Marcos. It doesn’t compute given the current alliances. I don’t think the opposition can get its head out of its ass for the 2025 and 2028 election. Maybe it’s only a matter of time before they go extinct.