Word Wars: Drone Blogging

I'd like to thank Angry Maude for taking up the cudgel the other day. [Cudgel:  (noun) a short, thick stick used as a weapon.] I told her to just relax, we've been writing too much about the elections and the campaigns haven't really started yet. But she explained, which is a euphemism for shouting in my ear, that it is wise to get ideas out early so other can run with them. [Euphemism: (noun) the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt.]

So I'd like to continue this trend of parsing ideas regarding the election. [Parsing: (verb ) to analyze (something, as a speech or behavior) to discover its implications or uncover a deeper meaning.]

If you pull back and look broadly at the contested Cybercrime Law, you see two forces in action. One, an attempt by people with power to avail themselves of a tool to intimidate or even silence critics. Two, an attempt by people with words to avail themselves of the right to use them freely insofar as they do not threaten or instigate physical or monetary harm.

I belong to the latter group. Proudly. I believe we fairly represent the spirit of Thomas Jefferson and Sam Adams (ahahahaha, the guy who makes beer) when their writings make clear that the human condition is treated best when it is open to ideas and not shut off from them.

A commenter at Raissa's Top Blog described a lot of bloggers as "helicopter bloggers", hovering from afar and shooting off opinions. I wrote back that I considered myself to be a "drone blogger", hovering from afar and shooting off word missiles at deserving targets.

We are heading into the election cycle, which means our environment, defined by what we see on television or read in the papers and internet, is about to become filled with deceitful crap aimed at convincing us to vote for one person or another. It's all nonsense. These words will come at us from every which way, all with the purpose of invading our thoughts and convincing us to take up acts that favor somebody we don't really know.

Word Wars.

Well, frankly, I love it.

Is a foreigner here allowed to opine? Or is it an affront to the sovereignty of Filipinos? Does it smack of colonial intent?

Or is an idea an idea no matter who utters it?

The problem here is that JoeAm says it more directly and with more literary flair than most Filipino blogger offerings. So it seems louder, eh? Snippier. Ruder perhaps.

It takes a Filipino of considerable breadth of understanding, and security of emotions, to deal with some of the stuff you read here. Especially when it is off-base, or wrong. But style is what it is, eh? I don't know any other way. So tough luck ye stalwart Filipinos of rigid bearing and sensitive mien . . .

I prefer the term irreverent to obnoxious. But, hey, people are free not to read. I have asterisked the hell out of the site explaining that there is only one goal here, a healthier, wealthier, wiser Philippines. If the writing is not your style, at least let me have mine, because I can make up a story better than most, and zap snide insults quicker than a hungry cobra on a fat rat.

• So when the Chinese push their arrogance east, I'll jam it back west.

• When the political priests flap their robes and their mouths like any common in-the-dirt conniving politician, I'll will make sure they get plastered with a fine sheen of gooey red Filipino word-mud. There is no "reverence" in politics.

• When the antis go on into their fourth year of denial about the health and condition of the Philippines and its President, I will sit back and laugh. And toss out poison word-darts at those aspects of their physique that is largest, and I'm not talking brain or heart.

• When the chronically corrupt insist on dipping their clammy claws into the public purse, I shall make sure they grab a handful of word-wasps.

And I herein add a fifth party to the above list of institutions that work concertedly against the best interest of the Philippines.

•  It is the old guys, the unbending masters of rigid perspective who have had their day in the sun but insist on promoting family member to carry on . . . wives, daughters, and sons . . . against the letter and spirit of the Constitution . . . because the greed in their hearts exceeds the compassion they have for a nation of substantially poor but honorable citizens.

And I welcome others to join the Society of Words.

What weapons do we have to engage in word wars?

We have keyboards and modems and brains with no agenda but the well-being of the Philippines. We have the Humpty Dumpty New World Dictionary and a  small group of extraordinarily bright and well-centered people, each a personality in his or her own right. We have independence and we have passion.

We have ears and the willingness to listen to opposing views, striving always for respect for dissent and respect for the dissenter.

We have strategy and tactics and the ability to wing it.

More than anything, we have our words, God's gift to us for the pursuit of health and happiness.

It's election season.

Lock and load.