Angry Maude Rips Two Senator Ladies

Guest Article

By Maude Garrison

Insecurity is a beast. It eats at one's innards like acid, gnawing away at one's sense of self and the ability to see things objectively. Envy is its partner in crime.

Insecurity appears to reside in the Philippine Senate. Amongst the brightest and best schooled and most capable minds in the nation. It's spawn, envy, appears deeply held by certain members of that esteemed body, and I'm sorry to say they both wear skirts.

I noticed that Jojo last week endorsed Senator Legarda as a friend of President Aquino. I ran around hiding news articles from him to keep him from blowing his stack and switching to Nancy Binay. Then he found out anyway. Fortunately, he did not switch to Binay. He just shook his head in disgust.

So I have to deal double the grief on this blog, one helping for me and one for Jojo.

I'm dismayed . . . no, let me be truthful here, as ladies are occasionally inclined to be . . . I'm incensed to see Senator Legarda sucking up to voters at the expense of my homeland and at the expense of Philippine security. She is either doing crass politicking or she has she has joined Senator Santiago in the ranks of the apparently insecure and envy riddled legislators who are raising a "sovereignty" stink regarding an American ship stuck on a reef.

What a horrible threat to the sovereignty of the Philippines, eh? A boat accidentally ran into a reef!  Man the battle stations. Arm the cutter. Get those jets in the air as soon as they get here from Korea. Tell Japan quick quick to give us the 10 boats they promised.

After all, this horrid intrusion into our national ego is AMERICAN. It is military. It smacks of imperialistic hubris. The nerve, running into the reef by mistake. AN APOLOGY IS NOT ENOUGH. NO, WE WANT BLOOD. WE WANT . . . WE WANT . . . WE WANT . . well, I don't know, but money is not enough, apology is not enough.

Oh, yes. WE WANT A HEARING, A LYNCH MOB.  AN EMOTION STOKED SHOWCASE OF AMERICAN NEGLIGENCE AND ARROGANCE. THAT'S WHAT WE WANT. Our sovereignty is under attack! The nation is collapsing! The sky is falling!

Oh my God! The humiliation, THE HUMILIATION to the Philippines!

How can we ever recover?

No wonder men don't take we girls seriously. Men are overloaded on testosterone and we get hysteria.

Meanwhile let us duck our eyes from those Chinese camped intentionally on Philippine rocks right over there. 

We don't need no stinkin' hearing on that, or apology from them.

Well, for the Lady Legarda, it is election season, and so waving the "I'll stand up to America" placard is great for votes. Yeah, it smacks a little of prostitution, I admit, selling your friends down the river for a few votes. But these are politicians, I suppose we can't expect much better than that from them. I certainly don't expect better of my US congressmen who trek the treason line about every committee meeting.

But one is certainly inclined to ask, which is REALLY the bigger threat to sovereignty? A boat that accidentally runs into a reef or a senator who disparages and undermines an important defensive alliance protecting Philippine territory and autonomy?

Now Senator Santiago, perhaps we have come to expect this from her, a role model for my own occasionally indignant outbursts. But Senator Legarda? 

Senator Santiago is re-visiting the burr that has been under her saddle since the US spirited Private Smith from the Philippines before he could be lynched and Nicole embarrassed Filipinos by trekking off to American to find her sunshine there. "The humiliation! The humiliation!" Senator Santiago shrieked at the time, regarding the imbalanced imprisonment clause in the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). So her personal credibility is staked to having that document shredded. A Singaporean shipping company, working on a contract for the US Navy, dumps sewerage into Manila Bay and it becomes a reason to attack the VFA. Not toss the shipping company from the Philippines.

Rationality, to the insecure, takes on a whole new dimension. It is slathered in envy and self-pity. And when it gets beyond civil, it is called hysteria. 

What is it with this bristling anti-Americanism that arises every day in some way in the Philippines? Big ways, little ways. What is it about this emotional neediness that has the Philippines always trying to appear taller by bringing America down?

You say I am sensitive, perhaps? Overly defensive?

Yes. Yes, I am. One can only take so much of this ridiculous immature schtick. And it is relentless.

So what do you lady Senators want from America? You want Americans to die to protect the Philippines, right? That's your agenda if China invades Palawan?

Or do you discount those deaths because "its really for America's interest"?

What ungrateful . . . can I use the word "wenches"?

Sorry, ladies. But it is my nephew you are talking about sending out to die. A seven tour Iraq veteran, father of three beautiful children. That is my friends from high school whose names are etched in gold letters in a black marble wall in Washington D.C. that you hold so cheaply. That you disparage so easily for personal political gain.

You want to know how to get an American angry? Demean his or her soldiers. Not the generals or their political bosses. Demean away. But lay off the working stiffs out on a boat on the other side of the planet from home who got a wrong map or read a map wrong and plowed into a reef. The working stiffs whose job it is to die for you and your family.

Yes. Yes, I am defensive when you senators rip into American troops and call them a threat to Philippine sovereignty. What kind of load are you consigning to them, the need to both defend the Philippines and carry your insecure, envious baggage, too?

It's a little thing when a blog commenter fires off a "go home to America" taunt at Jojo. Hey, consider the source.  It is a big thing when a senator of the Philippines loses her grace and dignity and undermines a critical alliance, causing the Chinese to roll doubled up in laughter at how easy it is to manipulate these running dog alliances. That is a threat both to the Philippines and the sailors on the boat because it encourages the brash Chinese to be even more brash.

Oh, senator ladies, you say this animostity toward the US is historical, this resentment of things American? Right, right, like those racist Americans from 114 years ago.

Nothing has changed in the Philippines in 114 years, so you figure nothing has changed in the US, either? Check again to see who is President these days and tell me the US is the same racist nation it was in 1898.

Or you mention those WWII American heathens who  were so brutal in Manila on the way to preserving Tagalog as the national language of the Philippines instead of Japanese, and who prevented the ladies of the Philippines from becoming career comfort women.

Well, I have a book for you historical resenters. It is called "The Power of Now" by Eckhart Tolle. He lets us in on a marvelous secret. The past is done. Over. Gone. It doesn't exist. People who live there are dysfunctional at best and crazy at worst. 

Senator Legarda wants to hold a hearing about the Reef accident. Here's a quote from her as reported in the Inquirer:

• “We’re soft. We appear soft. And we should not be soft because this is a test of how we value our sovereignty and how we value what is ours.  Because if they can just step this way and say ‘aray’ (ouch), then move on, then we will not be respected by other countries.” 

You are not soft Senator. It's worse than that. You are disloyal to an ally for political expediency. You undermine an important defensive alliance for votes.

Trust me, that laughing dog China is not respecting you either. They are laughing.

You get tough with a vital ally that accidentally rams a boat into a hidden reef at 2 am in the night.

You meanwhile avert your eyes from the nation that  - - - coldly, calculatingly . . . wants to steal your wealth, the oil in Philippine territory. In broad daylight. And screw any reefs in the neighborhood, or turtles, or fish. This particular nation has ships blocking an atoll and is tossing Philippine fisherman seeking shelter there back out into the rough seas. An atoll that is 124 nautical miles from Luzon, inside the 200 nautical mile Exclusive Economic Zone that is PHILIPPINE TERRITORY.

Where's your hearing on that?

Hide your eyes. Duck and cover. China is a big authoritative bully, not that patsy America who is a fat and lazy friend, easy for ragging on. What is the term for someone who avoids the bully but beats up on the vulnerable guy? I'd look it up but I lost my Thesaurus and besides I'm on a roll here.

Here are some words from Senator Santiago (same source) as she dissed the U.S. Ambassador's apology as fake and manipulative:

• “I am concerned that the American offer of compensation is made to appear, not as a dictate of legal obligation under international law, but as an indulgence in American magnanimity.”

• “International law is clear that whether or not there was negligence or fault on the part of the US warship, under the principle of state responsibility, the US government is responsible for the partial destruction of Tubbataha Reef, which some say will need 250 years to be fully restored,”

What part of "protecting your own interests" does the good Senator expect the U.S. to abrogate. And what part of "insult" to an AMBASSADOR does the undiplomatic lady not grasp. And where, Senator Santiago, is the outrage that Tubbataha is the ONLY AND LAST preserved reef in the vast ecological wonderland surrounding the Philippines? What have senators been doing all these years as this precious coral that takes 250 years to grow has been dynamited, hacked to pieces, smuggled, and ground up to pave driveways?

How about a hearing on THAT, dear hysterical ladies. Who was not doing their preservation job, senators?

How about a hearing on why words of "treason" were thrown around between Senators Enrile and Trillanes and FA Secretary Del Rosario about the China back door fiasco. What about Senators who divulge state secrets in a public hissy fit on the floor of the Senate. Does THAT not undermine Philippine sovereignty? Where is the Senate hearing on THAT, apparently negligent, lazy, insecure and envious lady senators?

No, no. Let's go after the Americans. Loudly. Front page stuff. 

Insecurity drives envy. Envy drives anger. Anger causes you to cut off your nose to spite your face. It's an American expression, although Sancho Panza probably used it, too. Another one is tossing the baby out with the bath water.

From the bamboo huts that my neighbors live in to the halls of the hallowed Senate, the modus operandi is the same. Piss on the people who can help you and ignore the thieves and miscreants in your midst.

It is soooooo  sooooooo  . . . where's the flicking thesaurus?

Forgetabout it. Use your own words.

I'm outta here.

Screw the kickapoo. I need skotch.