Nakakahiya na rin!! First it was the Mexican people’s calling out Filipinos for our baffling beholdenness to the looks of their president Enrique Peña Nieto. Now we get a veiled lecture from Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to focus more on what is real rather than on the merely superficial.
Canadian Prime Minister and ‘APEC Hottie’ Justin Trudeau is married with kids.
(Source: Huffington Post)
(Source: Huffington Post)
I can only thank the hordes of netizens who “trended” the hashtag APEC hottie. Jesus Christ. It’s no wonder we elect so many dumb showbiz stars to lead us. A pretty European face is a big enough dopamine fix to divert intellectual faculties away from what is important and what matters. It’s no wonder ditzes like Alma Moreno can actually seriously consider running for the Philippine Senate!
The difference here is that these “APEC Hotties” Filipinos are trying to cut down to the level of their vacuous celebs are, on the inside, the real deals.
Trudeau’s message to us already sounds all-too-familiar because it has been all too often repeated…
He went on to share a lesson he learned from his father – the late former Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau – to set aside “positive impressions that weren’t grounded in reality” and instead focus on “substance.”“What I also had to learn is that there were a lot of people who liked my father and liked me for reasons entirely unrelated to who I actually was, and I had to learn to set aside positive impressions that weren’t grounded in reality,” Trudeau said.
Positive impressions not grounded in reality.
The trouble with this manner with which we objectify people is that our perceptions of reality suffer. When we see a video of a kid dancing to the tune of “Happy” in the midst of the rubble left by Haiyan in Tacloban and slap the experience with the label “positive vibes”, we kind of ingrain it in our minds that everything will be alright now. And, guess what, important lessons remain unlearned. But, hey, that’s the “power of positivity” we are told by all these Chopran bozos that infest our social media timelines. We focus on possibilities rather than hindrances when we remain “positive”.
I don’t think so.
Just like the way the devil is in the detail, the lessons are in the negatives. The reason we work hard on getting a good education is because we recognize at the time we set out on that journey that our brains are emptyand have yet to be filled. We decide to get an education because of a tacit admission that the glass is half empty rather than live by the hubris of thinking that our brains are glasses that are half-full.
Looks and pedigrees hands down win elections in the Philippines.
Justin Trudeau will likely win a Philippine election not just because Filipinas all over the archipelago will drop their panties for him but because he has a political pedigree, being the son of long-serving former Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau. Sounds familiar?
But did Justin Trudeau become the prime minister of Canada because of his looks or because of his pedigree? Perhaps there was a bit of that at work. But to suggest so as if those were the only criteria that matter in Canadian politics will likely insult Canadian voters to the bone. And Filipino voters? Filipino voters see no problem with being renowned for their penchant for voting on the basis of looks and pedigree platforms. (Obviously current Philippine President BS Aquino won on the basis of the latter)
And therein lies what sets apart the women from the teenage ditzes. Ditzes wear their ditziness with pride. Grown women look back to their years of being ditzes fondly but embrace their present self-assured maturity.
I suppose we could thank the paralysis Metro Manila suffered during this year’s APEC summit. When a mega-city like Manila grinds to a halt for an entire week, guess what, tens of millions of Filipinos are idled. And it goes without saying that idle minds spell trouble. But hey, I’ll put a positive spin to this mess and propose that at least these idle minds set themselves to the task of perving over Trudeau and Nieto. In other ghettoes around the world, idle minds fall prey to worse things — like the seductively radicalizing views of AK47-wielding false prophets.
In that regard, there is reason to be “thankful”. It could have been worse, right? 
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