LET ME park this: Damage Psyche – Psychological or emotional trauma is damage or injury to the psyche after living through an extremely frightening or distressing event and may result in challenges in functioning or coping normally after the event.
I’m quite sure sometime in your existence you have come across the phrase “the Filipino has a damaged psyche.” Maybe you read it somewhere or heard someone trying to be clever use it in a conversation, perhaps a lecture or a speech but definitely not from a politician (it’s way beyond their intellect level), most probably from someone from the academe a writer perhaps.
And what is the Filipino psyche? It is just the soul, mind or personality of a person or groups of persons, in this case the natives of this archipelago, a.k.a. the Filipino.
Take note that I am using the term Filipino in a generic form with absolutely no distinction whether male or female but the whole Filipino nation which encompasses all sexes.
That the Filipino has a damaged psyche is quite evident in these three things which he/she is passionate about: politics, basketball and, of course, beauty contests. Never mind the lesser passions i.e. cockfights and mahjong. No, having an affair with your seaman kumpare’s wife does not count, although it can be also very passionate.
We’ll start with basketball. Ask any Filipino male on the street and he probably knows more about the Philippine Basketball Association or PBA than your tabloid sportswriter. Chances are he’s wearing the latest LeBron James basketball shoes; if he does not have one yet, probably dreams about having a pair. Nevermind that he can’t afford it and he’s not even a basketball player.
Nothing wrong with being a basketball fan; it’s just pathetic that the dream of every Filipino basketball player is to play above the rim and emulate the dunks of Michael Jordan and LeBron James notwithstanding the fact that average height of a Filipino male is 5 feet 5 inches.
You see, a Filipino basketball fan/player always identifies himself with the National Basketball Association or NBA style of play, nevermind that the average height in the NBA is 6 feet 6 inches and that style of play has been overtaken by the European brand of basketball.
The unblemished no-win record of Gilas Pilipinas or the men’s national basketball team at the recently held 2019 FIBA World Cup in China finishing 38th with 38 teams participating or dead last is testimony to a damaged psyche in basketball.
Ah, beauty contests… he Philippines is perhaps the only country in the world that puts too much importance in a shallow, meaningless and completely useless beauty contests. So Catriona Gray who claims to be Filipino is the current Miss Universe. Really, what good did it do to the natives of this islands? Did it somehow uplift their lives? It seems to me the only person that benefited is Miss Catriona Grey herself with all the endorsements and commercials she’s doing.
Beauty contests discriminate. No matter how Miss Catriona Grey inspires the little girl from Tabuc Suba, Jaro to be like her, she can never be if she looks like Jover Laurio.
It is only in the Philippines where Miss France wins the Miss Universe crown and it makes the headlines of all major newspapers and the six o’clock news while in France it does not even make the second page; it was relegated to some obscure page.
The joke here is that if Miss Philippines does not even make the 10 finalists let alone win the Miss Universe, don’t dare go to any beauty parlor to have a hair cut as the beauticians will take out their frustrations on your hair.
Finally, politics. The Philippines is perhaps the only country in the world where politicians and their retinue of clowns and idiots succeed to make an art form politicizing diseases and epidemics.
Take dengue, a killer disease that has taken the lives of Filipinos and desperately needs a vaccine or cure. But what that nincompoop Noynoy Aquino and his motley crew did is despicable to say the least.
P3.5 billion, almost the entire budget of the Department of Health, have been railroaded and approved in record time just a couple of months before the 2016 elections to purchase from French pharmaceutical company Sanofi Pasteur the experimental and overpriced dengue vaccine Dengvaxia.
According to Sanofi, its Dengvaxia works as expected in people already exposed to the dengue virus; but in those who haven’t, the vaccination is linked to an elevated risk of severe disease developing from a subsequent dengue infection.
DOH, then headed by Secretary Janette Garin of Iloilo, bought from Sanofi P3.5-billion worth of Dengvaxia and started a public dengue immunization program in March 2016 targeting public elementary school pupils that are at least nine years old.
Whatever the ulterior motive was, it is apparent that the stupidity, greed and apathy of those “yellow shirts” that make up then President Noynoy Aquino’s “Daang Matuwid” crew resulted in an inadvertent genocide of 800,000 Filipino schoolchildren. As of press time about 300 or more have already died.
And then we have polio that recently made a comeback after 20 years and what do they do?
Of course, they blame President Duterte when the real reason for polio’s encore is incompetence and lack of proper Information and Education Campaign or IEC on the absolute need for immunization vaccination against this dreaded disease by the people from the DOH.
The buck stops with DOH secretary Francisco Duque./PN
