Going nowhere
While we deplore the negativity darkening it, we welcome social media for the free-speech platform it has become for many hitherto silent bystanders. It has broken the monopoly professional journalists had on news and commentary, a welcome development as the former have proved to be not free of political bias.
Social media (trolls, fake news and all) makes for a vibrant democracy. It has practically slammed the door on authoritarian governments’ attempts to muzzle the press by allowing more than ever before a lot of people to participate in the on-going national discourse.
As in any democracy, the more participation the better is the result. Yet what will determine results are the perspectives of both sides of the national divide.
Massive poverty and peace and order (criminality and rebellion) are the crucial issues on the table. A positive perspective discerns the relative importance of an act of government to the solution of these problems. It views the action in question in its proper historical and social context and, more than criticizes, suggests and even makes tracks in an alternative or supplemental direction. In short, it does not criticize to destroy.
That comes from a negative perspective which criticizes to advance self-interest. It neither views an issue or event in its historical context nor does it reckon the importance of an issue or event in the context of the country’s main problems. Because it is meant only to destroy, it also nitpicks on even the most irrelevant and non-consequential issues, that is, to our core problems of poverty and lack of peace and order.
Both perspectives are in evidence in both camps. Antis, as driven by ambition, consider as solution to the country’s problems the ouster of the president and, of course, his replacement by one from their party. Pros meanwhile, in an opportunist’s effort to pile up pogi points for the coming election, swallow the president’s work-ethic hook line and sinker.
Perspective matters because the ongoing animated even heated political discourse will produce good results only if we are able to participate from the positive perspective of genuine nationalism which, in the current social context, means love for the poor and commitment to the reduction of massive poverty in the country.
The right perspective is not so much to criticize or blame others as for all of us (Church, government, business, ordinary citizens, workers, farmers, etc. to ask ourselves what we are doing (not just saying) to alleviate, minimize or even solve the country’s poverty and peace and order problems. For, in the end unless we get together and make a substantial dent on these core problems, this country is going nowhere.