The #OFW: the #Philippines' modern-day heroes are its most powerless citizens! #puso

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OFWs as heroes my ass. I have heard countless testimonials from OFWs who have been thoroughly harassed, abused and inconvenienced whenever they're back home in the Philippines. Call them heroes while treating them like crap.

What's worse, OFWs have little to no political clout in their home country. They should have at least some say in the way things are being run in their home country, because after all they're the biggest sponsors of the palamunins back home, while the phrase "OFWs are heroes" are constantly being used in every propaganda piece.

There's an extraordinary amount of self-delusion and hypocrisy going on in the Philippines, moreso than in any other country, more than I daresay Republican America or Putin's Russia. At least they have something real and concrete to brag about, to be proud of. In this country the word pride and achievement is as hollow as the next popular fad craze that they happen to see and mimic on social media or as hollow as a politician's promises.

If George Orwell's 1984 accurately describes contemporary North Korea, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World describes the Philippines with precision.

Filipinos as a whole are people desperate for achievement and self-affirmation. And how low their threshold for achievement has become. They will cling to any sort of tiny triumph, that when examined and looked at against the bigger picture, will seem small and inconsequential to most, but to these desperate people it will look like a giant leap, like an enormous accomplishment, and they will describe it as such.

Think "World's Most Mentos and Coke Fountains", "Most Breastfeeding Simultaneously", "Largest Flaming Image", "Most People Walking on a Catwalk", "Longest Basketball Game", and the list goes on. Reported all over the national news. Small, trivial and pathetic to most, but to Filipinos these may as well seem like the first walk on the moon.

Think Gilas who lost all their games and won none (despite already having non-native Filipino imports); yet they are still being celebrated. Hell I remember when the "Fall of Bataan" was being celebrated, a wartime defeat being celebrated for some inscrutable reason only Filipinos and their loser mentality are privy to.

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http://getrealphilippines.com/blog/2014/09/winning-heroism-and-the-palamunin-mentality-in-philippine-society/comment-page-1/#comment-681320

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