USA or China? Duterte chooses the PHILIPPINES!

A policy bomb was detonated in Beijing, and now the nation is feeling the tremors of said pronouncement.

Typically, the initial reaction zoomed on a matter of choice - USA versus China.

The westerners in us are frantic. "We just can't do that to Uncle Sam!" What about the economy? What about aid? Our military? The BPOs? What about our immigrant relatives?

The more pathetic ones would conjure images of a country that will no longer be, once the GIs pack their bags and turn their backs.

It is a natural reaction, born out of a century-old stranglehold and our Stockholm syndrome affair with the US of A. Ever since, we were perhaps the only Asian country indoctrinated with western culture, and we embraced it like our lives depend on it.

We aped the Hollywood glitz and glamor, and we subscribed to its ideals of democracy and freedom, notwithstanding the fact that in doing so, we are also the only Asian nation without a unique sense of culture and nationalism.

Actually our forefathers had it in them to imbibe a culture but what can you do to a nation ravished by self-absorbing conquerors one after the other in the last 4 centuries?

And so we had an amalgam of east and west in us, but the dominant ideal that stood was naturally the one perpetuated by the last colonizer -- the Americans.

Thus, the little brown brother came to be, but we seemed never to have grown at all, and  never given that space to carve our own niche in the global community.

The little brown brother was seen to it that it remain to be as such. The saddest part was that our leadership in the last decade or so was complicit.

Go ask Heneral Luna. He will confirm.

Now comes a game changer from our very own ranks. A maverick whose boorish demeanor and spartan behavior belie a brilliant mind and a zeal for patrimony.

What he detonated in Beijing today has sent shockwaves from Aparri to Jolo all the way to the Bay Area and beyond.

He wants to pursue an entirely different foreign policy. Actually, he may be the first president to even have a genuine foreign policy.

For once, the little brown brother stood up, and dared everyone to hear what he has to say. Suddenly, the global stage stopped, looked and listened.

And despite the crudeness and coarseness in his ploy, it cannot be denied that there is quite a depth in its repercussion.

He is charting an unheard of entente with a superpower that is not like the only superpower we have known and cuddled with. A superpower that we have subserviently and faithfully loved but who has constantly taken us for granted.

It is now making everyone dizzy and uncomfortable.

Is he on the right path? Or has he gone crazy?

Or is this the start of an awareness that we can be a sovereign country that deserves respect and recognition.

Again, for most of our countrymen, the discourse has become vapidly simple --  Where should we place our bet and our future?

USA or CHINA?

For Duterte, lest we forget or fail to realize, the choice is very clear --

It's the Philippines 🇵🇭

#ForTheMotherland



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Mark Lopez as posted on Facebook.