Lately, the Opposition has been undergoing an existential crisis and are divided over how to define the broader community of rabid critics of the government of President Rodrigo Duterte. It used to be clear in the past. Yellowtards = Everything that is Good. Everyone Else = Bad (“evil” even, if one asks the most rabid of the Yellowtards).
Oh and then there are the communists and their circle of “front” organisations. These bozos are against everything to do with freedom, choice, and making one’s own bed. But we won’t include them in this exploration because they are in an ideological hole of their own making right now.
The reason it was easy for Filipinos to equate Yellowtardism with everything that is good is because they had the Roman Catholic Church on their side. Priests, nuns, and bishops hosted Yellowtard rallies and spectacles in their churches. They also celebrated masses on command for the Yellowtards. In a predominantly Catholic country, whoever is “blessed” by a Catholic cleric is de facto GOOD.
The logic is simple when you are a devout Catholic that way. Good equals Catholic Church. Catholic Church endorses Yellowtardom. Yellowtardom is therefore good. Milk in my cereal. Coffeemate in my coffee. Makes sense to me, right?
It is therefore nothing short of an intellectual cataclysm ravaging thought leadership in Philippine society today that the idea that Yellowtards are God’s soldiers on earth has now come under intense modern critical scrutiny. Church-going prayerful Filipinos are now faced with the soul-wrenching option of separating religious faith from political faith. Indeed, political sensibilities independent of one’s religious beliefs is an alien concept to Filipinos. Perhaps, however, until now.
Filipinos will have to come to terms with the possibility that there is a widening gray area between being a Yellowtard and being a Duterte critic. This just means, perhaps, really stopping and understanding clearly what a Yellowtard really is. Perhaps the term “Yellowtard” no longer has anything to do with a partisan colour. It has more to do with the quality of one’s thinking. Perhaps low-quality thinking is what now defines what a Yellowtard is. The amazing thing about this new definition is that it still describes most people who identify with the old 1980s notion of being a Yellowtard.
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing. 😁
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