The Yellowtards are in the midst of a monumental temperamental tantrum following a catastrophic loss of their Opposition bets in this year’s elections. They now dismiss Filipino voters as “bobo” (stupid) for not voting for their candidates. But in the face of clear evidence that this summary judgement of people who voted against the Opposition is a big lie, they are now on a warpath to slander highly-educated people who they believe supported administration-backed candidates.
One such person is a certain Athena Charanne “Ash” R. Presto who “graduated summa cum laude”, teaches at the Sociology Department of the University of the Philippines, Diliman, is currently taking her MA Sociology at the same institution, and tweets at @sosyolohija.
She writes in a Rappler article…
One should not set oneself up as a scholar if he or she refuses to recognize the moral responsibility that scholars are faced with, especially in the Philippines under the Duterte administration.
Unfortunately, the way Presto tweets does not, in any way, mirror the spirit of true scholarship she articulates.
In a single ill-thought-out tweet, Presto, as the typical “woke” snowflake is prone to do, reveals more about her real character — one that is profoundly inconsistent with her “woke” talk.
The trouble with Presto is that she builds an entire argument on an unsound foundation — her personal judgement that the candidates backed by the administration of President Rodrigo Duterte are the wrong people to vote. This is problematic because, according to the Philippine Constitution, only the vote can determine who is RIGHT for the job of representing Filipinos in Congress. Yet, Presto writes…
Those who had the means to get an education but who still chose to vote for the President’s allies are not bobo – they are just plain rotten.
Not only does Presto presume to be an authority on who Filipino voters should vote for, she builds an entire thesis on how one ought to apply one’s knowledge and education in his or her chosen field of endeavour, on her pompous and presumptuous judgement. That is not for anyone to decide for another. And, certainly, there are ways to make good use of one’s education beyond “morality, rights, and justice”.
Indeed, scholars of the hard sciences pride themselves in not having to defer to those nebulous flakey concepts to explain how the world works, how fortunes are made and lost, and how human nature shapes history and life on the planet. In doing so, a true intellectual (something Presto evidently is not despite her education) is able to use theories agnostic to such polticially-motivated constructs to develop better frameworks upon which truly visionary pathways for human progress could be charted — something the Opposition in this year’s elections failed to present to the Filipino Voter.
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