Illusion of truth

Netnet Camomot . 

THERE’S this drugstore whose sales staff tends to suggest another brand for the medicine you’re buying and would tell you, Pareha ra man na. Sometimes they go to the extent of informing you that the brand you prefer no longer exists. So, I called up the more popular drugstore to confirm if indeed that particular brand has been phased out, and they said, Wala man, ang packaging lang ang gi-change.

And then, for our last purchase, the suggesting drugstore gave us cetirizine instead of levocetirizine. There was that time months ago when they suggested a particular brand of supplements which eventually gave us headaches. Hay naku. Bakit ba ganyan? Ang ibig ‘nyo’y lagi lang mag-suggest?

US President Donald Trump is also fond of “suggesting,” especially for Mexico to fund the wall that he wants built along the US-Mexico border. Or is it the US government that he now wants to pay for that wall? US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer tried to convince him to stop his wall dreams and government shutdown but Trump walked out instead, which Democrats believe is his “temper tantrum.” There will come a time when he will be called Tantrump.

If worse comes to worst, Tantrump, er, Trump can probably ask Amazon.com Inc. founder and CEO Jeff Bezos to help build the wall. Bezos and his wife, MacKenzie, are divorcing just when they’re celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary, and people are now speculating how much she would receive out of his estimated net worth of $137.1 billion. $66 billion? Ooh la la.

In 2016, Trump sent to reporters a memo where he revealed that the wall would cost about $5 to $10 billion. If you do some math there, the Bezos couple can definitely afford it even after finalizing their divorce. But with Bezos perhaps too busy savoring his remaining billions and his future ex-wife also probably busy counting her share, who has the nerve to help build the wall? Not me, said any billionaire who doesn’t want to be near Trump.

Trump did have some words of, uh, wisdom for Bezos’ divorce: “I wish him luck. It’s going to be a beauty.”

A beauty? Well, he should know—he has been divorced twice, in case you’ve always thought Melania is the mother of Donald Junior, Ivanka, Eric and Tiffany.

Trump can only be young at heart now and that could be the reason why he talks like a spoiled brat. If you’re not a fan of President Rody Duterte and his p***ng in* and war on drugs, at least be grateful he doesn’t have temper tantrums, unless he did have some while I was hibernating in Siberia.

Since it’s not easy to tell real from fake news, how to know if Duterte is also into temper tantrums? Better pray for discernment then as you scroll down your Facebook News Feed.

Fake news, by the way, is usually shared by those who are above 65 years old. In an AFP piece (“Older Folk More Likely to Share Fake News,” Philippine Daily Inquirer, Jan. 11, 2019), Princeton University and New York University researchers revealed that “no other demographic characteristic seems to have a consistent effort on sharing fake news.” They went on to explain that it “is possible that an entire cohort of Americans, now in their 60s and beyond, lacks the level of digital media literacy necessary to reliably determine the trustworthiness of news encountered online” and that “memory deteriorates with age in a way that particularly undermines resistance to ‘illusions of truth.’” Ouch. Senior moment pa more.

Well, another spoiled brat with an “illusion of truth” could be Ateneo de Manila University’s junior high school bully Joaquin Montes whose apology, aired by GMA, turned out to be a non-apology when he said, “I was just defending myself. Hindi naman ako nam-bully for no reason… Para sa akin, hindi naman bullying ‘yung ginawa ko because I was also defending myself naman eh, in a way. Kaso nga lang in the video, mukhang ako talaga ‘yung mas aggressive.”

That’s GMA, the television network, and not GMA, the House Speaker, although the latter—former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—could have given Montes some tips on how to say, “I. Am. Sorry.”

Montes should define what bullying is according to his own personal dictionary. If he continues to be not sorry, he may morph into a politician someday. Oops! Imagine him as the House Speaker. Oops! With the potential to morph into the country’s president. Que horror! Or he will become president first and House Speaker later? Yikes! No suggestions please!