Just thank the lord

Cong Corrales

“People, get ready. There’s a train a-coming. You don’t need no ticket. You just get on board.” –Curtis Mayfield, People get ready

I STILL can’t get the grip of how the number of “ingrates” in this country has grown in just two short years.

Imagine the gall of these fault-finders. Can’t they see that Digong Dada is hard at work? Can’t they see that now, because of the 16 million “enlightened” citizens, we are better off, as a country and as individuals?

Don’t you believe me? Let me enumerate at least three things this administration has been “astonishingly good” at the past two years.

This regime has been busy unclogging our swamped out court dockets. It has been busy helping the judicial branch. The Philippine National Police puts the number of drug personalities killed in legitimate operations at 3,451 as of July 26 last year.

This figure, the police say emphatically, does not include the vigilante killings. Other human rights advocacy groups have their own number of drug suspects killed but what do they know, right? It’s not like they can actually count how many people have been killed simply because they didn’t kill them. So, I’m sticking with the PNP figures. Now, that is reliable data.

Imagine how liberating this 3,451 deaths to the lower courts are? Judges can now schedule more important cases. They don’t have to settle cases regarding drug use. Kudos!

On another front, didn’t the President promise a train system for Mindanao? Well, he did one “better”. He gave us the Train (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) for the entire archipelago to “enjoy”.

Look, with this Train, the government does not only make your take-home pay tax-free, it also helps you watch your blood sugar. It doesn’t matter if it’s your only source of energy because you don’t have a regular income on account of having absolutely no job security being contractual, this regime will tax your sugar anyway.

Under this Train, drinks containing high-fructose corn syrup are levied at P12 per liter while excise rate on drinks containing caloric or non-caloric sweetener is P6 per liter.

Isn’t that great? With or without you meaning to shape up, this government will do it for you by raising the tax on sugar. The same thing could be said for the sugar barons, but to hell with them. This regime doesn’t care for them. Digong Dada has said over and over again that he hates oligarchs and the elite.

This Train simplifies the estate and donor’s tax, increases the excise tax on petroleum products, as well as with automobiles, and expands the value-added tax. Let’s see the oligarchs and elite claw their way out of that! Woot woot!

Don’t you believe me? You can check it out for yourself at http://www.dof.gov.ph/taxreform/. There, you could see that I used the same exact words they used.

This regime’s propaganda team (read: PCOO) even touted it as the “best Christmas gift to Filipinos ever.” Now, these people wouldn’t lie to our face, would they? What with their stellar embodiment of the truth.

Okay, that may be taking it too far. There have been instances where this team of intellectuals and pundits have spun the President’s pronouncements in the past. But hey, they do it so we, the people, could understand what Digong Dada is actually saying. They are looking out for us, that way.

Speaking of propaganda, if it hadn’t been for PCOO assistant secretary Margaux Uson’s booboo on the location of Mt. Mayon, our visual artists would not have been able to flex their creativity with photo editing software that much. See? The faux pas ushered in a massive interest where the friggin’ volcano really is from this generation of entitled half-wits and meme-dependent truth-seekers.

Palace spokesman Harry Roque eloquently argued this point by saying last Sunday: “Kung walang fake news, hindi natin malalaman ano ang true news. Let there be a free marketplace of ideas.”

I didn’t know that Roque is heavily into dialectics. Like, how would you know white if you haven’t seen black? How would you thresh out the truth if you haven’t heard the lies surrounding that truth? This argument makes perfect sense. Sieg Heil!

The killings, the Train, and this regime’s propaganda team are all for the “benefit” of every freedom-loving Filipino to enjoy.

Going back to my opening quote from Curtis Mayfield’s “People get ready, I suggest we stop our whining and just enjoy this regime’s Train ride to, err, somewhere. Let’s forget about critical thinking and what it’s for. Hell, let’s just give up thinking altogether and just thank the “lord.” Pfft.