SKIRMISHER

Computers. It’s a part of your life when you’re deep in Information Technology. It’s something short of being attached to your bowels to be part of your system and either you curse it or welcome it with bliss.

Right now I type this article on an PC running OpenBSD (yes, OpenBSD! you’ve read it right) using NEdit (another arcane application, arcane to those who fear to tread beyond Windows).

The lifestyle change honestly disappointed me (and really made me yearn for the conceived ease of use) initially but when you’re open to possibilities and broadminded enough to accept that things don’t happen here like in MS Windows (no more viruses and intermittent blue screen of death too), you’ll fare off better here.

Now, why the masochistic change of computing platform? Two words: freedom and control. I believe one can’t exist without the other, or we’re in folly.

Speaking of control and freedom, the State of the Nation Address or SONA will be held today, and I believe the demonstrators for or against the government still don’t get it.

The truth is: demonstrators are mere guinea pigs of political honchos of this country. When you’re an ambitious bastard, to rouse the people on your side, touch on their oppression and promise them the castle in the sky upon your accession to the high throne and you’ve got a strong chance to get there, when the majority has empty stomachs, there’s little room for reason. When you want to control dissatisfaction when you’re already in the position, you can organize underground mobs to pacify, disable, paralyze, neutralize, even pulverize, the growing opposition. Or much simpler, divide and conquer your opposition. These methods and further variation of this theme doesn’t benefit the common tao in any manner. In fact, they become more disposable and/or dispensable if they try to ride the wave either way, for or againsts a regime.

Haven’t we yet learned to stand up for ourselves? Stupid question! The answer’s right before our very eyes! The majority can’t. Why don’t we have the courage, the power to stand up, speak for ourselves, despite our political messiahs? Our politicians have acted like saviors for some time that they made theselves seem indispensable, that we need them, that without them we are nothing. Anyway, many of us are getting paid to be political guinea pigs, for the lack of better things to do or maybe due to other excuses. The politicians would fare off with the majority having empty stomachs and empty heads to make them docile and unthinking, easily swayed by minimal persuasion.

No politician can save the country and the people from hardship, from poverty, from the dirty barong-barongs many live in. Nothing sacred or significant is given, it’s always taken.

So what do I recommend that be done about demonstrators, for or against the government, no matter who the hell’s on the driver’s seat of the administration? Well, guinea pigs like sacrificial chess pieces, they mean nothing, they’re means to an end and nothing more. Only the living survivor of the cause and struggle will earn the laurels of the victory, the dead ones will be… well, dead.

Stumble it!