Let the Knife Speak: On José Rizal
&gt;Travelers to the Philippines are sometimes puzzled to see the statue of this same man, José Rizal, in practically every town plaza on the islands.<p>dumb tourists, maybe<p>Personally, I kinda ruined a romantic date in Intramuros by wanting to visit that museum, and then buying and wearing the shirt from Rizal. (you have to choose your priorities, between cheesy &#x27;i love you and this park is so cute&#x27; and &#x27;viva la Révolution, colonialism is all over&#x27;).<p>And it was worth it, I&#x27;m now a bit smarter.<p>But yeah, as a tourist from France, I was surprised by how dystopian looked Manila.<p>- Signs and everything remotely important were in American English.<p>- Some justice court, next to the museums, was in the same building as a Chowking (a fast food chain), which was maybe the worst place to assert the sobriety of justice and public services.<p>- Everyone had SUVs and cars from TV series, as cycling and public transit aren&#x27;t that developed.<p>- There were private security officers all over, as if the government didn&#x27;t exist, and the ones would could pay would decide what was worth to protect.<p>- The workforce was ridiculously cheap and allocated inefficiently. There were a lot of security guards for private houses, you could take the tricycles to go around the city. Why isn&#x27;t workforce more expensive and allocated in industries and R&amp;D ?<p>- Most filipinos I knew were studying in public universities, paid by state, just to be able to move oversea when they graduate. It&#x27;s a very bad investment.<p>- And laws don&#x27;t make any sense. I&#x27;m about to loose my Globe prepaid SIM, as the government just mandated to whitelist who can access the mobile phone network in the PH (the whitelist : Filipinos, residents, oversea filipinoes, aka everyone but tourists). As if you can regulate who can access a public network to make it secure.<p>However, I have a different perspective than the OP about his own article.<p>The article depicts modern days Philippines as a &#x27;tyranny&#x27;, and encourages to &#x27;Let the knife, the Philippine bolo, speak.&#x27; to establish freedom.<p>But as far as I understood on my trip, the country has too much freedom : it&#x27;s just on neoliberal autopilot. There is no real government to overthrow in a revolution.<p>The Philippines lack a vision or a dream or something. You guys need to _build_ a state and institutions that can be held accountable, and that can foster a debate to create things that make sense.<p>The article notes that, in &quot;As the writer Eric Gamalinda has noted, only two things unite Filipinos: gossip and José Rizal.&quot; So there needs to be more !<p>Bolo time is over, now build the nation with books and laws !