Monday, March 03, 2025

Pilot episode: Disturbing events in the US

“The events unfolding in the US since the start of 2025 look like the pilot episode of a multiseason political TV series — amusing as fictional drama but disturbing as a real newscast.”

Not to be self-important about it, but those are my own words, which I posted earlier today on my Tumblr and BlueSky accounts. I’m quoting myself simply because I don’t want to be accused of plagiarizing myself.

It’s not even a unique observation. Many others, I imagine, have the same idea, though they may say it differently.

I’m not even an American. I’m a Filipino, a native resident of the Philippines, which has historically close, if at times troubled, ties with the United States. 

So, the developments in the US can be worrying to Filipinos as they may have some negative effects on the Philippines — a democratic republic with a Constitution modeled after that of its former colonizer.

READ: Thousands of people protest in Washington, D.C., and across the U.S. on Presidents Day

The two countries have some shared principles — even if the realities on the ground, more often than not, may break some of those very principles. And at the moment, the realities playing out in the US are not something Filipinos would also want to live through.