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Sorry, I don’t get it. Your hovercraft is full of eels?

Thanks to all for the warm welcome.

The Philippines is screwed. Thanks to government corruption and outright stupidity of our political leaders, we kicked out the Americans and the elite grabbed the assets they left behind to become even more wealthy. China then exploited the vacuum and seized the Spratley and Paracel Islands and is now taking advantage of American unwillingness to honor its commitments by building military facilities on those islands and taking control of the entire South China Sea. From those forward bases, China can easily seize control of the Philippines, which is the closest and weakest country in the area. When it does this, it will be able to completely blockade Taiwan, Japan, and South Korea.

We used to be confident that the US will keep its promise to protect us, but we no longer believe you can be trusted because your president has repeatedly proven you have no “palabra de honor” - you stab your friends like the UK, Poland, and Israel in the back and kiss the asses of those who hate you.

Unfortunately, the Philippines has too many problems to resist China. We have the highest taxes, greatest corruption, utterly stupid and fractured political parties, and political rulers who’s only qualification is that they are well-known by the masses because they are boxers, singers, movie stars, or basketball players.

Oh, let’s not forget endemic poverty, the best and brightest leave the country in a massive brain drain, majority of the wealth concentrated in the hands of a handful of families, environmental illiteracy, and inefficient transportation network.

Many of us can see what’s coming and we’ve migrated far away to give our children a chance to grow up in safety. My family migrated to Canada - I’m now living in Calgary, working and paying taxes. I’m fearful for my cousins and their children back home.

We Filipinos are known for being hard-working, but we also have a tendency to take any job, no matter how overqualified we are, just so that we’re working instead of sitting on our butts relying on the government (the “basta may trabaho kahit na ano” or “as long as I have a job, no matter what it is” mindset). This is why most adult Filipinos you’ll see who are working in fast food restaurants or as janitors will have college degrees, and even post graduate degrees. Go ahead and ask them, you’ll be surprised.

Many Americans may not care now, but after China takes over and strangles East Asia; you’ll find out very quickly that you too need East Asia for your own well-being and quality of life.

The eels line was just a random off-the-wall expression. My pinay wife told me to say something silly to make you laugh.

So true about the brain drain. My wife's immediate family left Manila in the early eighties, and they're now working on convincing extended family to emigrate.

I do think it was a mistake to ask the US to pull out and close our bases back in the day. Doing so makes it easy for our scared politicians to procrastinate on dealing the messy China business. If our bases where still there and active, then this Spratley nonsense won't be happening. Hopefully future leaders from both countries will rethink that mistake.