While I don't condone to President Rodrigo Duterte's Punisher-like behavior in dealing with certain people and he should learn more diplomacy, there's another issue that I could raise with Americans who claim to be "experts" of the Philippines. It reminds me how some crazy Americans think they know just about everything. While I'm not anti-American but I can't deny how the United States is indeed a dysfunctional country. A lot of Americans today are too spoiled, too pampered and they don't want to follow simple guidelines. What's so frustrating to think about is that a lot of Filipinos want to follow their lifestyle.
It's an issue among many Filipinos today is that they overrate American culture. Worse, if the local media ever gives them imported shows you should expect most of the shows you'll see are American media. I remembered how I woke up to Saturday morning cartoons and almost everything I see are American media. While I have nothing against any decent American show while a lot of Filipinos tend think that everything American is good. This in turn makes a lot of Filipinos susceptible to believing that as long as it's an American then they can trust him or her. I blame it on people think that at as long as it's American then it must be right.
What's so frustrating is that many of these Americans who claim to be "experts" of the Philippines may have only been in the Philippines for such a short period of time. Does swimming in the attractive beaches of the Philippines make them an expert? No! They simply enjoyed something beautiful about the Philippines. When I went to China and Singapore some time ago, I can't even claim to be an expert of those countries. Both trips only lasted for one week and I was on a recreational tour. Even more, to be truly an "expert" of the Philippines is already hard enough for Filipinos then why are there annoying Americans who claim to be an expert of the Philippines when they only stayed in the country for a very short time? They didn't even spend a lot of time in the Philippines and now they're claiming to "guide" Filipinos? Did they even analyze all 7,107 islands broken down into regions and have they been around the whole Philippines to claim they know what's good for it?
What Filipinos need right now is to know their country first-hand and what's wrong with it. Nothing's wrong with foreigners giving feedback but when they claim to be an expert then it's time to sound the alarm. Feedback or criticism must always be sorted out before they should be considered valid or not. Many people claim to be an expert in certain fields but they aren't. It's really time to tell those Americans who keep claiming that they're experts of the Philippines to stay in America and stop meddling with the Philippines.
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