01646: A Weather Rant

Without context, you have no idea what year this photo is from.

A quick Google search defines calamity as "an event causing great distress and often sudden damage or distress; a disaster." And while the current monsoon rains enhanced by Tropical Storm Maring are certainly a rather nasty thing to deal with, it's hard to fully appreciate this all as a "calamity" in terms of the definition. And I don'y say this to cheapen the plight of what people have been facing since the rains began over the weekend, but more to stress how annoying how we're not exactly talking about "sudden" damage or distress. Instead we're dealing with the results of systemic corruption and stupidity.

But I already wrote about the woes of patronage politics and how it has contributed to the problems that we face today, so there's not real point in revisiting that subject right now. However since this is my personal blog, I do get to dedicate time to ranting.

And frankly, I'm a little too tired to full-on rant, but I just wanted my displeasure known. We're living in the capital region of this country but we suffer from rampant floods every time it rains like this and our lack of a decent transportation system just complicates things even further when the weather gets bad like this.

And what's even more annoying is the fact that I don't see a foreseeable end to our problems any time soon. And no, I don't think that flooding the Twitter accounts of politicians will make them change the way they do business. And a public demonstration at Luneta may feel meaningful, but I don't think it'll be enough to weed out the corruption that has rooted it firmly in our government system - nor will a million selfies.

I just wish I had more solutions at this point. So for now, I'm just going to rant about my frustration with the stupidity of it all and how helpless we all end up feeling because of what the people in power do.