Common grounds

Blaming traffic accident to trees takes away the fact that the ultimate cause of all road mishaps is reckless driving. Traffic accidents do occur at the Monumental Axis in Brazil, a very wide road, where trees are sparse. Blaming typhoon-related loss of lives and properties to trees takes away the fact that driving and being on the streets at the height of a storm and not fortifying your house while a typhoon is approaching is pure carelessness if not foolishness. A typhoon does not need a road to wreak devastation. It just needs lack of preparedness to spell disaster. Storm-related roadside damages, therefore, are collateral. So, yes, people who blame trees are barking at the wrong tree. Pun intended. Of course. *** Some say we easily give up a fight and give in to the system. No. We just refuse to fight on a breached front. Why cry over spilt milk? Why waste time on things you cannot change? Why choose to die in an overrun battleground when we can always change gear and strategy, take the higher ground, and wage war on a new level? Drama is good. It has sparked revolutions. But there is a time to stop wallowing in it because what wins the battle is not the outpouring of emotion but the cleverness of style. *** Make no mistake, I cannot be pro-Duterte at all times (because I can never be pro-extrajudicial means). But I say it’s useless to “depopularize” him. It’s useless to urge those who voted for him to be mad at him. It’s useless to embarass him. Bashing him will only make him the underdog and those who catapulted him to power will just support him even more. Using his own words to fire back at him won’t work either. At the end of the day, he is the President. Instead, never ever underestimate the power of reaching out. There is a common ground people. It’s where our nation is founded. But that common ground is always below our own private pedestals. It is within all of us. If we would only and truly reach out. This is not fence-sitting. The common ground doesn’t have borders after all.