Filipinos cannot be hurt by depriving them of something they do not have

In his latest piece, the Inquirer.net Editor has gone back to picking up where the State of the Nation Address (SONA) of President Benigno "Noynoy" Aquino III left off -- blaming the previous administration.

Indeed, the first 90 percent of today's Inquirer.net editorial is nothing more than a litany of gripes that itemises former President Gloria Arroyo's overspending -- a big drumroll, suffice to say, that ends with this crash of the cymbals at the very end of Mr Editor's quaint treatise of forced outrage...

Though it has already been three months since Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s presidency ended, it continues to hit us where it hurts the most.

I don't know for sure if the Inquirer.net Editor was being ironic in his remarking how an accounting of the former administration's fiscal approach reveals something about our situation that "hurts the most". Certainly we need look no further than the last several weeks to see that the amount of hurt Filipinos have sustained over such a short short period is unprecedented. In a single fell swoop, the already small stature of Da Pinoy in the global community has shrunk even more.

The Inquirer.net Editor would like us to believe that the flushing of money down the drain by Arroyo is something that could "hurt" Filipinos. But then when one considers how many Filipinos never really had any money to begin with, I doubt that highlighting how they've been deprived of something they never had could really "hurt" any more than what they've been divested of in the last several weeks.

Ironic therefore, how many Filipino triumphalists have for so long trumpeted how Filipinos stand tall and proud despite being so wretchedly poor. In short, the message of these triumphalists is that it is not the absence of money that could hurt Filipinos but the deprivation of the only thing left to prop up what is left of our "dignity" -- our delusional pride. Now even that delusion has been taken as well courtesy of the showcasing to the world of our national ineptness that resulted in the deaths of eight Hong Kong tourists. No amount of an accounting of the previous administration's handling of money will overshadow that.