Status Updates From I Was the President's Mistr...

Self-help’s funny. If you can actually help yourself, why read a book by someone else?

making others willingly repeat lies is the height of power. Willingly repeating someone else’s lies is the height of powerlessness.

corruption thrives when temptation meets tolerance, and man, are we Pinoys a tolerant people.

I’ve thought long & hard about what freedom means and how easily commitment to it can become tyranny.

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We deserve the leaders we choose. Suffering the bad ones is part of our education in how to choose better ones. Or a step toward ourselves becoming the leaders we need.

bottoms of my pants so belled that each step almost clanged my arrival

For there are no tyrants where there are no slaves. When mainstream media is run by oligarchs & their partisans, we can no longer trust it. When they make it so we cannot know what’s true, we empower leaders who will tell us what to believe. For if he is deft enough to fool us, he is worthy enough for us to follow.

Every joke is a tiny revolution, wrote Orwell.

Not size of explosion, but how well it sticks. Mine were made w/gasoline, kerosene, tar, potassium chloride from my chemistry class, capped & sealed in empties of San Miguel Pale Pilsen… brown bottles concealed long rags snaking inside, & outside we taped windproof storm matches, as Finns did. … w/postage-stamp-sized sandpaper to light match that would burst bomb once the glass broke on its target

…armed with the university library, not the internet, our weapons steeped in history, science, and the truths of literature - not anonymity, Wikipedia, and cognitive bias.

My answer to your first question: Next, please.

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It's easier to fool people than to convince them that they've been fooled. Attributed to Mark Twain, but his actual words were, "How easy it is to make people believe a lie and how hard it is to undo that work again."

He's not good, he's not evil. He just quit trying to tell the difference.

we'll admit tons to our parents, but never to repeating their mistakes

that's how democracy works - who else is gonna dig up your dirt if not your opponents?

a tango is a sad thought danced; lovemaking with clothes on

...about his being a master debater, and a cunning linguist, and a vigorous packer, who can't wait to turn sixty-nine. What's prettier than roses on your piano? Tulips on my organ ...

my Scotch was on the rocks, just like my career

Felicia, me [Fernando], Ford, Frankie, Filomena, Fritz, Fe, Freddie, Famela, and Bong … my parents ran out of F names.

Famela! 😳

- My spiritual advisor[‘s] religion is from our country, relevant to our concerns. Do not tell me to follow orders from some badingaling in his castle there in Rome … fat on centuries of conquest.
- why I trust military men: they follow orders because they give orders
- Bureaucrats, 4X a day brushing away taste of what they must swallow; secretaries w/IPA, washing hands of dirty deeds they perform for others

More “sound bites”
- Sharia, to force our women to cover their beauty … if their impeachment succeeds, our country’s best assets will be hidden under burkas … why will tourists come all this way? What will the husbands look at here? Sunsets and tiny monkeys?

😳

So many “sound bites”:
- Church permits up to 16 wives: 4 richer, 4 poorer, 4 better, 4 worse
- 6,000,000 addicts in this country … if they continue to destroy the youth … 6,000,000 I will shoot. My brother Felix owns a funeral home … I will make him richer
- You bleeding hearts … human rights, what about human wrongs?

The most corrupt are most noisy in shouting corruption.

A mistress … hers is less a life of dependence than independence. … Being second - or third or fourth - means you’re often alone, which also means you’re more free.

… why must the world act as if it’s impossible for a mistress to be a feminist?

The surest way to affirm our faith is to journey through doubt.

“Silent but violent” (rather than “silent but deadly” re flatulence)

I eat assassination attempts for breakfast … And fart bullets the rest of the day.

… politics is showbiz for ugly people …

It is our responsibility to publish these materials unabridged.

It is yours to make sense of them.