Loooong comment. History rant. Sort of :))

On a number of comments sections, I've seen people who express disapproval about the President or those Facebook memes about President Marcos or other things get attacked and, besides being tagged as "bayarang dilaw," tarred with the same brush as Felipe Buencamino and Pedro Paterno--para lang din daw silang yung mga ilustrado, sarili lang iniisip kaysa yung bayan.

Dunno, I just think it's really unfair to say about them and about the ilustrados in Luna's time. I mean, yeah, we had self-absorbed ilustrados and who were expert-level turncoats, but we also had better examples from the same social class, like Rizal or General Luna himself. Heck, most of the officer corps of his time came from this class.

Also, remember that scene in Heneral Luna where soldiers were deserting in the middle of a battle? In one of his essays, Nick Joaquin writes that that was basically what our army looked like in the late stages of the Filipino-American War: the enlisted peasants and townfolk were deserting (no pay and running out of supplies) while their officers tried to keep fighting. We had the Paternos and the Buencaminos of the bunch, yup, but we also had people like Luna, Captain Rusca, Colonel Roman, and the irreconcilable "El Vibora," Gen. Ricarte--though he kinda sided with the Japanese during World War II, so . . . :))

TL;DR #NotAllIllustrados. Also, I oughta know better than to read the comments sections. LOL

Good morning /r/PH. Nag-almusal na kayo?