Thoughts on Election 2.

Oh no, not another one.

You all knew this was coming, as implied by the title of the previous post.

Some years ago when I was trying to catch up with the games I missed through a pirate genius' invention called "Emulators", there was this old game entitled 'Romance of the Three Kingdoms' based on the novel of the same name that I grew quite fond of playing, mainly because it was a strategy game and I loved strategy games. This game puts you in charge of a definite population, a tribe as populous as our country's cities today, but not entirely a nation yet as that is the game's goal, ultimately unifying all of ancient china under your rule. For a ruler such as yourself, money back then meant only a few things:
• for manufacturing weapons for defense and conquering other tribes,
• for patronizing the farmers and sustaining a stable growth in agriculture as food keeps your army in tip-top, fit-for-fighting shape,
• for building a stronger infrastructure so as to prevent catastrophic damages from floods and earthquakes,
• for having an emergency fund in case there is a drought, a famine or a plague causing distress on your people,
• for bribing and invoking defection among important, high-ranking and influential people in other tribes to aid in your cause (I had a ruler defect to my cause, effectively gaining all of their tribe's land, resources and armies), and
• for rewarding the loyalty of your men, and occasionally treating the masses for their collective efforts in nation-building (could be done by giving the families either food or gold, or by lowering tax rates if the monies are overabundant-yes, this can happen if you know how to be thrifty or you have an immense knack and skill for plunder).

To win the game, you must have the support of the majority of the country. Being selfish and wanting to keep all the money to yourself isn't gonna cut it. Using it to keep the nation happy and as one will.

Did I manage to get my point across and make it stick? No? Well, what I'm trying to say is that if trying to win the hearts of the masses, I won't make the agencies rich by splurging on TV, radio, all-nonsense Internet commercials, print ads and all these trash that would add to my problems later on if I win. Instead, I would spend my campaign fund helping the masses, one province and one city at a time. The campaign period is long, but the "presence ads" hung around longer even before and that didn't come dirt-cheap to these candidates. Presidential candidates in the U.S. traveled to each of the States and held conferences to try and win them over, joined the rallies of minorities and advocacy groups and maybe told less bullshit to the country. What if the candidates with all that money started doing relatively small but great-impact helpfulness to the masses? What if someone could say to those candidates, "While you were shooting that TV commercial, I was building a new Gawad Kalinga community and giving out stock medicines to various baranggays" or "While you were recording those radio plugs, I was busy ordering a construction of a public hospital up north. And buying shoes for children who walk bare-foot to school on oven-baked pavements everyday who believe that what they do will make life better for themselves in the future, but will they have it with YOU around?". These candidates use money to get their faces and their voices recognized throughout the whole archipelago and use lovely words concocted by the ad agencies just to tell the people to vote for them. As someone had jokingly defined what advertising is, said "it is the art of convincing people to buy the things they don't need", it may most likely be the same with all these campaigns. Words are powerful as they can be the catalyst to change, but what if everyone assumed they were all empty in the first place? We're not talking about Jesus Christ here, who refutes "seeing is believing". We're talking about people like us, who are most likely to change given absolutely the most powerful position of the nation. Even I am at qualms with positions of power as I tend to be materialistic sometimes and I am afraid to see myself at my worst. I have a hard time keeping to a code of honor and nobility because I understood a long time ago that life is unfair, and I might relish a macabre moment to deal this unfairness to others. But it goes both ways too, and I know I will choose to make a legacy out of doing the right thing instead of fighting for top rank next to the past evil patriarchs of the world.

In defeat, a villain quoted the 26th verse of the evangelist Matthew's 16th chapter, saying "For what profit is it to a man if he gains the whole world and loses his own soul?" and acknowledging that he had been wrong and he deserved the consequences of his actions. Afterward, the protagonist left the other protagonists a clear message, stating "Remember, the only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.". My weapon is the keyboard, I'm trying to do my part by blogging about it.