Brat Collins

We must invite the Collins Dictionary folks here, if they’re not already here. Their top picks for word of the year are strangely apt for the local setting --it’s as if they were all digital nomads in some remote Philippine isle.

Take one of the word finalists: “delulu”. Seriously, I had been laboring under the mistaken impression that this was fairly recent sward-speak, much bandied-about in episodes of Drag Race Philippines.

As I understand it, delulu means someone delusional, or harboring fantasies of unattainable romantic scenarios. “Lulu”, for sure, already meant “luka-luka”, or insane, for the gay community. It wasn’t too far a leap then for “lulu” to transmogrify into “delulu”. It almost meant the same, anyway. We can agree that an insane person is quite delusional.

No, it doesn’t mean Senator Leila de Lima, although ex-prez Duterte would like us to think she is delulu in thinking he was responsible for her incarceration. After viewing the Congressional testimonies this week though, it may reach the point where we wonder who among the cast of characters were sane, and who were delulu.

Did Duterte think he could browbeat military officers, police generals, scions of rich families and political dynasty spawn into kowtowing to his gloriousness? To be fair, they did do some serious boot licking when he was still president. Or was it these small congressional fry who were buzzing around him, pestering him with questions about his sudden source of wealth? Huh. Clearly, these probers were fools for thinking he couldn’t accumulate billions! Any knucklehead can see politics would be a get-rich-quicker than you can blink game. Why else would they run for political office? Such delulus.

Anyway, delulu lost as word of the year. It was up against strong contenders “yapping”, which is basically what Collins lexicographers saw and heard on their idiot box every time they tuned into the Quadcomm hearings, as well as “era”, derived from Taylor Swift’s ERAS Tour, or perhaps, the end of the Duterte era, as junior Congressmen took turns ripping flesh from the formerly-invincible strongman.

But guess which word won the 2024 word of the year award? Clue: it’s what presidential daughters become after they taste the heady bubbly that is power and get surrounded by sycophants galore.

Drumroll please. And the winner is: “brat”! Yes, it means a spoiled child, like we all used it before, and also its Gen Z equivalent, which is confident femininity, and an “independent and hedonistic attitude” personified by singer Charli XCX.

Additional suggestions for Collins! Perhaps they can consider these alternate definitions? We could add that a brat also means a female public officer who will not, despite the oath of office she took to serve the people, even try to account for the billions in public funds she received. Those funds went to her office, and then? That’s it? We don’t see that cash anymore? Not even a nice tidy report identifying beneficiaries like Chippy Wildflour and Jamba McDonald?

Mayhaps, it’s someone who shirks her duty to her constituents, and jets off to see the ERAS Tour in another country when a typhoon strikes the country. Maybe, she even watched the Charli XCX concert. These coincidences never cease to amaze me.

A brat could also be someone who fails to realize she is watched by millions of impressionable kids, who will then grow up thinking that her bizarre and boorish behavior is the proper way to behave towards holders of office. She refuses to accept invitations to attend Congressional hearings, and then seems to encourage her staff to likewise refuse, thereby courting arrest warrants for her poor underlings. She is prone to holding press conferences designed to pretty much vent her morbid thoughts and act out her childish fantasies about maiming and cutting frenemies.

Or perhaps, that is a delulu-stricken individual?

It’s getting confusing. Maybe we are the ones who are delulu. Why are we still expecting accountability from public officers? Why do we believe that the rule of law exists? Why, one can be convicted of a crime, and then run for office, and then poof! All those cases will disappear!

Trust the Donald to show us the way. And we thought he was delulu for deciding to make another run for the presidency after being booted from office four years ago. We were so wrong.

The next elections for our own presidency will arrive in no time at all. By then, we will surely find out what we are. Delulu, or Duterte?