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Perhaps
it really is as helpful as the radio broadcaster Paul
Harvey suggests, that in times like these we should just
remember that there have always been times like these.
It’s a
comforting thought.
We find
ways in times of crisis to reassure ourselves that
things are not as bad as they appear to be, because it’s
good to feel unaffected. We can watch things unfold and
we can thank the heavens that we have been spared from
this or that tragedy.
To a
people living in a state of perpetual calamity, such
thoughts can be a salve. But it can also mean slavery.
We have
become the cynical idealists that the historian
Alessandro Morandotti once described—we manufacture
variations to the saying that tells us things can’t get
any lower when you’re already on the floor. And it’s
probably true.
But what
if there was a basement? And what if beneath that there
was something else? Down below, desperate hope mingles
with gin and despair, and it’s not good.
It’s
hard not to notice the fear. It’s hard to ignore the
rot, and inside our indifference malignant worries grow.
We used
to laugh at our country’s recent stretch of good
fortune: after the vile Marcos dictatorship, there was
always something droll about the gradations of
incompetence and mediocrity that followed. But today
seems to be a different matter. There is something
terribly disquieting about unadulterated bumbling,
untethered avarice and murderousness. The jokes become
less funny, come too close and become too real.
Every
year we are told that the country is on the verge of
takeoff, and every year we wonder why we seem to have
the longest runway in the world.
Here,
bridges are built where there are no rivers. Here,
funds for agriculture are channeled to cities of
concrete and steel. Here, officials administer trade as
a paranormal vocation: to export Filipino nurses to
Japan, the government offers to import Japanese nuclear
waste.
Here,
political science does not apply because the government
is an absurd animal. It is a preening, snorting bull
that tramples and gores the weak, and a sheep in sheep’s
clothing that fondles the feet of the mighty. It is a
bull-sheep government capable of astounding feats: it
can swagger and slaughter unarmed dissenters and, for a
piece of American generosity, it can spring from its own
jail and escort to the US Embassy an American soldier
sentenced to spend 40 years behind bars for rape.
This is
a creature that lives for US charity: around two years
ago the American government committed to send military
aid to the Philippines in the form of five battle-ready,
Vietnam-era helicopters, under one condition: Philippine
taxpayers first had to pay over $7 million in
refurbishing fees to a chosen US contractor. On August
2006, after payment from the Philippines, the US
delivered its promise—five flying things, not one of
which could fly.
It is
easy to blame the
US
for such transgressions. It is easy and lazy and misses
the point. It exonerates alleged leaders who invite the
contempt of bullies and it pardons our own failure to
make those who profess to lead us accountable to their
actions.
And the
truth is, this tyranny of shamelessness—this rule of
misrule that we find ourselves in today—can only thrive
in a climate of forgetting and spectatorship.
Once
upon a time, not so long ago, hardy souls restored free
speech in the country. Today, too many with something to
say have learned to sleep again with one eye open.
Once
upon a time, there was a country that could feed it’s
own people. Today, its farmers subsist on sorrow while
the country relies on others for nourishment.
Once
upon a time, there was a country that could benefit from
the best that its people had to give. Today, its
economic fundamentals are evident: children in schools
pose as sardines in tiny tin cans, public health is on
the auction block, and larceny is the only
state-supported enterprise.
Today,
we hurtle toward industrial oblivion because the
government is a believer in the church of so-called free
trade. Its scripture commands the creation on Earth of
the holy trinity: pliant people, good governance and an
open economy, so Glory to the Fodder, the Gun and the
Low Tariff then pray hard the rest of the year.
Today,
our dignity is for barter and we have put up for tender
our very soil; our export of humans is flourishing and
we have become a net producer of hunger.
Today,
nine million Filipinos are toiling abroad because in
their own country they cannot provide for their families
or nurture their dreams.
Today,
officials bray we are “on the way to winning the grand
prize—First World status.” Their wisdom warms the heart,
like cinder lodged in an artery.
***
Constantino is a Quezon City-based writer and author of
The Poverty of Memory: Essays on History and Empire. |
