In a popular TV game show, the host asked a player while quoting a survey of 100 Pinoys, what the first question he would ask after a deep and long slumber of 100 years. The three-second fame given to those who would vicariously impersonate literature’s Rip Van Winkle , who a story says slept for 20 years, inquired about almost everything but the latest on the six o’clock news.
In Washington Irving’s short story, Winkle boozed to snooze for two decades, missing the American Revolution in the process, the culmination of the Americans’ idea of exceptionalism, or their concept of nationhood,a city on a hill, spreading the democratic light around as far as possible? Did Winkle ask about what’s the breaking news, or the 6 pm heist?
The Pinoy Winkles did not, apparently. News is not personal, anyway. Like death or tragedy, it’s what happens to other people. Besides, as a French philosopher observed , the more things change, the more they stay the same. Bon Jovi was more to the point: yesterday keeps comin ‘round, it’s just reality.
How long have we slept? What have we missed?
Years ago, the late Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez asked a general while he was being carried to a waiting ambulance after he was ambushed. “What’s happening to our country, general”, he asked, perhaps in the context of a difficult time during martial law, in the spring or autumn of the dictator, which the new President once recalled as a golden age– maybe the sound effect of lisping.
The mastermind in the assassination of Ninoy Aquino is still a deep, dark secret. So is the mastermind in the alleged ambush of a prominent politician who played not just a cameo role during
martial law. Meanwhile, villains have been made heroes, and heroes face oblivion ,if not extinction.
The Pelaez’ agonistes was replayed a few days back by the brother of the assassinated hard- hitting, truth telling broadcast journalist Percy Lapid. “What’s happening to our society”, he plaintively asked after the alleged ‘middleman” in his brother’s slaying died mysteriously in his cell right under the noses of people who were supposed to watch over him. The only difference was that Pelaez was referring to a place, Lapid’s brother to people. To the first, those who can vote with their feet, flee for
their future and tells kin and kindred the good news, belong. To the second, those who can grin, grind and bear it, dream of a world with betters news than the old ones.
In the meantime, insanity still reigns. The same things happen over and over again, and better results are expected. The poor remains poor if not poorer, politicians get rich, if not richer,
masterminds of murders remain at large or beyond reach, and evil men see a journalist’s mouth as a gaping big hole in the head.
On the other hand, tragedies can or must be seen on the positive side. Sen. Pia Cayetano was glad there was the pandemic that devastated the nation. At least, it showed us how bad the nation’s
health system was. Truth, which can set you free, can also be painful. Take your pick or poison. In the case of the death of the ‘middleman” in his cage, it blew to smithereens the much -ballyhooed justice system, or police protection in the country, or the pretense to it, in the face of a probe of a former president and his ilk. We can do it.
Except those who really understand what’s happening in the country, those who should and can know, don’t. But they can investigate. Sen. Koko Pimentel has told his fellow senators to hold off their noses on the death of the middleman in Percy’s killing. A bar topnotch, Pimented knows what the middleman is for. Let the NBI and the PNP do their own probe before jumping into the fray. Maybe the investigators themselves should be included in the Senate probe. Watch the watchers.
“ The tragedy is not that things are broken,” Alan Paton wrote in his book “ Cry.the beloved country, “but things are not mended.” Whatever has happened to the Pharmally anomaly as former
Sen. Dick Gordon, who lost his shirt but not his soul in the last elections, exposed in the corridors of power? What has happened to the high-inmates in prison who died mysteriously in jail during the pandemic? For crying out loud, why is Sen. Leila de Lima,who was nearly murdered in broad daylight in police custody, still doing time in jail while her accusers have slunk away one by one and a President blithely ignores his sacred oath to do justice to everyone?
Sen. Jinggoy Estrada may be right, partly. We must look inwardly than outwardly for inspiration. In other words, ban those international movies, particularly the Korean teledramas. They
only ruin the local industry. He didn’t define boredom or ethics, not even culture or art. He didn’t also elaborate while he’s still in the Senate despite issues of corruption. Korean movies tell a lot about that and what happens to leaders in their land who have lost face as a result.
Is our learning curve more steep than those of other people? Is our patientce, as Rizal read, our learning curve? Like South Koreans, Vietnamese, Thailand and the list goes on? We were second behind Japan in growth before the Tigers of Asia overtook us by leaps and bounds. Now we enjoy their cinemas and chilis, and Estrada is having heartburns. Look where we are ?
But take heart. President Marcos, the Younger, has declared that Filipinos are ready and raring to go back to normal, whatever that means. In the background are surging fuel and food prices and inflation, and the continuing risk of freedom, which is defined by George Orwell as the right to say no ,or the truth.
“Ay, that’s the rub”, Hamlet bewails.
