WE ARE made to believe that Senator Leila de Lima is a political detainee now. Not. We know what the case is, it is criminal, and not like trumped up charges against activists, she is pointed to by high-value Bilibid prisoners as someone who allowed drug business to prosper inside the national penitentiary during her watch. This was despite the fact that she was a frequent visitor in the penitentiary and thus cannot say she is not familiar with the territory.
We say even the worst criminal can still change, but we are made to believe that blogger Mocha Uson, who was appointed member of the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB), is not credible to raise a howl against sexy scenes on television because she is a sexy dancer.
There are disconnects everywhere, which brings to fore the need for parents and the academe to bring back focus on critical thinking so that we bring back generations of children who can truly discern the right from wrong and the right that is being deliberately hidden by hordes of untruths.
Thus, we understand Davao City Mayor Sara Duterte-Carpio's open letter to Archbishop Socrates Villegas with regards the church leader's make-believe letter to Jaime Cardinal Sin, one of the stalwart figures of the Edsa Revolution in 1986.
"Since 1986 and until seven months ago, I remember that our nation has been hounded by corruption, crime, territorial war of gangs and druglords, extrajudicial killings, narco politics, terrorism, protracted rebellion, abuse of power in government, political bickering and the entry of foreign mafias," Duterte-Carpio wrote. "It surely did not start when President Duterte took office."
"He won the Presidency precisely because you ignored what was wrong with this world. All you desired was to put into power a leader who walks and talks like you -- someone who is definitely not Rodrigo Duterte," she added.
Indeed, we are caught in a game where some people are playing with our people's perceptions.
Put this side by side with the fact that many people still cannot discern fake news from the real ones and are sharing doomsday scenarios of a Magnitude 7 earthquake like it was an edict from heaven, we recognize the need for the academe to shape up and the parents to be as alert, on how to mold the perception of the coming generations such that they do not become slaves of those who only have self-interests to protect.
"You preach about freedom as if you invented it, as if it is your gift to us. Let me tell you what freedom is. It is to live a life that is free from your selective moral standard. This is what the meaning of EDSA is," Duterte-Carpio wrote in her tirade against the Archbishop.
Freedom is indeed in calling out the wrong to open a discourse with the intention of bringing enlightenment to all and not to put down the masses or tie them forever to be beholden to masters, whether it be through religion or through financial strangleholds.
"What is scandal? Scandal is saying one thing and doing another; it is a double life, a double life. A totally double life: ‘I am very Catholic, I always go to Mass, I belong to this association and that one; but my life is not Christian, I don’t pay my workers a just wage, I exploit people, I am dirty in my business, I launder money…’ A double life. And so many Christians are like this, and these people scandalize others. How many times have we heard – all of us, around the neighborhood and elsewhere – ‘but to be a Catholic like that, it’s better to be an atheist.’ It is that, scandal. You destroy. You beat down," said Pope Francis in his homily at the morning Mass at the Casa Santa Marta last February 23, 2017.