THE past weeks have been hectic... no, make that past months… no… the whole lifetime. Whatever. It just seems that what I once thought was hectic is never as hectic as the present. But maybe, that’s how it is in life.
What were once unimaginable soon becomes mainstream, routine, and becomes the norm.
That’s sad, however, when placed in the situation we are in… we thought Erap was bad when we learned he and his friend chugged down those Johnny Walker Blue Labels and spent long hours in VIP rooms of the casino gambling by the hundreds of thousands… and then came military comptroller Col. Garcia sipping off military funds and sending these off through his sons and wife and yes, all those unimaginable properties as well asnt he more or less P50-million pabaon retiring generals received.
But even as we were still gasping from incomprehension, Janet Napoles hogged our attention as we listened to how she siphoned off all those billions to the pockets of senators and congressmen for years and years.
Now, mention billions, and no one gasps in surprise anymore. The P50-million we thought was outrageous now sounds like loose change.
It doesn’t help that we have a leadership that doesn’t lead, and is only concerned about what they think and believe in… or is it what speechwriters think and believe in? We can never be sure. All we know is that while indeed corruption is being unearthed especially among the people regarded as antagonistic to the president (while those chummy with him are quietly sent to the corner to share some drinks and midnight conversations to wait for the storm to pass), not one sane thought is saying where all these are expected to go and where the people should move.
It’s worse now because once again, the very tenuous peace we have been trying to fan to life is now gone again, peppered to lifelessness by the same bullets that pierced the bodies of the 44 Special Armed Forces, 18 Moro combatants, and at least five civilians in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, in the early hours of January 25, 2015.
For days on end after that, we had to listen to the President say the families of the 44 were not any better off than he was when he lost his father, as well as, point to Napenas as the one who bungled everything and shoo Purisima in the corner with apparent orders to zip his mouth. That’s just how the script goes over and over again. He doesn’t even care that his chief negotiators and peace-pushers are now being painted as evil because they continue to shout for peace.
Now, this is what is even more worrisome.
Today, we think, the President is the most incomprehensible insensitive leader there can ever be. But then, we once thought P50-million pabaon for a retiring military general was also unthinkable, until we learned about the billions Napoles was allowed to apportion, as a private citizen at that. Thus, there is that tiny niggling fear that there will be worse, if not worst. But only if we allow ourselves to be fooled once more by spin doctors and well-oiled campaign machineries who feed us their ideas of leaders, while we simply swallow what they are feeding us and decide accordingly.
Garbage in, garbage out. Now look at the dump we have allowed ourselves to wallow in. all because we merely accepted the illusions we were fed without stretching a bit our braincells to discern what garbage were hidden behind these illusions.
Let us stop becoming desensitized to worsening situations and practices of those in government and reclaim our power over them. Never let go of outrage, never allow outrage to settle down and be desensitized. That is the only way we can, as a nation, bring back prosperity (and sanity) for all.