THE PRESIDENT NEEDS OUR REASON, NOT OUR RAGE
RIGHT after the Singapore meeting between US President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, someone told me that his views of Kim have become more favorable. Knowing fully well the atrocities Kim has
aghast when he began blaming the Western media, which he now accuses of probably just misrepresenting the misunderstood Kim, in the same way the media has misrepresented Donald Trump and President Duterte. He likens Trump to the President, and now has audaciously drawn in Kim to join this cohort of leaders.
His logic was simple, if not for its disturbing conclusion. He believes that President Duterte is a victim of media misrepresentation and bias, in the same way that Trump is. And the optics of Trump and Kim having a friendly meeting bestowed on Kim the same aura that President Duterte possesses as a strong, misunder-
way reason has yielded to a pseudomathematical logic of equating Kim with the President just because Kim had a friendly handshake with Trump, and that Trump is likened to President Duterte.
What left me extremely disturbed was when this person I was talking to painted the atrocities committed by Kim’s military in North Korea as perhaps just a product of Western media’s propaganda, in the same manner that mainstream media misrepresented the deaths in the President’s war on drugs.
There is no doubt that the President is extremely popular. At about 80 percent approval ratings, even Stephen Sackur of BBC conceded that he could in fact be the most popular leader in the world today. He elicits emotionally grounded support, even bordering on idolatry.
I once ran an informal nonscientific survey in Facebook; it revealed that among Duterte supporters, slightly more people are willing to grant God some fallibility, than entertain the thought that the President could be wrong. This is something that is not unexpected in a culture like the Philippines' where citizens focus on personalities and place their hopes and dreams on leaders. The idol worship of President Duterte is a natural product of the people’s bottled- up resentment towards the failures of an elite ruling class. Blind loyalty towards the President becomes the other side of blind hatred towards his enemies and critics.
But I could never have imagined that this political stance would end up with someone, a college graduate at that, drawing some parallelisms between the Philippines and North Korea. And it is
really terrifying.
Actually, the political landscape is littered with equally disturbing indications that reason is taking leave of our public discourse.
When confronted with the bare truth that vagrancy had been decriminalized in 2012, and hence police arrests of “tambays”
attendant offense would amount to illegal arrests, I saw some people questioning the law and casting aspersions on those who amended the Revised Penal Code as part of some yellow conspiracy targeting the President. Lost in the irrational conversation is the fact that the amendment came at a time when President Duterte was still mayor of Davao, and it was then Vice President Jejomar Binay who had declared his intention to run for President.
When informed that Justice Secretary Menardo Guevarra reversed the order of the Bureau of Immigration to cancel the missionary visa of Australian nun Sister Patricia Anne Fox, many expressed outrage and immediately jumped on Guevarra, taking him to task for being a closet yellow. What was lost in this irrational expression of outrage was a reasoned understanding of the basis of the reversal. People simply jumped to conclusions and impugned the political loyalties of the justice secretary, demanding that he be
- sion. Had these people done so, they would have realized that the reversal was ordered because the BI had violated its own rules. Guevarra ordered a review of the case and instructed the BI to follow the legally correct procedure.
Reason is also certainly being pushed aside and relegated to the margins when you see some people showing an almost pathological hatred of this Australian nun, who admittedly was very much involved in social advocacy, particularly on the rights of poor farmers and indigenous peoples whose lands are being taken away by greedy capitalists. Yet, a close inspection of their postings in social media reveals that these people are totally silent on the Chinese Coast Guard taking away
exchange for expired and spoiled canned goods and instant noodles. Worse, some of them even appear to be rationalizing the acts of the Chinese as a simple case of barter, and not of extortion.
And reason vacating the public
to overt articulations and public disclosures in social media posts and comments but is also widely felt in the silences that are accorded to contending narratives. A post that slams and trolls a critic of the President, or memes Sereno, De Lima and Robredo can instantly turn viral, but a reasoned, well-
applying land reform in Boracay will merit only a scant appreciation. Character assassination and
attacks generate so
media pages, but a more cerebral discussion of policy issues and options, more so when they touch on matters that run contrary to the President’s policy preferences, often end up as social media duds.
One could always argue that the marginalization of reason in the public discourse is not a monopoly of the pro- Duterte crowd. In fact, absence of reason is as intense, if not worse, among the yellow crowd. Worse is that the yellow unreason comes with pretensions of moral uprightness and intellectual supremacy, which is in fact more disgusting.
However, the yellows, noisy as they may be, are a minority facing a formidable pro-Duterte majority of 80 percent. The danger that they pose, as Meilou Sereno discovered when she faced Stephen Sackur, is largely directed at themselves.
But when reason vacates the majority, then the threat becomes more compelling.
There is no doubt that the President is extremely popular. But as
what he now needs is less of our rage, and more of our reason to ensure that he gets a mandate not only from our angry hearts, but also from our reasoned minds.