So many unsung heroes

A HERO can be anyone. The reason why this last Monday of August is a nonworking holiday is for Filipinos to commemorate the unknown, faceless and forgotten heroes in history who had given up their lives for the country.

By that category alone, anybody can be a hero to anyone.

In the current state of affairs in our country, when every Filipino has become suspect by so-called authorities who are out to track and kill the drug-suspect no matter if they do not even have any idea whom they are after, who would care about heroes?

In fact, no one would want to be a hero.

In today’s time and age, each day has become a ghastly trend of dead body count that makes breakfast a bitter pill to swallow each morning with the early newscast announcing a litany of people killed in the dark of night, in the different parts of the metropolis.

One can almost be certain about the growing statistics among the fatalities in the government’s ‘war on drugs’, many among them innocent victims who have become “collateral damage”, that cops said were unintentionally hit by wayward bullets from cops or vigilantes who are after the “boun t y.”

“Shoot them if they fight back!” The license to kill has been spoken, so ordered. Period.

The gravity of that order weighs heavily on the people, because as cadavers lie cold on pavements each day, the stench of death rises to suffocating levels. It has become hard to breathe in air without fear lurking in the corners of one’s consciousness.

Anybody can be “collateral damage” even in broad daylight. Yet, the national leadership looks on with disdain and even contempt on the citizens’ t r epi dat i ons.

For the families of the fallen, their sons and daughters who have become just statistics among those “collateral damage” are the reluctant heroes in President Digong’s war, the innocent blood among them who sacrificed so that others may live.

But their bloods are calling out for JUSTICE. They were silenced by the bullet that took away their right to LIVE, but their deaths are shouting out for justice. In the conscience of the living, the dead cannot but speak.

Though history may not have been faithful with the documentation of how despotic regimes had been caused to fall because of the

blood of martyrs, it had noted countless of such cases where time had proven that abuse of power and savagery can consume itself.

Like a blaze that burns everything in its wake, an unchecked and unquenchable thirst for blood will eventually lead to its demise.

Thus, if our present day heroes never really wanted to become one had they been given the choice, but to live and let live, no villains could have fallen. It is a sad parody of life, but that is how heroes are destined, perhaps.

The sweet revenge of dead heroes though is that humanity continues to thrive. However, it is when lethargy sits in among people that the tyrannical and opportunistic dark forces encroach into its wakefulness. The vicious cycle then continues.

— Gingging Valle