People without a sense of outrage
The nation is mired in crisis and the people are still laughing. The country is on fire and the leaders are strumming their guitars and playing their harps and violins. Millions are hooked on drugs, killing their own loved ones, robbing their own friends, and raping their own mothers and sisters and even daughters. Policemen are allegedly executing suspects who are already kneeling and raising their handcuffed hands in surrender. And the people are not affected. They are silent, cowed into a conspiracy of indifference. What is happening to us?
Our congressmen are railroading national budgets, rushing some certified anti-people taxation and hurrying indecently some impeachment charges, and becoming very concerned with too much investigations and too little legislations. Our senators are bickering in front of national television, exposing their ignorance and arrogance, their blatant show of power and abuse of authority, threatening resource persons with contempt and shouting at witnesses, behaving as if they are magistrates in sacred robes of law and justice. And yet, the so-called legislators' brazen and ostentatious display of partisan and biased agenda is apparent. They have detained Ilocos officials and personnel for refusing to give the answers they expect and insist on jailing them even against the order of the appellate court, releasing them only when the governor came and knelt before them virtually.
In the face of too much abuses by our political leaders and corruption in the bureaucracy, and given the long and neglected suffering of our people, the Filipinos continue to grin and bear all the ''slings and arrows of outrageous fortunes.'' The people behave as if everything is normal. Perhaps, they feel that anyway, they cannot do anything about all these, a feeling of helplessness. Maybe, they are too focused on how to survive, how to chase the daily bread and how to cope with so many pains, problems and challenges. Perhaps, they are confused. But why are the people not expressing their anger, their sense of outrage and frustration?
I am afraid that this was the same feeling that people had in the late '70s and early '80s, when, in the darkest moments of our history, Martial Law, they just gave up, and allowed destiny to bring them anywhere. The people have lost control. And they seem to cooperate with what they feel is the inevitable. But, to my mind, this is just an interregnum (to borrow the famous word of the late senator Blas Ople). This is the dark before the break of dawn. Evil triumphs when good men do nothing. But not for long. Walang forever. In daybreak, a new beginning shall come. I can imagine it all. This is déjà vu.