This Country of Broken Things
I don’t even know where to begin.
The last several months since the lockdown had been one brutal leap into darkness after deeper darkness. It was like trying to survive blunt force trauma or a gunshot wound in the head, except ten times worse than the real thing. And you’re alive to feel every bit of pain that goes with it.
Trillions in public funds lost. Billions in public health insurance allegedly stolen. Two of hundreds of activists murdered in cold blood, a peace advocate by stabbing. The State on the move to reinstate the death penalty and a revolutionary government even as assassinations and extrajudicial killings rise in the tens of thousands. Drug war death toll is close to 30,000 says Amnesty International. That’s like 18 Boeing 747s crashing each year for the last four years without survivors. Think about that.
Covid-19 infections reaching hundreds of thousands. The economy on dystopian meltdown. The Department of Trade and Industry pegs business closure at 26%. Adult unemployment at a whopping 45%. Roughly 5.2 million families going hungry in the past three months (that’s 26 million individuals at an average of five per family, more than a quarter of the hundred million population).
An average 5,000 cases of Covid-19 each day, putting the country at top spot in the region. The militarization of the Covid-19 response. China inching its way into our borders (to say nothing of Malacanang). Universities censoring student organizations. Red-tagging of student activists, campus journalists, farmers, indigenous people and critics. Members of the military allegedly involved in terrorism and drugs killed by police. Police reportedly involved in rape, murder, drug trafficking, abuse of authority and corruption. A daily breakfast of government incompetence, idiocy and lies served in silver platters by an online troll army.
The President himself giving us Filipinos the finger on national TV. All fueled by impunity.
A 29-year-old contributor wrote to the Inquirer that being Filipino is the last thing he needs right now, so much so that he openly denied being one. Days later, I stumbled on several social media posts romanticizing the idea of ‘statelessness’ and how good it would probably be to finally set one’s self free from the shackles of a nationalism that is largely false and flawed to begin with.
To remain without a country, without a state. Why not? To simply be a citizen of the world and not some rundown, crummy sort of government no better than the lies they spew like excrement.
Given that the bone and sinew of our society bear all these cracks, to say nothing of the deeper lesions of poverty resulting from systematic theft, what the future holds is anybody’s guess.
We are so soaked in the blood of the innocent that trying to make sense of our present, let alone our past and its impact on the future, remains an uphill climb. Adamant as we are in the struggle to make things right, oftentimes it feels hopeless.
Many are exhausted, some running on fumes. Others had long since given up without even trying to lift a damn finger to solve anything.
From the Sick Man of Asia, now we are ruled by the sickest man there is. We’ve been brought lower than our knees.
What we are going through under Rodrigo Duterte is a near-death experience, like choking on a hangman’s noose with your full weight bearing on a rope much too short and brittle to kill you instantly.
Suffering without any hope of dying. That’s what Hell is in five words.
I know what being exhausted means. I know what it feels like to want to hang up my gloves and let the opponent have his way. Time with my wife and kids is always a good enough excuse after a little over three decades of giving them the cold shoulder if only to beat writing deadlines.
There’s nothing trifling about writing analysis pieces every single godforsaken day. In a country where many barely read, let alone comprehend what is written, writing ceases to be a revolutionary act.
Keeping up with a propaganda machinery fueled by government resources and more than enough daily supply of incautious, irresponsible harebrained statements can suck the marrow out of any writer.
Just hearing about how a government health agency operates, like a Mafia-style syndicate, with the Health Secretary as ‘godfather,’ is strenuous enough as it is without taking into account the tens of billions in public health funds lost in the exchange of hands.
In this country of broken things, who would want to remain a Filipino?
Last night, after having one too many shots of whiskey, my wife asked me why I am doing what I’m doing: writing protest pieces against government-sanctioned violence and incompetence. “Please be careful,” she said, bearing a look of melancholy in her eyes. “Likha needs you. We need you.”
I closed my eyes and took about a minute to answer. “Just say the word and I will stop right this very second,” I said. “All you have to do is ask.”
She looked away. As kin in the writing life and a fellow journalist, she knew where I was going with this.
“You know I’m neither public servant nor activist,” I said. “I’m no public speaker. Neither am I a revolutionary. I cannot rally people behind me the way mass organizers do. Writing is the act I can do with some measure of courage and regularity. I am not a people person. I lived more than half my life inside my head. I think this is where I am most effective. I love you and the kids. I am willing to drop everything at your request. Just say it and I will do it, no questions asked. I will not take it against you. In fact, my life is yours to command. But the same love I have for you and the kids is the same love that fuels my writing. You, of all people, know why I am risking all that needed risking. I wade through this darkness with just a spoonful of water so that you and the kids will not have to bother with it in the future. I want to die writing, not just ranting. And I want to do this in the best way I know how: words. I have nothing more to offer but words. I know one day that words will not be enough. Should things get any worse, we will have to take that route where there is no turning back. But what good would revolutions serve if the very character that ruined us would remain and continue to ruin the next chapter in our history? Words shape ideas, and ideas principles, and principles character. I would like to begin and end where our flawed systems take their cue: shaping human thought and character with words.”
I don’t know if that was the alcohol speaking, but recalling them today, I refuse to take any of the words back. After my little pep talk, my wife wrapped her arms around me and whispered to my ear, “Then let me write with you.”
I make no pretense to any heroic or messianic dreams. I’m not out to save the world. I’m not even out to save my country of broken things. Hell, no. It would take more than a lone undergraduate’s voice to change anything worth the effort. It would take all of us to push back the jaws of tyranny with some measure of success.
I simply look over my shoulder and see my wife and children, my neighbors, my friends and colleagues. I see the poor grappling for any chance at a simple meal, my colleagues to hold on to a job. I look at our doctors and nurses and feel their pain. I look at my children and wonder what their future might bring. I write to tell their stories and perhaps how we may best help them — one person, one scrawny day at a time.
Do we have to be a Filipino to do that? All we have to be is human.
