I was at a friend’s house watching the betamax with several other friends when we started talking about, what else?, politics during a food break. Generally, it was about comments on how people could believe anything that Marcos and his people said anymore and lamenting on the gullibility of those people who believed, after twenty years of saying he would reform, that he would start now after these elections.
Suddenly, one of our friends we had grown up with and whom we felt we knew through and through, said “Why? Don’t you think that Marcos did a good job?” We had to stare at him for a couple of seconds, wondering if he was pulling our legs. Apparently he was sincere in his comment. When this penetrated our thick skulls, we started saying things like “The economy is a wreck because of him!” and “Those crooks stole almost all there is to steal!” He said, Of course! A politician is entitles to steal some money while in office, and if he himself took political office, then he would do the same.
We started to scream at this insanity but quickly stopped when we realized that he was giving us a ride home, and that it would not be fun to walk from Paranaque to Malate at one in the morning.
What got to me, really, is the fact that we all grew up together, from families that are good friends with each other. We had come under almost similar influences. And yet he could say, without battling an eyelash, that he would steal, that he would break the public’s trust in him and steal if he was ever elected, and he didn’t think that there was anything wrong with it!
Where could such twisted ideals come from? I mean, we know that most politicians are not exactly honest in their dealings, but that is just accepting a fact of modern Filipino life. We may accept it as being the current norm, but that does not make it right. When did accepting become conditioning?
And, these days, it’s not just politicians stealing money, it’s graft and bribery and cheating on our income tax and our tests. Anything goes and none of it is wrong. Many people gloat publicly about getting away with it.
I guess what bothers me is not so much that people do what they know is wrong, but that they are unable to see that what they are doing is wrong.
I listen to my grandmother’s stories about the old days before the war, and my parents’ stories about the days before Martial Law and allowing some romanticizing (the past always looks better when it is well and truly past), the people and how they felt and though were so different! It seems that the day Sept. 21, 1972, the whole moral fabric of our society changed for the worst.
I guess the worst crime of the present regime (for me) is not economic mishandling or the violation of human rights or militarization because those are the things that can be corrected with time and effort. The greatest crime was the murder of morality and the destruction of ethics, things that may never be corrected even with the full backing of the Catholic Church, the Protestants, the Muslims or of any other proponent of ethics and morality.
