Why the #NeverAgain slogan reflects Filipinos’ total failure of imagination

October 19, 2015

by benign0

The onus on building a clear vision of what lies ahead for the Philippines during the euphoric months following the 1986 “People Power” EDSA “revolution” was on the victors. What did we get instead? Nothing more than a vacuous excuse of a roadmap to prosperity. The Yellow emotionalist rhetoric that dominated the national political “debate” for three solid decades had as its pillars the sorts of notions only the infantile emotionally-unstable society of the Philippines could embrace:

– Martyr worship

– Sacrifice Platforms

– Political vendetta

As to the future, guess what: The Yellow Mob only issue a deafening silence. Actually, that’s not entirely true. The Yellow Mob of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan and its legions of emo worshippers do have a notion of what the future of the Philippines is not. This is encapsulated in the moronic slogan #NeverAgain. The girly “Never Again” slogan draws upon the Filipino’s bakla fear that another fearsome Marcos-style dictatorship may one day engulf the Philippines again.

The screaming fits being thrown by Filipinos are therefore more about what the Philippines cannot be again. Indeed, the Philippines as a society suffers from a fatal failure of imagination. Filipinos cannot seem to imagine a country that is something and can only throw hissy trantrums over what it should not be.

Oscar Franklin Tan in his Inquirer column today To old Filipinos who knew martial law and dictatorship, could not have described the intellectual bankruptcy of the #NeverAgain slogan better…

“Never Again” is merely rejection. It is incomplete because it builds nothing and leaves revisionism and disenchantment to fill the void. Many frustrated voters, for example, do not disbelieve the thousands of deaths during martial law, yet entertain vague ideas of imposing a discipline associated with martial law. This is hardly unique. In last year’s presidential elections, Indonesia almost voted in the macho and “tegas” Gen. Prabowo Subianto, a former son-in-law of Suharto, who ruled for 31 years.

We unconsciously shroud the Edsa Revolution in myth. We risk overly romanticizing its events and demonizing less enthusiastic views as heretic. Unrealistic expectations fuel cynicism. For example, the term “necropolitics” was coined to criticize that Corazon Aquino and Sen. Benigno Aquino III would never have become presidents but for a famous relative’s death. Finally, myth is simply not credible to a critical YouTube generation who value authenticity and readily accept flawed heroes.

The political leadership of the Aquino-Cojuangco clan is to blame for Filipinos’ wholehearted embrace of the historical “revisionism” (the younger generations’ openness to the postulated virtues of the Martial Law years under former President Ferdinand Marcos) that the Yellow Horde are stomping their feet about today. It started way back in the months (extending into years) that former President Cory Aquino’s “revolutionary” government and then succeeding Philippine governments failed to put Marcos and his circle of cronies and Martial Law architects and implementors either in jail or before a firing squad. Look no further than how Juan Ponce Enrile and his former Martial Law henchman Fidel Ramos continue to hobnob with the Philippines’ high society today.

Add to that the reality that the intellectual achievements of the Marcos regime itself remain in effect today. Laments a certain Miguel C. Suarez in a letter to the Inquirer…

IF MARTIAL law was such an abomination, as your editorials on Sept. 22 and Sept. 27 correctly pointed out—“the long dark night of martial law” and “Martial law would always be a total, monstrous aberration from democracy…” — why have the dictator’s decrees not been repealed?

The truth is, although the Filipino people threw Ferdinand Marcos the father out of power 29 years ago and he’s been dead the past 26 years, he still rules this country—through his more than 4,000 decrees and other issuances that remain part of the law of the land! They are the biggest monument to that historical aberration. Is it any wonder then that Marcos’ progeny is back, with nary an apology; or why we, as a people, can’t seem to take seriously that rare national accomplishment that was the People Power Revolution?

The reason is quite simple: Filipinos habitually allow themselves to be taken for a ride by their oligarchs and traditional politicians — which is not surprising considering that the circus we like to call a “revolution” back in 1986 delivered no real change. The same oligarchs and the same traditional politicians continue to rule. Filipinos deserve each other.