WHAT GREAT IRONY occurs when in a country that often preaches what is holy, right, and wrong so willingly laughs with mockery in the faces of those who suffered a grueling fate. As the world continues to turn ablaze, the normalcy of tragedies might have desensitized most, but this excuse couldn’t even merely disguise the rotten core of these souls who pray for forgiveness and abundance in the same night they shrug past images of children whose lives were taken too early by violence they so wrongfully encountered. R.I.P. Emily Dickinson, there is a sorry soul towards the fact that lesser people pluck at twigs of evidence, no longer fostering what faith should have been.
Before March began, a divided uproar arose as the nation stood witness to the gradual attainment of justice for the victims of Former President Rodrigo Roa Duterte’s egregious drug war that lasted for a fair portion of his term that began in 2016. Now facing trial before the International Criminal Court (ICC), the “Bedan of the Year” and “Bedan of the Decade” awardee now suddenly wishes to seek empathy from the Filipino people. Yet, these pretentious pleas appear hollow, for the right to due process that so many of his supporters claim to be deprived from him were actually taken away by him, along with the last breaths of the victims of the drug war. Irony and audacity it seems, as the same empathy being asked for was denied from long ago, when screams of the perished were silenced with fatal gunshots. One might think that the great number of lives taken would be deemed sufficient to invoke one’s solicitude, yet not even images of children who didn’t even get to live through their childhoods budged the cult-like loyalty of these Duterte supporters. In a post made by Inquirer remembering the innocent youth killed during what are supposed to be police operations seeking to annihilate drug-use, at least 96,000 Facebook accounts appear to find it humorous, bombarding the post with “haha” reactions.
Deep in denial of such condemnation, people try to seek reasons, hoping that these are merely “troll” accounts, just pure political machination through fake accounts, aiming to take control of public perception. But with just a click of a button, names of these accounts were seen, with some people being met with the realization that a lot of these are real, turning out to be people they know in real life. While the actual disparity between the real and fake accounts are yet to be discovered, it is unsettling enough to see such moral erosion in a country that overwhelmingly prides itself on Christian values. How dare you people pray for forgiveness and protection to God, who champions mercy and compassion especially towards the impoverished, when you allow political idolatry to corrode the same values in your hearts. A single glance in the mirror will tell you that the evil you pray to be protected from already exists in you, growing and gnawing on every chance you take in defending those in power, responsible for lives lost too soon.
“How dare you people pray for forgiveness and protection to God, who champions mercy and compassion especially towards the impoverished, when you allow political idolatry to corrode the same values in your hearts.”
The line between the State and the Church might be inviolable in law, but in these recent turn of events, the latter should at least be a stronghold of morals for the former. As soon as we adapt to the cruel idea that justice is partisan, that we can simply offer innocent lives in exchange for a fallacious idea of safety, we stray away from the righteousness and salvation we so desperately wish to possess. The soul of the nation slowly decomposes the sacredness it strictly imposes on its people. The fainting robin remains hopeless, and the prayers from so-called believers turn meaningless, echoing in a distant abyss, for only I could hope that the God we all know and worship truly pushes evil away. If it is what it takes to realize that lives lost during the drug war were also human, creations of the Almighty, then may the sympathy you people deprive from their families become your chance to stand evidence of the flaming venue in the afterlife that punishes people of your kind. Maybe then, you get to reconcile with your Tatay Digong that you wish for to come home. In simpler words, as blunt as Mr. Cervy Ramos from Informed Philippines puts it – go to hell.
Email me at thebedan_associateeditor@sanbeda.edu.ph