This one’s from the Philippine Daily Inquirer. I’m re-posting it in full before I write a reaction tonight. (DPG)
From one of my all-time favorites, Conrad de Quiros:
IT’S NO small irony that at the very time 80,000 Chinese were massing in the streets of Hong Kong to protest our handling of the hostage-taking, P-Noy was talking about us being a nation of heroes. It was of course National Heroes’ Day, a day that called for dwelling on Filipino heroes and Filipino heroism. But it could not have been more out of sync, or out of line, or out of it. The last thing that has been patent to the world in recent days is how heroic we are. The first is how pathetic.
Our OFWs in Hong Kong and China say they are deeply fearful about how their employers and neighbors are going to treat them over the next few months or years. They have every reason to. This isn’t going to blow over. This isn’t going to disappear anytime soon. This will get worse before it gets better.
Nor is it going to greatly help to just plead with the Hong Kong authorities and people for understanding, we never wanted for this to happen, we too are shocked and ashamed by what has happened, we too are angry and outraged that one of our own, and a police officer at that, should commit so reprehensible a deed. Quite simply the whole country has been indicted. Quite simply the whole country has been put on the dock. Quite simply, the whole country has been weighed and found wanting.
As it damn well should be. It’s time we looked at ourselves in the mirror. And no mirror produces a clearer image than the one the world currently holds before us.
Not the least of what damns us is the lightness with which we have taken this incident. No, more than lightness, levity. To this day, pictures of the crowd that surged forward after the shooting to ogle the dead continue to make it to the social media. To this day pictures of cops and students posing before the blood and gore, in some instances smiling and preening, continue to make it to the social media. How do you think that is going to be taken by the Chinese community? How do you think that is going to be taken by any sane person?
That is a disgusting display of bad manners and wrong conduct. That is a disgusting display of perversity. That is a disgusting display of lack of humanity.
It doesn’t help that text jokes have arisen on it. I know gallows humor has been our staple response to tragedy. I know it’s what has allowed us to bear the unbearable over the centuries. But it’s one thing to show that about our dead, which in any case can only lead to our becoming inured to or callous about death, it’s another to do that about the dead of other people. Especially the dead of other people made so by us. Some gallows humor allows us to escape the gallows, others lead us straight to it. This gallows humor puts a noose around our necks.
More than this, what damns us is the blitheness with which we have taken the incident. I don’t know that we see even now what it is that has so infuriated Hong Kong a whole multitude of its inhabitants—80,000 is a record for people who are normally too busy to indulge in such things—has turned out to expend their fury on us. We’re so busy wondering if government’s image has been tarnished beyond repair, we’re so busy worrying if the investigation will turn out that some of the victims died by “friendly fire” (what a horrifically ironic phrase), we’re so busy being alarmed at the thought of our OFWs becoming the victims of retribution: Have we stopped to wrap our minds at the awesome, mind-boggling, irreversible fact that people have died?
It is not our lack of competence the world is truly minding, it is our lack of grief. It is not our lack of appreciation for the preciousness of talk the world is truly minding, it is our lack of appreciation for the preciousness of life. It is not the tragedy of the massacre the world is truly minding, it is the travesty we have made of it.
Outside looking in, people can only put their thoughts about our behavior in this way: “It’s bad enough that you’ve been inept, it’s bad enough that you’ve been rash, it’s bad enough that you’ve been pointing at one another, but do you have to be casual about everything too? Do you care at all that people have been killed? Do you know at all that people have been killed? Do you see at all that people have been killed?”
We’ve given a whole new dimension to “culture of impunity.” That used to mean only that murderers find it the easiest thing in the world to commit murder in this country. But that has come to mean now that we find it the easiest thing in the world to accept murder in this country. After a burst of shock and awe, we let the horror slip from our minds, telling ourselves it doesn’t do to dwell on the morbid. After a burst of reality check, we hasten to distance ourselves from reality, or indeed in this case to reduce reality to the unreality of a “reality show.” After a burst of breast-beating and conscience-racking, we let loose our fatalism or resignation or leave-it-to-God attitude, telling ourselves what’s done is done, life goes on, let’s move on.
That’s something we’ve been doing all these years. Scores of journalists have been murdered and we have not particularly shown any care for the dead. Hundreds of activists have been murdered and we have not particularly shown any concern for the dead. A whole tribe of people has been savagely massacred in Maguindanao and we do not particularly see the dead. Or we no longer do.
Well, as we’re being currently reminded by the world, that is not the way of the world. That is not the way of humanity. The only way life goes on is when we stop to see the dead. The only way the world moves on is when we stop to mourn the dead. The only way we let go is when we cling to the memory of the dead.
We have been judged, and found wanting.
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