The Way to Enlighten the Masses Against One-Woman Rule

There's an interesting thing going on over at Filipinovoices.com, a collective of Filipino bloggers. Over the past few days, there has been a flurry of exchanges between "fascists" and "anti-fascists", with the first salvo initiated by this so-called "High Priest of Smokes", who claims to be a lawyer with a big ego. His (or her?) arguments border from rational to insanely irrational. Obviously, HP is a staunch defender of the insane, err, Gloria, which, to his credit, seems understandable, given his so-called position in the administration. 

However, from all the trash that he wrote, one thing struck me as a valid observation which I'll be discussing here today--why is there no visible signs of dissent against Gloria? If we are to believe those who oppose her, the people oppose one-man rule. Yet, why is there no cogent opposition from the masses?

Yes, we hear members of civil society, former government officials and civic-minded intellectuals writing pieces against this regime. And yes, we always read stuff that reminds us of those evil times under Marcos. However, despite all of these revelations, the masses remain silent, like Orwell's sheep. 

Thinking about it, the answer lies in how civil society position their propaganda against one-man rule. Whenever we talk about "authoritarianism", "dictatorship" or "martial law", we always associate it with the former Marcos dictatorship, which is understandable, since it is the only regime that imposed martial rule. We have this penchant of always using this formula: martial rule=Marcos, or vice versa.

Yet, we fail to grasp that not all people equate bad things during the dictatorship with the Marcos brand name. In fact, over the past years, we see Marcos running just second in the list of most despicable Philippine leaders, shamelessly behind Gloria the Queen of Enchanted Kingdom. Meaning, for the masses, the concept of martial rule is not as equally bad as Gloria's rule. The People are trying to tell us something here.

What the people are trying to say is leave the brand name Marcos alone. If we are to succeed in convincing the people that martial rule or any authoritarian rule is evil, we need to associate the concept of authoritarianism with the loss of liberties under the present administration.

We need to portray Gloria as the head of a cult of fascists in barongs intent on perpetually governing a freedom-loving Nation. We need people to think and feel that their futures are in peril with the continued governance of these fascists. 

We need to tell the masses that the better concept that would at least ensure a bright future for everyone lies in the concept of the collective---that the future would be more secured if there's a group of leaders who serve as Vanguards of Democracy. The anti-thesis of the concept of one-man rule is collective governance. This concept should be explained more thoroughly to the masses to disabuse their minds that martial rule is not bad.