Saturday, September 21, 2013

Edsa 1 and the french revolution: what we have accomplished after 27 years after deposing a dictator

There is such a course as philosophy of history. Dr. Zeus salazar thought us that history follows certain paths.

There is a belief that all historical events follow a straight line---when an event happens, it does not repeat itself anymore. There is another, the cyclical where philosophers of centuries past believe that history always repeat itself because human behavior does not change. And there is this the dialectical process.

In our case, such as the first Edsa and the French revolution, there seems to be an observed fact---that after 27 years what was supposedly a revolution turned out to be just a monumental expression of people's disgust and never more than that.

The first Edsa was supposed to correct the monumental wrongs committed by a man who became a dictator. After 27 years, the very immoral and decrepit society which the dictator wanted to correct even becamse more vicious and inhumane.

We know what became of the French Revolution. After disposing of a tyrant of a monarch, France underwent a revolutionary process which eventually gave rise to another tyrant, this time coming from the military's ranks rather than blue blooded. This all happened in a spate of 27 years.

The reason lies naked before us---in both events, there were never really honest efforts to change the very system that promoted inhumanity. What happened was the very people who led these events became semi-gods and tyrants themselves. Faced with riches beyond their widest imagination, these people became extremely greedy to the point that every single one wanted those riches for himself. These people all invoked the libertarian mantra in robbing the very people they vowed to serve and rob them all blind.

These so called revolutions were never revolutions--they were all creations of pseudo revolutionaries who want nothing more than experience and enjoy the perks and privileges of those whom they want to depose. Greed is in their very minds, and not the purest desire really to effect change for the welfare of the many.

This is similar with what happened to us. Because we did not face the post martial law problems of the past squarely and with honesty, change never really happened. After 1986, we revived the very scourge which martial law tried to extirpate. Liberal democracy was reinstituted,, the very evil that led us towards the downward path eliminated whatever gains we got from deposing Marcos.

While we revived our civil liberties, making people believe that they are already free, we also allowed the very few yet the most vicious greedy individuals among us to exploit the frailty of our democracy by allowing them to carve the economy among themselves. Years of developing our economic infrastructures (read: industries) all went to naught as we allowed companies to buy them at a very cheap price. Now, we have an economy that provides riches to the rich and poverty to the poor. The very scourge that martial law wanted to cure is now a fixture of a liberal democratic society which the only good thing really is the state allowed us to exercise a few freedoms in exchange for our economic freedom.

And we are made to accept this lot because the few among us continues to rob us of our hard earned monies called taxes. They tax us, and the rob us unider the pretense that those monies are being spent for our welfare. We now know better.

We know that for every natural disaster, expect a fee thousands to suffer and a few hundreds to die because government will say that they do not have the money to give us food, to give us shelter and to protect us from the ravages of nature.

We now know that for every war this state wages against their perceived enemies, thousands still will suffer from hunger and despair in every evacuation site and babies will be killed and children will lose their sanity because government will say that they have no money to take care of them.

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