Rage, rage, rage

There was hardly any good news in social media in the week that was… except perhaps, the UP men’s basketball team’s two consecutive, unexpected wins. Congratulatory messages as well as jokes on the once-luckless team’s surprise victories came flooding online from UP students, alumni, sympathizers, and even from the respective schools of the teams they beat. There was only joy for the country’s favorite underdogs who, up to today, live on self-deprecation and unhealthy doses of optimism. In true underdog fashion, their wins were reminiscent of the 1990s Barangay Ginebra, who always managed to keep us on our toes near the end. Well, at least it was for their first two games of the UAAP season.

But for the better part of the week, there was a shortage of cheers online. That picture of a drowned toddler in a red shirt, lying facedown on the seashore, was powerful enough to send all those who shamelessly pop #VitaminSea Googling for answers as to why such tragedies happen. Their search would lead them to the Syrian civil war, which has been ongoing for almost half a decade now and has displaced millions. Its complexities are baffling — what with too many Western countries and Arab states using Syria as a battlefield and weapons guinea pig — so much so that any Filipino online-and-armchair activist would forego ambitions of posting something that would, in its strange netizen logic, “help” stop the violence one way or another.

While the refugee problem sent local Internet waves amok, it was too late, too far, and ultimately too real for any online commentator to do anything about. We could only grieve for them and, eventually, rejoice as some refugees found welcoming arms in countries outside Syria. But those acts could only do so much. Before the week ended, concern for the events in Syria died down and the snapshot, forgotten.

Carmageddon

Much closer to home was the carmaggedon the thunderstorms brought down on Metro Manila last Tuesday night. Perhaps, “closer to home” is not the right idiom to use because many opted to park their cars on the side of the road, walk to investigate why they were stuck (or to eat and have a foot massage somewhere), and come back to their cars later, only to find that the traffic was still frozen. It was so close yet so far for many who lived and worked in the metro where no two points are mountains apart from each other. Many were dumbfounded, saying, “So, causing traffic is not a function exclusive to INC or any group of rallyists,” and also, “Stricter enforcement by the PNP Highway Patrol Group ain’t gonna solve much after all!”

Nature proved to be the great equalizer once more as it exposed one truth about traffic which many find hard to accept: There is no singular, instantaneous solution for heavy traffic, or a singular reason why traffic came to be. It cannot be solved simply by disciplining bus drivers, giving licenses to Uber, or expelling the MMDA chairman (although, I do wish he abandons all hope of getting into higher office). Surviving traffic is not a mere function of the individual but a social reality — an unwritten law, if you will, that involves all or none at all. And as with other things which might seem minute and insignificant, the slightest changes in the traffic situation will have colossal effects. And this seemingly innocent, no-brainer decision to have the PNP enforce traffic in EDSA (totally disregarding the facts that the MMDA is, by legislation, a nationally funded, billion-peso entity; that all LGUs in NCR already have their own traffic enforcement arms which have no less a responsibility in easing the traffic situation; and that the PNP is the national police arm and should not simply be relegated to doing civic duties) will have long-term effects on the way the country is governed. The unobvious consequences of having armed but supposedly less corruptible men in EDSA will spell a greater difference than the 10-minute reduction in travel time.

Lumad killings

And speaking of long-term, the Lumad (a general Cebuano term meaning “indigenous”) in Surigao, Davao and Bukidnon, who have been around for ages, have lately been under siege and have finally made it online with #StopKillingLumads. What is hard to dispute is that Emerito Samarca, executive director of the Alternative Learning Center for Agriculture and Livelihood Development, an award-winning community school for indigenous people, and two elder Lumads were hogtied, tortured, threatened with knives to the throat and shot behind the head in public by the military for the Lumads of Surigao del Sur to see. There are even reports of underage rape by the AFP men who, for all their “intelligence” funding, label their victims as NPA just for singing a song of dissent. And as 2,757 Lumads fled their villages, a four-year-old child died amid the poor conditions in the evacuation center.

So we need not look to Syria for refugees of conflict; that situation is already here, too near and too real, in Mindanao, especially in the newly opened areas for mining. In a move to escape Manila’s traffic, I packed my bags a year ago to live in our ancestral home in Caraga, where on Friday nights, I would race with truckloads of military men, in convoys of three M35s or more, blazing across battered coastal roads. (Unfortunately, I had to be in Manila for Tuesday’s carmaggedon.) In Caraga, I feel an odd sense of security — one that is wrought from fear — with men in fatigues never too far away. Perhaps, it is an amplified version of the fear I have of the PNP now stationed along EDSA.

But I am thankful that technology today allows us to be passionate about one thing and compassionate about — or at the very minimum, aware of — a thousand other plights. At least, when distressed by the cruelty around me, I can still watch the Fighting Maroons win on TV.

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