Unconventional wisdom

More often than not, what is widely held to be wise suffices. This is why proverbs are of great value. They provide people with a convenient guide to summary understanding and, often, confident action. "United we stand, divided we fall." "A house, divided, cannot stand." "A good leader is an excellent follower." "Who makes haste, wastes." "Do not put off for tomorrow what you can do today." These are all maxims that people have invoked time and time again. They have proven their worth many times over and their pragmatic utility explains why they have become an integral part of conventional wisdom.

There are times, however, when one must question the utility of popularly accepted notions. Unity can be facilitated by calling precisely for a timely division and a house might better endure if parts of it that had been severely attacked by termites were dismantled and the rest insulated from further damage.

In crisis, haste is of the essence and waste is a calculated risk that one tries to minimize but cannot always avoid. Even in crisis, however, the excellent manager never loses his sense of critical timing and understands that premature action can prove as fatal as procrastination. He also knows that while he must listen to the sentiments of those he leads, there are situations when popular feelings precisely must be temporarily ignored to successfully resolve an enduring crisis.

In contemporary Philippine politics, much conventional wisdom needs to be reexamined if the national interests are to be served well. Unity – pagkakaisa – realistically cannot be considered without a clear exclusion of those who had worked to ruin the nation. It is precisely this wimpish call for universal collaboration that has disabled all attempts at building a better Philippines. Nothing can be more fatuous — or, given those who brilliantly schemed for it, insidious – than a romantic plea for decent citizens, genuine patriots, conspiratorial traitors and insatiable plunderers to labor in joint venture towards a noble end.

Two decades should be sufficient to demonstrate the necessity for dropping an uncritically catholic approach to nation-building. Those who do much harm to the body politic must be cut off from it, even as a gangrenous arm has to be severed from the healthy body. To stay the arm is to corrupt the entire body – a most unfortunate choice that irresponsible Filipino leaders made and inflicted on the hapless nation in the past twenty years. As a consequence, most Filipinos now are unable to distinguish between a Ninoy Aquino and a Ferdinand Marcos. Both are deemed by the national public to be equally heroic and so the vital distinction between hero and heel is tragically lost to most.

In the helter and skelter of the forthcoming Philippine elections, the same public disorientation is apparent. Political performance in a time of deepening crisis is mistaken to be the proper domain of a motley assortment of inept clowns, intellectual cretins, moral gymnasts and political balimbings. Extremely rare are those who can truly undertake competent public service among those posturing as candidates for both national and local offices. Fewer still are those whose chances for electoral endorsement may be deemed relatively bright.

It is easy to blame the public for its apparent lack of political discernment. Nothing could be more wrong, however. Most people are actually victims of persistent disinformation and systematic miseducation. If they eventually accept historical distortions and political perversions to be their controlling reality, the blame must be situated not in the public but elsewhere. Responsibility cannot be shirked by those who foist on their people repeated falsifications of their history and political regime. In most cases, these inimical illusions are crafted by people in positions of authority, indeed by those who often dominate governance in this country.

Take the most recent illustration of this horrible fact. In that sumptuous fiesta hosted by Malacanan for an American president on a short-time visit to the Philippines, much talk focused on local democratic governance and how this particularly benign regime reflected much that American policy towards this country wrought in the last 100 years. TV cameras covering the event recorded no dignitary choking on his food or spilling her drink as s/he delivered this preposterous line. gained much applause and, much emboldened, bounced it some more among this gathering of soaring eagles and strong republicans.

It was quite a spectacle witnessed by millions of Filipinos glued to their TV sets to witness the historic moment. Neither the local host nor the foreign guest showed the least discomfiture in trying to persuade their national audience that Philippine democracy exists and is becoming more and more viable by the day. Neither of the two partners in historical revision appeared concerned that Philippine history was again being written by a most forceful, imperially-oriented, alien hand.

Alien presidents are actually much easier to read than native ones. They do look after their national interests even as they often mistake the true nature of these interests. It is Filipino presidents who are harder to figure out. Far too often, they appear unable to serve their national interests. Even when they appear to know what these really are, they often act to violate these iterests just the same.

Conventional wisdom has little to say about Philippine presidents beyond their being impressive political survivalists. Perhaps this view says much about why depression in this country extends way beyond the realm of economics and the expertise of professional economists. In the course of articulating the wherefores of this provocative view, conventional wisdom becomes unconventional and probes deeper into a nation’s most painful truths.

These are the only truths that facilitate a people’s irreversible liberation.