A People Power 2 Journal
By Dennis A.S.Aguinaldo

Page 1

III. Personalities and politics
From the EDSA DOS Journal
*2:36 AM 1/22/01*

Damn these color-changers. These chameleons. These creatures of too-quick and too-shameless compromise. It makes us all wonder where principle is ensconced in their liquid beings. Or is principle only a shape they assume after entering the container-currently-in-fashion. Or in power. Screw the pogi points. Screw the politics. They spew the word "bayan" all over the place. They shamelessly open their mouths so wide as if in dire need of swallowing the whole throng. "Sambayanan", the word, helplessly dangling in their filthy oral cavities like the gem of the world reduced to the tongue-ring of these creatures of hypocrisy-halitosis. Damn them to their stinking graves. May only the filthiest of fates defile their lives and let not the land receive their disgraceful husks when the worms cry out for their bodies.

Ople had to quote Rene Saguisag. And what does that Saguisag stand for. Holier than thou hypocrite. What the hell does he aspire to be? Estelito Mendoza?

And so it came to pass that one Panorama issue, Ople subtly hinted that the throng of EDSA is actually the mob that had the Lord crucified. Never mind that Chavit was probably the Barabas referred to. (I pray he'll never be free from the need to satisfy the justice of this country). His self-preserving testimony may feel bitter forcibly brushing against our palates. Alas, he had to be swallowed.

What pushed us to degrade ourselves like this! Something worse had to purged. And that Evil cannot be what Ople subtly insists to be Christ. What is this? Is this intellectualizing? Rationalizing? Justifying? Legitimizing? Ah Ople! Trying to be on the side of the angels? Maybe you are. Your angels have fallen. What is to be debated is the nature of their fall. Is it just political? If so, they've just begun their descent. Maybe they have fallen even before you rose to defend them. Maybe they were lost long before you found them. Maybe their lies got you to believe in them. But why condemn a people in search of the truth? Are we just that--a mob worthy only of your basest condescension? Are we anathema to you and your grand ilk?

Then why bother writing to us at all? What is this salt you're attempting to rub into our wounds just when we're attempting to recuperate from the hidden blows of your client. Have you seen the blows? Felt it? Are you blind as well as cushioned? Are you playing ignorant? Or are you far more sinister than my feeble mob-imagination could ever hope to understand?

Gloria, you who are both Macapagal and Arroyo. So you have been sworn into power riding the puissant waves of the people. What more mandate do you require? What additional intensity? I pray all these doesn't get to your head. At least not until your term is over. And if it does (or it already has), I pray the people terminate your term with the same power that benefitted you.

You claim to fight against personality politics. That is a tough battle line you've (claimed to have) drawn. It's a war against our deep-seated tendencies as a people - not natural (I think and hope) but almost so. The years of conditioning people powerful before you have set into place, deeper and deeper under the weight of the centuries. until it all feels oh so natural, so much a part of our collective essence:

Ganyan kaming movie fans, movie fans...

You once courted the ever politically ambivalent (and now political aspirant) Nora Aunor to campaign for you. yes you have to get into power. And you were, in that instance, trying to get La Aunor's masa-celebrity-personality to work for your campaign. A stunt like that only feeds the brand of politics you claim to combat. And of course, i'm not yet mentioning the father's name that you stubbornly hold on to. what? I hope you're not as power-hungry as some people pro- and anti-Erap think you are. Or else, people like me, much, much smaller than you are will have to put an end to the futile activity of hoping.

IV. On mob rule
(From the EDSA DOS Journal)
*4:34 AM 1/29/01*

Damned crapshooting foreign commentators thought it fashionable to call our movement "mob rule."Back to basics. In classical past, "democracy"has been accused of the same words, mob rule. Later, socialism fell prey to this barrage. Another related word, which one will find discussed at length in Raymond Williams' volumes, is "anarchy." "Socialism"and "Communism" were both attacked and were meant to be cornered, encapsuled with that comment.

Rabble-rousers we Filipinos now are.

Looks like the White Burden is upon them again to try and rescue us from our own virtues. Again, their standards measure us, as if those standard would ever benefit us!

Well, I refuse to feel ashamed of the recent movement of our people. It lacked many things, but i believe it was on the right track.

"Mob" is an ugly word. So formless, violent, confused or frenzied, almost purposeless. That it could rule at all seems funny. Absurd, really, a mob, ruling! But on second thought, Hobbes' Leviathan comes to mind. But if the state of those three days were anarchic (which it logically is since a "mob" "ruled"), Where's the large pool of muck and blood?

It's so like them to call something threatening "mob."Organized crime was called mob. Somehow, the mob had a boss. Yet, nothing about the word "mob" suggests the kind of intricate order that strictly defines the mafia. Ironically, without this cutting edge order that made the whole thing and made it greatly feared, there would be nothing to call mob.

The order that brought the EDSA DOS to the fulfillment of its "immediate" goal was admirable. Short of miraculous.

Mob does not fit. Try "legion."

Dennis Aguinaldo, 23, works for an NGO involved in blindness prevention.

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