We’re no stranger to revolution. It’s in this country’s bones. I remember my first rally. I was barely seven, my parents took me to a run-down basketball court with hundreds of fist-clenched people. I remember barely being able to wrap my hands around the banner I was given; I remember hearing my father’s speech through the court’s faulty speakers, a speech that I’ve heard him give to my mom the night before as practice. My parents remember their first – different cause, different despot, there was an issue of shoes and the Beatles were somehow involved.
Heck, every Filipino remembers the first. The one with all the mythical figures of enlightenment and valor. You know, the one that birthed this entire nation from hundreds of years of tyranny. What I’m saying is that, if revolutions were a country’s firehose, then ours has been worn down to its fibers.
Lately, there’s been talk of bringing out the firehose again. More than talk, actually; there’s been a rattling for one. Full disclaimer: I’m not going to go into the whole socio-economic-geopolitics of it like a responsible citizen should. No. I leave that lane to the pundits – go and listen to them. However, what I am going to do is to hastily generalize and recklessly oversimplify one factor; one factor that I think has been hindering this revolution to get off the ground like the many ones before it.
We have to keep talking to each other. A lot of us, who’ve been rattling for revolution, are acting like members of a condescending nobility with their noses turned up at all the “dirty trolls” that dare to stand in their way. I’ve seen, in the past weeks, a dozen variations of “How dare they!” and a dozen other variations of “Why on earth are they still so stupid!”. These aren’t the makings of a proper revolution, I’m afraid.
Revolutions are built on powerful unifying motivations, across social classes, across communities, and across lines of differing beliefs. There’s no unifying anyone if we stay closed off in our echo chambers and wonder how can we stop them, or how can we fight them. It’s time to take a step back and learn: Why do they believe in this? Why are they still so utterly supportive of something we are so convinced is downright atrocious? Maybe there’s merit to ask these questions and understand the people we’re so quick to paint as the enemy. Maybe we have something in common, and maybe the real enemy isn’t each other.
Think of it this way. If someone kept yelling at you that you’re stupid and that you’re a danger to our country and this and that, then of course you’re going to try your damn hardest to prove to them that you’re not. If it means jumping through wild mental hoops to justify your side’s actions, then so be it. If it means seeking a disreputable personality to prove that you’re right, then so be it. Because you’re not stupid. And you want what’s best for our country just as much as they do. Here’s the rub. The only way that we move past this is if we stop taking sides, talk to each other as fellow citizens, and treat this for what it really is. It isn’t my side versus your side; it’s the public demanding public service from public servants.
Is this the key to opening the floodgates of revolution? No. Far from it. If history is anything to go by, there is quite a long way to go before things even get going. And if the current political climate is anything to go by, then there is also a long list of complex contributing factors to leap over first. But it would really help if we stop yelling at an amorphous them. It would really help if we stop acting like our team is the reigning champ at revolutions and that they would dare to oppose us.
The cruel irony is this. The more we say how appalled we are that they could have differing views as us, the more we sound like the doomed elite of last generation; desperately clinging to their “bagong lipunan” while the people are thundering through EDSA. And unfortunately for us, the people already have. They’ve thundered; and stormed; and won their revolution back in 2016. It’s a bitter pill that we have to accept. The same revolutionary fervor that our forebearers had, they had. I saw it in their eyes – the same spark that I grew up with. My fist was not splayed in the face of the ruling establishment; but theirs were. My heart did not chant the same rhetoric on fighting corruption, crime, and drug abuse using whatever fatal means necessary; but theirs did.
The only way we can unroll the firehose of revolution and save this burning country, is if we ask for it back first. They still have it. The floors are still dripping from the last time it’s been used. If we can’t even talk to them, it’s our revolution that’s getting doused.