Philosopher or dog?
The Evil That Men Do: The Crimes of Rizal & Aguinaldo, the Treason of the Intellectuals, & the Philippine Culture of Corruption — a Sociological, Historical and Philosophical Investigation...
Quite a mouthful that one, but then again no one is spared in the philosopher poet Domingo de Guzman’s little book The Evil that Men Do, which, courtesy of a phrase from Shakespeare, runs roughshod and threatens to turn Philippine history and our poor corruption-plagued society upside down and inside out until virtually nothing’s left but the philosopher’s rumination that Bonifacio is the only one worthy to be called National Hero, and these pages — curiously without a copyright, as if it were never written, and so strictly guerrilla reading — the great plebian’s revenge more than a hundred years after the revolution was betrayed by the intelligentsia and he and his brother were assassinated on Mount Buntis.
“The most significant new thing in all these is the documentation. This is why the only tactic left to the defenders of this culture of corruption, and I mean the Rizalists and the Aguinaldists, is to pretend to be able to ignore the book. But that’s impossible. The four volumes will entomb them and make their trembling silence permanent,” De Guzman says in an SMS explaining the reason for his work, which actually is the first of four books of philosophical investigation, published with the help of a certain Ed Clemente who frequents a café in Balay Alumni in UP Diliman.
The documentation, to say the least, is impressive. Like a lawyer in a historical court, where the killers of Bonifacio and the traitors of the revolution are tried or in fact incriminate themselves through the presentation of various historical documents, De Guzman narrates the events of more than a hundred years as if they happened only yesterday, so impassioned is his speech that no one gets away from his lyrical rant — not the historians who murder Bonifacio all over again, nor the “evil embracing” leftist columnists or the ambassadorial post-seeking aging gourmands, not the murderer himself Lazaro Macapagal nor Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, not even his favorites ano na nga ’yun Virgilio Almario and Gemino, a bad poet.
Indeed the gravity of his accusations and going full tilt at windmills and assorted giants is tempered by touches of such sly humor, perhaps even snide and heckling, but not exactly preening because he can’t afford it having finished only with a quarter of his arguments.
Seeing Rizal on the dock is most uncomfortable for a generation steeped in Rizaliana since kindergarten, but De Guzman proves his case that the National Hero turned in a katipunero who had visited him in his exile in Dapitan, and that in a letter written to General Blanco he had expressed interest to serve the Spanish empire as a doctor in the war against Cuba “to undo the calumnies” done to him through his exile that he was not a loyal subject of Spain.
Rizalists may argue that such letters and documentation can only be taken in the context that they were part of a defense of a condemned man, and in symposiums and forums de Guzman was reportedly laughed and heckled off stage for insisting on his thesis. Well those laughers and hecklers get their comeuppance now, if only through this little book.
Neither does De Guzman take too kindly to Rizal as novelist, short of saying he was definitely overrated, what with his two novels required reading in high school and college curricula, something the philosopher imputes to the well entrenched system of the assimilationists and reformists for long range mind conditioning across generations. “(The pen is mightier than the sword haha).”
De Guzman is as harsh or even more cruel to Aguinaldo, whom he calls various unsavory names and drags through the muck of history, trying to pay in psychic kind what the Caviteño had done to the supremo. And our famous historians Agoncillo, Ileto et al, whose textbooks were required in the most basic college history course, are finally and contemptuously put in their place by De Guzman for their distortions and other self serving ends, as if selling again the revolution for eight hundred something Mexican pesos, give or take a few pesetas.
De Guzman takes rightful issue with the historians’ use of Bonifacio’s executioner as the main source for accounts on the killing of the supremo, likening it to taking the rapist’s version of a rape as gospel truth, therefore a travesty of history and outright abomination.
The philosopher finds laughable accounts that Bonifacio did a hundred meter dash to escape execution, presenting instead proofs that the hero was at the time already stricken and weakened by torture and beatings at the hands of traitors who did their dastardly act in the name of Katipunan unity.
De Guzman takes issue with the historians’ omission of one key account on the supremo’s wife Gregoria de Jesus running through brambles to find out what befell Bonifacio, and her meeting along the road the assassin’s cohorts who had with them the by then recently dead man’s clothes. It could be a scene out of an independent film, except this was taken out of history and so more believable, more poignant, and sufficient grist for the coup de grace of this little first volume that is in itself already a mouthful, the lyric poem as appendix, where de Guzman assumes the persona of Bonifacio invoking his muse. And where the poet, alas, cannot help but wear his heart on his sleeve.
“Rizal, let alone Aguinaldo, has, as a lie, an insidious show-through. It is this show through that powerfully undermines and corrupts the Rizal believer. When we internalize Rizal as a model, we identify at one and the same time with the show-through through which the criminal and craven one silently but malignantly shows through. The net effect is our identification with a hero who at the same time was a criminal and a scoundrel, the being one and the same of which we must then not be able to think. This unconscious ban on thought must nationally enforce and cultivate in us our world famous national intellectual stupidity. Ditto for Aguinaldo and some 98 percent of our so-called heroes. Emphasis on the concept of the show-through…” De Guzman says.
Philosopher or dog? More likely Bonifacio’s avenger after more than a hundred years. But not all is venom and fire and brimstone. “It seldom happens that the human situation is a godly one. In every human being suffers a god, a goddess — most of the time. This, this god, this goddess, in every human being, is — what else can it be? — the sacred itself.”
Those who thought nothing was sacred after reading this book, will think again after rereading it which certainly the likes of the literary cabals and horse traders and congressmen would do well to read before, as they say, hair grows on their palms.
