So much sound and fury

Too many people rush to speak, even scream in this country without first thinking. Many also precipitately publicize their unprocessed thoughts – those things that the military euphemistically call "raw intelligence" and are better understood to mean little more than self-serving opinions or maliciously cooked-up disinformation. Too few people think and reflect before serving their public offerings of talk and what – for them – pass for ideas, perhaps even great ideas. As a predictable consequence, public discussions among Filipinos generate such intense heat from so little substance.

Neither the venue nor the entities involved make much difference. Whether they be honorable officials in formal congressional inquiries or pleasant media personalities in informal studio chats or in live "man-on-the-street" interviews, or blear-eyed cornerstore drunks in a may-pinagsamahan-sa-maboteng-usapan debates – one notices how too many people rush to get their mouths on record. The legislator does not allow his witness to finish a hanging statement but moves to another point of inquiry, the TV or radio host puts far too many of his own words into the mouth of his invited guest and the glazed-eyed pare of pares – the primus inter pares of this cornerstore parliament – wersh-wershes impressively over his momentarily obliging spiritual buddies.

Sound bites, not sound logic or sound evidence, rule the discussion of public issues by most Filipinos. Rhetoric and personal popularity rather than reason and impersonal proof move people to act, often in violation of their nation’s objective interests. Thus, a whole community could be galvanized by the stirring remarks of a political leader whose loyalty to his party is trumpeted to end where his loyalty to his country begins. Succeeding generations of children mouth their parents’ slogans and romantic myths which increasingly substitute for what might be jolting historical realities.

Hardly anyone confronts the historical record and asks whether the renowned rhetorician might have served yet another loyalty ahead of his beloved country. A recently published study of Philippine-American colonial economic relations (economist Frank Golay’s posthumously-published The Mask of Empire) actually invites serious Filipinos to reassess some of their most venerated national figures. If Professor Golay’s reading is wrong, Filipino scholars have a duty to keep the record straight and prevent a national hero from being unjustly maligned. Should the professor be right, then the same scholars have an academic duty to align sound bites with the objective evidence and enable Filipinos to appreciate their history better.

Parallel observations apply to the case of yet another forceful political leader, the certificate road builder of the late 60s and the early 70s whom sound bite professionals would also credit with being the premier architect of the New Society. Recently, he has been cast by numerous Filipinos as the defenseless victim of ingrates like PCGG Chairperson Haydee Yorac and DECS Secretary Raul Roco. In Metro Manila as well as in the northern regions of the country, there are those who shake their fists and stridently call for these two officials to relearn their history better.

Much sound, much fury.

Beyond the present sound and fury, that which is truly sound and that which properly infuriates a self-respecting, straight-thinking nation ought to be seriously looked into, retrieved and integrated into a core national memory. Nothing terrorizes a people as effectively as the sound and fury of its brutally falsified memories. Nothing also liberates a nation from its terrorists as much as the discovery and acknowledgment of its truthful history. For those people who gain their freedom intending never to lose it again, a nation’s painful history is never confused with its possible destiny.