The Marcoses and the stories of our lives

People often regard with great interest, and some with alarm, the incredible story of the Marcoses. They wonder why the Marcoses have been able to stage what can only be described as an amazing political comeback.

Actually, the story of the Marcoses is simple. But many fail to understand what is going on because they have not been looking at the Marcoses dispassionately. They forget the Marcoses, however one may regard them, are people still, subject to the same rules life applies to all.

And one of life’s greatest rules is that life itself must go on. Even good cannot leave evil behind. Good and evil have equal shots at life. If the Marcoses are back, it is only because those who hate them spend their lives hating them. The Marcoses ignore them and move on.

The Marcoses refuse to confront critics head-on, perhaps out of self-preservation. They avoid messy debates if they can help it, unless it is by their rules. And whether by accident or by design, the Cebuano adage “pilde ang maglagot” applies perfectly to their situation.

They understand clearly that the sooner they move on and leave the past behind, their chance can only get better of losing themselves in the crowd grown bigger by new generations with little or no connection to the past, younger Filipinos clueless to what the fuss is all about.

It is no surprise then that Bongbong placed 5th in the 2010 Senate race. He understood his politics well. His baggage may have been heavy, but he never opened it. His enemies tried but were ineffective before the new millions who saw only his youth, good looks, and eloquence.

If playing cute was all it took to get elected, Bongbong was not foolish to make things difficult. His enemies spoke the truth but Bongbong played sweet. In the fickleness of politics, truth is boring against personal charm and showbiz glitz. Ask any target audience of commerce.

And that is why Bongbong can now afford to even tweak the livers of his enemies with neat little hypothetical teasers such as parity with Singapore, or seemingly innocuous testing of the waters like finally according you-know-who a hero’s burial.

Then there is the unassailable truth about one man’s goose being another man’s gander. So if the Ilocanos and the Warays have a different take on their political choices, what right has the rest of the nation to regard their choices with derision?

This is a free country, after all. And no one is more insistent and adamant about that than the very people who hate the Marcoses themselves. It certainly would look funny if these zealous and jealous guardians of freedom and democracy cannot practice what they preach.

Democracy is sacred because of its ability to accord everyone an equal chance to bask in the free air and warm sunshine of freedom. And while it may be ironic to see the Marcoses enjoy what they deprived others, that is just the way the cookie of democracy crumbles.

So, unless anyone has a better system, or some nut decides to go on a murderous binge, I say there is so much wide democratic space for everyone to just live and let live, and perchance learn to laugh again, especially at life’s oddities.

For what I really grieve over, and find pathetic about, are those who stay rooted in the past, rendered immobile by paranoid fears. Like fearful husbands to suicidal wives, they are consumed by the compelling need to follow their wives’ every trip to the toilet and get no sleep.

Everyone learns from the past. But the lessons learned mean nothing unless put to good use in the future. What their enemies have not given them credit for is that the Marcoses learn from their past as well, and are in fact better at charting their destinies, as we now learn.

It is pathetic to see people appoint themselves heroes, just for having dedicated their lives hating the Marcoses. When Marcos was president in 1965, Filipinos numbered 32 million. When he fled in 1986 there were 56 million. Many of these have entirely different stories to tell.

For while there were true heroes who risked all to fight Marcos, so were so many more who chose to work the farms, run the factories, obey the rules, pay taxes, love their families, and otherwise became good and productive citizens despite Marcos. Their stories claim no pretenses.