I Can Tell You Why (on Privilege and Rage)

A note about rage, because it is important not merely to be a critic, but also to be able to argue why.

We are not enraged with our leaders because they could not stop a typhoon. We are not enraged by their inability to bring back the dead. We are, however, enraged at their blunt denial of the truth.

At their contemptuous choice (because they are agents, we like to believe, and therefore are responsible for their own actions) to erase the line the personal from the political from the personal and then draw it again when it is convenient for them.

At their graceless, complacent, and rude attitude in the face of human loss (the most harrowing kind, and the guilt of surviving that can eat a person up from the inside).

At their indiscretions, choosing which losses to cater to the fastest.

This is not to say that a modus operandi at the local mall should not be any concern of the government.

This is, however, to point out that when the government prioritizes such incidents, but fails to even visit the site of a bus that fell from the Skyway, and when it is the same government that failed to act in the immediate aftermath of Yolanda:

We are enraged because this government has failed to use its resources (read: privilege) to help, resources which, in truth, so many of us clamor for but, in the face of daily duties as members of our class, we cannot use in order to help on the scale that only a national government can.

Take note, for instance, that a round trip flight to Tacloban would take just under P10,000.00 (the cheapest I could find online falls to P6,000.00). That is an amount which, especially in these difficult times, the average citizen would have to sacrifice a substantial amount from his/her salary in order to afford. There is also the matter of items that careful volunteers may want to spend on, or vaccines they  themselves might need.

What I mean to say is this: when we demand that only people who have been to ground zero be given the right to criticize this government, what we are actually doing is limiting freedom of speech (and responsibility for this freedom) to the privileged few, in the context of a country that has 25 million people living in poverty.

Even worse, when we defend our government for its failure to respond accordingly and immediately, we deny this truth:

Since we cannot insist that every Filipino citizen visit and give substantial relief to ground zero, then we should at least expect it immediately from those who have precisely the resources to do so.

By which we mean the national government.