Filthy-mouthed girl
I was truly appalled at how filthy the mouths of some students can get. One girl, part of a group of no more than 15 students that tried to protest in front of the US Embassy but was held back by police, said into the cameras that beamed her image nationwide that President Duterte was "isang buang, isang baliw." Wow. Is this the kind of student whose education my taxes are subsidizing? "Pagka-bastos nga bata. Pagka-luoy sa ginikanan."
There was a time when student activists can carry on intelligent discussions of issues and hold audiences rapt in attention. But that was the time when issues were real and students were articulators of sentiments held deeply by the rest of the population that cannot voice those sentiments on their own. Those that moved on to a more violent form of expression made up the vanguard of what was then the true people's revolution.
But that revolution, while not necessarily failed, has been overtaken by the inescapable reality that revolutions just don't last forever. Those that give some semblance of continuity are actually corrupted versions, their ranks depleted of true revolutionaries and taken over by nothing more than thugs and bandits seduced by whatever luster remains of the heady days.
Even the filthy-mouthed girl was a fake. You always know the fake from the genuine because the fake always takes it to unnecessary levels. To call someone as "buang" and "baliw" does not argue her cause well. At the end of her crass display, at which horror TV viewers must have cringed unexpectedly, the girl student, the hope of the future ostensibly, became no more than a street quack peddler trying a few jaded magic tricks to assemble a crowd with curiosity.
That the girl and her companions made up no more than 15 students is proof of the shallowness of their cause. And what was their cause, by the way? According to them, they were protesting American involvement in Duterte's war on illegal drugs. I was shocked by how off they were. So consumed were they by the lure to protest they forgot to choose what they should protest against. "Basta lang maka-protest."
If they cared to look around, they would have seen and appreciated that Duterte's drug war is actually immensely popular. It was one of the things he promised to do that helped him win the presidency, a presidency that so far has given him very high satisfactory and trust ratings. It was only in how the drug war was carried out that made it a little problematic.
America aiding the Philippines in a drug war, whether it is a Philippines headed by Duterte or not, is and should be a most welcome development. Illegal drugs is a global scourge. It is one of the greatest threats to society. The more countries banding together to wage war on drugs, especially countries with the technology and intelligence to make that war winnable, should be encouraged, not protested against.
Unfortunately for the filthy-mouthed girl and her dozen or so companions, they were there not to protest with intelligence but to protest just for the sake of protesting. For them the romantic ring of protesting against America was the be-all of their pathetic display that day in the streets of Manila. "Basta maka-sunog lang sa bandera sa America, ok na." As my eldest daughter used to say at a very tender age -"what a bort pet." Whatever it meant, it was her expression of disgust.
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