All our enemies: The visible, invisible, and the disguised

The Philippines just cannot seem to run out of enemies. As soon as it beats one, or at least keeps it under relative control, another one gets foisted on it. Or it simply goes looking for one. Maybe the Filipino simply loves to fight. But I have a nagging suspicion that the Filipino just does not know any better. That it does not recognize the enemy until it has become the monkey on its back.

Prior to the pandemic, the country has been battling very visible enemies in lawless violence (terrorism, insurgency, rebellion), corruption, crime and illegal drugs, and the associated conditions of poverty and inequality, all with --and I say this very delicately and reluctantly-- relative success. You know, not really beating and dominating the enemy but at least having something to show for it.

Then came the coronavirus, the unseen enemy. The coronavirus is a terrifying enemy, not only because it is unseen, but also because it chooses no one and has even affected and slowed, to a certain degree, all the traditional visible enemies of the state. Terrorists, communists, separatists, drug lords, and even the crooks in government, are getting sick too.

One would have thought this country would have had enough, that enemies both seen and unseen would keep it too busy, occupied, and distracted not to go looking for more trouble and another fight. But unfortunately it is. Some Filipinos are toying with the idea of a revolutionary government. What and why for, I do not know. What I do know is it is even worse and more scary because it is an enemy in disguise.

A visible enemy is, well, an enemy you can see. All up to you how to deal with it --fight it, avoid it, run away from it, pretend it does not exist. An unseen enemy is tougher. But as with the coronavirus, you just suspect it in everyone, in everything, and just about anywhere. Hence the face masks, face shields, physical distancing, hand washing, and disinfecting. And quarantines in three to four letter varieties.

But how do you deal with an enemy in disguise? What happens if it comes as a friend? A revolutionary government is precisely that. You do not know if it is an enemy or a friend. In a revolutionary government, founded as it is on disdain and mistrust, there can be no real friends, only enemies that you do not know of. A revolutionary government is a parasite. It will eat us alive from the inside.

So why do Filipinos flirt with revolution, overthrow, upheaval, ouster. Because the Filipino has never been free. All his life he has always been a subject to someone. He has been colonized by the Spaniards, sold to the Americans, occupied by the Japanese, then freed and taken as spoils by the Americans again. When the Americans pretended to leave, a dictator took over with American acquiescence, until the end of his own usefulness.

So inured to the thought of being dominated has the Filipino become that even when finally free, he still cannot tell the smell of freedom even when swimming in the sea of its bouquet. He struggles to be free from freedom itself, thinking it to be an imposition that must be rejected. Domination has so damaged the Filipino it is now in his DNA. Thinking revolution is romancing that psyche, like tucking a raincoat on a clear cloudless sunny day.