The ebb and flow of history is such that the scum that was washed away eventually returns to shore. The problem is, unless we are able to clean the Sea of Human Nature, it comes back thicker and in greater volume.

A cursory survey of current events makes one realize that everything has happened before. Only now it’s worse.

Why is it that fascism has found firm footing again in many European countries? Why is it that now, anti-immigrant, anti-Islamist and anti-semitic sentiments are very strong and have permeated the top levels of decision-making of individual European Union states and the EU itself?

Even the vaunted home of liberal democracy, the United States, is increasingly concerned that a return of Donald Trump to the presidency will signal a descent into a fascist state.

Why is it that the political dynasties in the Philippines are more entrenched than ever? Why is it that every election season, political, entertainment and media has-beens and do-nothings besiege us with their self-serving desire to “serve the country,” believing that public office is their mission in life? It matters not that they have no passing mention of the barest of platforms and cannot even put together a coherent sentence. 

Historical scum returns. Which in turn begs the question: Why does it return? In addition to human nature, which makes it personal, the other half of the answer is because “It’s the system, stupid” and, thus, environmental.

Every high in our political history is soon outmatched by a descent more rapid and more disastrous. Consider: We have many political firsts that influenced world history. Our 1896 Philippine Revolution was the first democratic revolution in Asia that signaled the end of Western colonialism in many parts of the world, and our 1986 People Power Revolution was the inspiration for the relatively peaceful overthrow of despotic regimes, from the Soviet Union to the Middle East.

And yet our landmark revolutions were always captured by the local dynastic elite and their foreign patrons, keeping us from making fundamental changes in our economic relations and political systems. We not only shoot ourselves in the foot, we have graduated to kneecapping and pretty soon might end it all by aiming for our temple.

Even as recent as less than two decades ago, we achieved another political first: convicting a president of plunder, and yet now, the P50-million ceiling for thievery while in government to be considered plunder is often breached, and by even the most minor of subalterns like police officers and government lawyers, who in fact are supposed to be vanguards of the law. 

The general immaturity of the Philippine electorate is complemented by the dark rot of corruption that has eaten away at our souls, enabling us to kill and steal with impunity. Our vaunted institutions of family and school are seriously damaged. Parentless and single-parent families are common enough, but what is worse is when the parents themselves abuse and exploit their children. 

Our schools cannot be expected to teach the right values because they cannot even teach our children to read, write and reason. Not surprising, since some education officials are busy lining their pockets. 

Our military and police academies graduate officers who cannot talk straight or shoot straight (unless it is pointblank execution-style). No wonder our so-called protectors from the Chinese invader also need protecting by Uncle Sam. 

The Church and organized religion I will not even talk about.

We elect not only unqualified but horrible leaders.  Witness the dark forces unleashed by the subversion and manipulation of our government institutions by corrupt and unscrupulous politicians pushing their misguided agendas—the police, judiciary, Department of Health, Department of Education, Commission on Audit, Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Bureau of Immigration, Philippine Statistics Authority, to name but a few of the most prominently corrupt or inefficient nowadays. Ironically, in the age of data and information, our guardians of good government like the COA and the PSA are seriously flawed. They are clear examples of how data can be fudged or forged, manufactured and manipulated.

Any Juan, Maria or Alice can win political office with enough money and need not even be a Filipino. Our system of patronage politics is so embedded we do not seem to have progressed much from our feudal society, from the time of the datu and the encomendero. And yet, even the most so-called mature democracies are buffeted by conflicting ideological and value systems (Are whites better than other races? Should women be allowed to terminate a pregnancy at will? Should children be allowed to choose their gender?). 

If our country’s vice president can publicly proclaim her dream of beheading the country’s president, why not go the whole hog and dream of the apocalypse, when everything shall be wiped out and lost to time, as happened in centuries past, with conquerors erasing entire cities, here exemplified by the destruction of Babylon by Assyrian King Sennacherib: “The city and houses I completely destroyed from foundations to roof and set fire to them. I tore down both inner and outer city walls, temples, temple-towers made of brick and clay—as many as there were—and threw everything into the Arahtu canal. I dug a ditch inside the city and thereby leveled off the earth on its site with water. I destroyed even the outline of its foundations. I flattened it more than any flood could have done. In order that the site of that city and its temples would never be remembered, I devastated it with water so that it became a mere meadow.”

The parallels to contemporary times are shockingly alike, as shown by the time-honored Israeli tradition of leveling the houses of Palestinian “terrorists” and their families. Now, it is on an industrial scale, when just within the first five months (October 2023 to February 2024) of the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, 35% of the buildings in the densely  populated Gaza Strip were destroyed or damaged. 

And here we are, resignedly watching the waves come in and hoping they will take out what they took in. War. Oppression of other people. Worship of money and power. State terror… The scum has returned. Will it remain? 

Maybe the flood of the next world war will finally wash everything away, scum and all. Even if the scum survives, it will have nothing to return to.

May heaven help us save ourselves from ourselves, for it is when we change ourselves that we can also change our environment.

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