In this side of the world, people with right connections and privileged positions enjoy children’s rights; but children and minors from marginalized sectors don’t. They should be drug-free first and street-smart enough to deflect attempts of the authorities to plant incriminating evidence. Else, they suffer or die and boost the scores of the gamers who acquire lives, keep an arsenal of cheat codes and brave a long game play that lets them win all the time.
Gamers who never lose. Seems familiar. Just like those in the Commission on Appointments who rejected the confirmation of DSWD Secretary Judy Taguiwalo. Perfect examples of adults acting like annoying babies who want what they want and hate what they hate. No explanations needed. The gluttons with abysmal stomachs require neither their veggies nor their fruits. They crave for their pork now. Else, they throw tantrums, threaten the populace and take everyone to hell, if they cannot have it their way.If lawmakers take poor families as hostages for their patronage game, the police and the army see little people like Kians in urban areas and Lumad students in the hinterlands as points that can be converted to items that can unlock access to secret bosses or bonus stages. As if there is a quota, as implied by Tatay’s go signal to chase drug addicts and bomb Lumad schools. The latter has been carried out by martial law (ML) babies in Mindanao, even without the formal declaration. These infantile battalion bullies are known to pick on unarmed civilians and to cry foul upon being ambushed by guerrillas. When entering warzones or unfamiliar territories, ML babies drug themselves to valor and face enemies of the state that wages its war on drugs.
It makes perfect sense if, indeed, cops enforce the drug war (aka Oplan Tokhang) and confiscate shabu, while soldiers execute the counter-insurgency campaign (aka Oplan Kapayapaan) with shabu-induced courage, in the name of the father who babies them, changes their toxic sh*t-drenched diapers, provides noxious toys and validates trivial victories, which these infants presume to be substantial contributions to a better Philippine society. A bright future free from illegal drug trade, which is the root of all evil, the bane of humanity, the cause of mortal suffering, the leprosy, the tuberculosis, the AIDS, the cancer of society.
The urban poor is homeless; the farmer, landless; the employee, contractual; the worker, exploited; the college graduate, unemployed; the youth, unschooled; and other sectors, deprived of basic human rights, because they reduce themselves to subhumans by dealing with the demon called drugs. Had they been clean and innocent, let our valiant officers arrest depressed area-dwellers prone to addiction. Prevention is better than cure.
From uniformed infants to the uninformed civilians: the bobotante-blaming newborns. These infants cry over spilled blood, flooding the streets, but they also have enough reserves of teary-eyed gnarls and grumbles directed at the 16 million voters of Duterte, all of whom have blood on their hands, and mouths, too, because they are bloodthirsty, out for blood, pure evil, violence incarnates. (Tip: elect candidates with the least chances of winning. Losers will not commit bloody killing sprees as government officials, freeing you from any accountability.)
These toddlers complain about other voters’ choices and await for the next national elections, so they can vote for the best leader or they themselves can be the benevolent rulers their friends will love. They believe in themselves and in their dreams for a better Philippines. However, their skin will react with rashes if they brush against flags of organized movements, especially those affiliated with ones they consider as mere rabble-rousing whiners: the Left. Pampered, activist-allergic, victim-blaming, civil society snowflakes attend rallies, if there are no blatant political colors; they flaunt their civic nationalism matched with their taxpayers’ membership card (as if the poor are exempted from paying taxes), when effective rallies translate to real change, thus interrupting their well-behaved law-abiding routine of traveling to work and returning at the house that they have been paying for, all their lives.
What do these types of tykes have in common: the pork-seeking sucklings, who only think of their insatiable appetites for power and wealth; the police boys and ML babies, who only follow orders so they can be heroes to make Tatay proud; the vote toddlers, who only rely on the correct choice of candidates at elite-dominated elections as means of being good citizens building a better society? All three possess a naïve imagination limited by the boundaries set by the current socio-political conditions. A bunch of babies, who can learn that beyond their cribs, boxes and safe spaces, where not only their whimpers matter, there is an outside world worth exploring and a peoples’ solidarity worth strengthening.
