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A year of death

FROM MUHAMMAD Ali to David Bowie to Prince to Allan Rickman to Craig Sager and to, most recently, George Michael and Carrie Fisher, 2016 has terribly become a year of deaths.
 
Closer to home, President Rodrigo R. Duterte’s “war on drugs” have so far yielded 6,206 deaths—as per Rappler account. Of the total, 2,157 were killed in police operations while 4,049 were killed vigilante-style.

But 2016 proved to be not just a year for literal death; it displayed more so the death of sensibilities, morality, common sense and empathy.

We cheer the deaths of illegal drug trade suspects—both alleged users and pushers; while we also gnaw at our fingernails hoping and praying that we and our loved ones are spared from either being collateral damage or simply being suspected then killed.

We nonchalantly spew thoughts that those who died deserved their violent deaths; yet we feel the chill of understanding that we—or our family members and friends—may be next.

We continue to support the “war on drugs”, at least based on nationwide surveys; yet at the same time we express apprehension that anyone of us might fall prey to either police bullets or to the impunity of vigilante killers.

Sadly, we have become a country and a people of contradiction.

And in the confusion, we have blurred the line between right and wrong; we no longer know the difference between justified and overkill; and we have lost hope in our country’s democratic processes that we have either passively and actively surrendered to the law of violence, guns and deaths.

To top it off, we have succumbed to machinations of the powers-that-be; fanatically believing every words uttered; manically accepting what should be absurd reasoning as gospel truth; and blindly following the lead of an egomaniacal mad man whose sole intent is to accumulate power and be the center of everything.

And nothing much else.

The deaths of those icons would surely change the world as we know it.

And the deaths of our fellow Filipinos in Mr. Duterte’s war may only hurt those who knew and loved them.

But it is in this instance that we should all understand that we are all slowly losing our collective soul as a people and a nation.

And we are all slowly succumbing to the rumor-mongering; to the hateful “if you’re not with us you’re against us” mentality that is being espoused; and to the fanaticism being preached by paid hacks who simply want us to believe without reservation—and without real basis.


In the end, the death of our collective consciousness and our comatose critical-thinking ability will even be worse than physical death.

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