OUR SOCIETY IN EMERGENCY ROOM

"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" -- EDMUND BURKE

BY ALEX P. VIDAL

Typhoons. Earthquakes. Volcanic eruptions. Tsunamis. Massacre. Child prostitution. AIDS. Peso devaluation. Graft and corruption. Unemployment. Starvation. Is Philippines the next Sodom and Gomorrah? Signs of the times?

During a lavish banquet, Babylonian King Belshazzar saw the fingers of a man's hand writing these Aramaic words on the wall: "Mene, Mene, Upharsin." None of the wise men could decipher the words. 

But the Hebrew prophet Daniel told Belshazzar that the words meant that God had weighed Belshazzar and his kingdom and had found them wanting. A short while later, both Belshazzar and his kingdom were destroyed.

It's always challenging to practice a profession in media as so-called "catalyst of change" in a society riddled with man-made mayhem, vulgarity and barbarity. 

CRIME

It cannot be said enough that crime is on the upsurge-- regardless who is the president.  The drug menace, a P205-billion-peso-a-year racket, is destroying our people, of all ages and walks of life. No victim is too poor, too influential, or too well-established to be more than a push-over for the ubiquitous pusher. 

The real crisis, as the disappointing revelations in the past years have reinforced, is in our law and order setup and our justice system. Our policemen, if not on criminal payrolls, seem to be increasingly clumsy and inept. 

Our soldiers "trigger-happy" and demoralized by plunder committed by their superior officers. Our courts overloaded, if not lazy, venal and corrupt. Our judiciary tainted by allegations of "hoodlums in robes."

MEDIOCRE

Our educational system is mediocre and dominated by embalmers from funeral parlors. Our traffic is a nightmare--the drivers among the most undisciplined in the world (I'm speaking through personal experience)! Our religious leaders hypocrites and materialistic if not pedophiles and sex fiends that prey on the weak and the gullible.

Our lawmakers architects of political dynasty; their wives and live-in partners promoters of extravagant and lavish lifestyles amid abject poverty. Subalterns in the executive branch from Malacanang down to the smallest political unit are smitten by unreasonable junkets abroad--all at the expense of tax payers.

Our civil servants 10-percenters and merchants of SOP. Officials in higher echelons have institutionalized kickbacks and bribes in alarming proportions. Our young citizens embroiled in celluloid sex and lacking in spiritual and moral scrupples. Some Facebook and Twitter friends tyrannical and possessive. Further this affiant sayeth not.

CHARACTER

Meanwhile, no matter how some people impeached the character of slain radio blocktime commentator Niel "Lito" Jimena, we cannot deny the fact that he was a martyr of Iloilo press. 

Since democracy was restored in the country after the EDSA revolution, Jimena was the 146th member of the Fourth Estate killed and the 9th this year. The Philippines, according to the International Organization of Journalists, is the second most dangerous country in the world for media practitioners next to Iraq.

REMINDER

Jimena's murder was only another stark reminder that newsmen and media practitioners, manning the ramparts on the battlefront, are constantly at risk and danger. 

We may fall to the hired assassin's bullets, or we can be suborned. Some of us can be "bought" or intimidated; we can be misled, or seduced. We are not supermen or super heroes in the cartoons, and those unlucky are always vulnerable to make a quick trip to the kingdom come. But we, by and large, try to do our job, earnestly, and constantly. We just hope Jimena was the last martyr of Iloilo and Negros press.