Thursday, November 04, 2010

Character Calamities

The speechwriter of the President of the Philippines, Mai Mislang, tweeted, during a state visit, that the wine sucked in Vietnam – as though she had been raised guzzling Domaine Romanee-Conti.

Having been a French colony, Vietnam was likely amused by such judgment from a person of a country known for beer.

Ah, well, stupidity is a child of ignorance.

As if this wasn’t enough to upset one for weeks, one of the two women seriously injured at a grenade attack at La Salle university blithely forgave the assailant, whoever he was.  The two women lost limbs and nearly their lives. 

The grenade was thrown allegedly by one fraternity member to damage members of another fraternity – and by accident, collaterally damaged grievously two women whose lives are hereon changed in ways we cannot even conceive.

This readiness to forgive, in my perspective, does not necessarily make one a better person; it simply marks one as a patsy, who cannot even recognize the presence of serious evil.  Whoever threw the grenade was evil;  he knew and didn't care that he could not limit the damage to members of the other fraternity only.

Forgiving so easily allows evil to thrive; and this is probably why people known to have committed great crimes surface and re-surface, again and again, holding on to power, position and privilege, in the Philippine political world, as acts of injustice and terrorism remain un-redressed.

So, there’s the wine comment and the forgiveness comment and my comment: women of the Philippines can sometimes be arrogant and judgmental in petty matters and pushovers in really serious ones. -- ##

2 comments:

Rose Salidum said...

Oh, Miss Rosca, you are so hard. God told us to forgive those who trespass against us. It is very good for women to practice forgiveness. It pleases God.

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