Sep13 Other People’s Blood

Other People’s Blood

After failing to impeach the incumbent PGMA, the tone for belligerency has definitely stepped up. Last week, we noted of politicians and several entities latently advocating for the military to intercede to oust the President. Now we are reading of opinion writers advocating for genuine bloodshed through a revolution.

In one of today’s opinion columns, Edilberto Alegre wrote in his Pinoy na Pinoy Businessworld column that because the former pillars of regime change, particularly the church and the military, has not moved to overthrow the government, but whose institutions has been afflicted by schisms, a bloody revolution is likely to ensue.

Mr. Alegre says, ``There are no credible issues to die for. There are no credible leaders to follow. I am afraid it’s time for a real revolution in which there will be unbelievable bloodshed.”

The absurdity or paradox with Mr. Alegre’s proposition is that when there is ‘nothing’ to fight for, WHY then must it follow that there should be an ‘unbelievable bloodshed’? Filipinos in Mr. Alegre’s view would have to turn bonkers to engage in wholesale slaughter for NO apparent credible reasons to fight for.

Like all of those clamoring for a violent upheaval to effect a regime change, obviously, Mr. Alegre and ilk are calling for Other People’s Blood (OPB), meaning that they are desiring to envisage a revolution at their midst when they would be relegated to the sidelines cheering and not wanting to be physically involved in those brutal skirmishes. He would most probably be screaming, “Yeah...die you dork, you deserve it for supporting this administration.”

This idea of lusting for bloodshed comes to a generation that has not personally encountered the brutalities and horrors of war.

To quote historian Arnold Toynbee who wrote of a war-and-peace cycle as a consequence of a “Generation Cycle in the transmission of a social heritage”.

``The survivors of a generation that has been of military age during a bout of war will be shy, for the rest of their lives, of bringing a repetition of this tragic experience either upon themselves or upon their children, and … therefore the psychological resistance of any move towards the breaking of a peace … is likely to be prohibitively strong until a new generation … has had the time to grow up and to come into power. On the same showing, a bout of war, once precipitated, is likely to persist until the peace-bred generation that has been lightheartedly run into war has been replaced, in its turn, by a warworn generation.”

It is easy to call for bloodshed and chaotic revolutions when somebody else’s blood is at stake or is spilled on the streets other than the caller himself.