Even a well-fed sewer rat is still a sewer rat

he way I look at it, reminding Filipinos of the ruthlessness and corruption of the Marcos kleptocracy is like reminding people how cruel the Japanese Imperial soldiers were under the command of Gen. Tomoyuki Yamashita during the Japanese occupation.

From first-person accounts of Filipinos who survived the entire Second World war (1939 to 1945) Japanese army regulars were some of the vilest, cruelest, most merciless and most remorseless of human rights violators—instantly beheading Filipino peasants or spilling their intestines right out of their stomachs with impaling swipes of their bayonets—at the slightest pretext and often none.

As their victims, clutching their intestines with their own hands, desperately begged for mercy, summoning their last ounce of strength to still try to do the proper greeting bow, the Japanese soldiers exploited their victims’ prostrate position to chop off their heads with a slinky samurai.

When they mishit, it sometimes took several blows. The Filipinos died a horrible agonizing death, writhing and screaming in unimaginable morbid pain, whispering their plaintive cry to God with their last fading breath of prayer. That’s the kind of cruelty our guerilla grandfathers suffered.

But today, even now, try reading what I just wrote to any average person you meet and they will shush you. The Japanese? Those polite, high-tech global ambassadors of peace and goodwill? Makers of the best cars and industrial machines, originators of the cutest, most benign ‘Hello Kitty’ and other cuddly animé characters? Biggest donors of development aid?

To today’s Gen X’ers, Gen Z’ers, millennials and Gen Next’ers—Japan is all about sashimi, sushi, bonsai, origami, ramen, the shinkansen bullet train, self-disciplinary karate, ethical sumo wrestling and delicious kikkoman soy sauce.

Japanese historical revisionists, over several decades, have cleaned up both their war record and postwar legacy real good.

So don’t even bother badmouthing the Japanese today. The people who suffered are no longer around. Those who are around did not experience anything they would want to remember. And, finally, those that were never there, those that have nothing to remember, those that do not know a thing are defiantly ignorant, even arrogantly counteroffensive.

That is exactly also the profile of the fake Marcos loyalist—loyal to a man they never knew, who was dictator when they weren’t even born yet.

What possible good can come from “reminding” them that Marcos was a thief? Marcos, a thief? You mean the one whose nice and softspoken son just handed me a hundred pesos a while back?

Martial law? What is that? Those that were never there, those that have nothing to remember, those that do not know a thing are defiantly ignorant, even arrogantly counteroffensive.

I lived through the Marcos years, throughout the entire martial law, and even I don’t have that much to remember PERSONALLY, for good or for bad. Just as no one can tell me what Marcos and martial law are all about, I can’t tell anyone either.

That’s why FACTS are important. Facts are independent of your experience and mine. In this day and age, we both have free and equal access to the facts. You can’t prevent me, and I can’t prevent you, from finding out the truth.

But instead of doing that—instead of urging you to research historical facts—I would rather just describe to you the present, the time in which you and I live, which is now.

We live in a rich country of poor people, where TWO PERCENT of the population control NINETY PERCENT of the nation’s wealth. Where’s my proof? It’s on your backpocket (or purse, if you’re a woman).

Go ahead, take out your wallet and see how much is in it. Is there enough in there to see you through to the end of the month? No? How about the end of the week? How about the end of the day?

Hold up your wallet, hold it up eyelevel so that you can see in the background the shiny new dark-tinted SUV parked across the street. You don’t own TWO of those, do you? Or one for you, another one for your wife, and another one for each of your children. Some people do. But NOT you.

You don’t belong go that upper TWO PERCENT crust. You live payday to payday—if you’re lucky to be employed. If not, then you are gifted with the patience, resiliency and imagination to come up with idea after idea on how to make money some way, any which way. Just to be able to bring food to the table, send your children to school or buy your life-sustaining maintenance medicine.

Don’t waste my time telling you the rest of YOUR experience. Do that on your own. You will realize how unequal the nation’s wealth has been distributed. You will also realize how unequal and different are the means that we get our share of that wealth. Some work for it, like you and me, some inherit it, some hit the lottery jackpot—and some get it the easiest of all ways: they just STOLE it.

Stole it from whom? From you and me. WHERE IS MY PROOF?

You see, that’s the beauty of it for these thieves. YOU are asking for proof, and I DON’T CARE to prove it to you. The thief gets away with it totally unscathed.

But let me prove it to you ANYWAY. You don’t have your just and fair share of the nation’s wealth—and the Marcoses stole theirs, several billions more than they neither earned nor deserve and the proof is how you are yearning for some of it right now—not all of it, but just what you think you have either earned or deserve.

In short you KNOW some of the Marcoses’ money is really yours and you want it back. You’ll do anything to see that happen, including making him president so that he can “make your life better.”

If you don’t think so, then God bless the Marcoses for being so lucky.

And you? You will remain a wretched beggar, swallowing your pride and dignity, lining up for morsels at every Marcos rally.