Damned in unlearning

 

 

 …THE REVOLUTION failed because it was badly directed, because its director gained  his place, not through meritorious, but through opprobrious acts; because, instead of supporting the men of most usefulness to the people, he, jealous of those men, rendered them useless.

Believing that the aggrandizement of the people was nothing more than his own personal aggrandizement, he did not rate the merits of men according to their capacity, character, and patriotism, but according to the degree of friendship or kinship that united them with him; and, wishing to have his favorites disposed to sacrifice themselves for him, he showed himself lenient even towards their faults. For his having thus contemned the people, the people abandoned him; and because the people abandoned him, he had to fall, like an idol of  wax, melted in the heat of adversity.

May we not forget a lesson so terrible, learned at the cost of indescribable sufferings. 

AS RELEVANT today are the words of the Sublime Paralytic, Apolinario Mabini, on Señor Emilio Aguinaldo. And as appropriate to that Caviteño of those days as to this Davaoeño of today.

Indeed, the tragedy of Miyong, repeated in the farce that is Digong. To paraphrase Marx.

Of the Filipino then, failing to heed Santayana’s admonition: History unlearned, we are a people dumbed, we are a nation damned.