The Devil sees daylight: the class divides
I just love playing the devil’s advocate. No matter if it leaves me with some disgruntled friends, risking the cooling of a warm friendship. It has always been my nature. A bit of a devil, I guess. Not with the role to tempt, but more to advocate. I guess that explains my attraction to cause-oriented and advocacy groups.
As proclamation 1017 was dropped and then lifted, media and the noisy people rallying are left in a limbo on the vagueness of the state now. People are getting picked up by going to rallies. As usual, activists sound off their disgust of GMA in the streets where they were most comfortable. This “taking freedom of expression to the streets” has indeed been proven successful in EDSA 1 and 2, and in exercising their right to be heard. But unlike EDSA 1 and 2, the middle class is conspicuously absent in the rallies nowadays. We take middle class here to encompass upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class. These are the working people, claiming to be the silent majority paying taxes, moving at the last minute giving the final push to the peaceful revolts that spanned two decades.
But lo and behold, they are not silent. They may be invisible on the streets but they have brought their sentiments out and turned to the tools at their very reach – the internet, and their voices are singing a different tune. As the untiring activists scream their loathing to a cheat and lying president, the middle class that would rather not go to the streets, because they have work to do and they have to earn a living, says they are now too tired. And in their tiredness, they have resorted to belittling activists.
When I first read a letter that sounded like this, it made me laugh, more because obviously the author was trying to be funny and typical with Filipino humor, sometimes they have to strike out at others to elicit a laugh from their audience. But then that one letter became two, then three, and it is much angrier and more serious. The haughtiness and disdain are real.
What they have failed to realize is that the people on the streets are not just paying taxes, but some lead groups of people, and communities, and some own and manage their businesses. And they have access to internet, too.
Now it is a war on the net. Both sides whip out strong words, producing eloquent documents, seemingly trying to prove the more rightful stand. But the whippings were with spits of fire, leaving the reader hurting and condemned if one does not agree to their sentiments. To counter the accusation of not caring what happens to the country, the middle class lashes out at those on the streets. They hold up their shields of jobs and needing to earn for their families. They strike back with scorn for those that do, saying the people who go to the streets are those that have no jobs and are not paying their taxes making them not just unproductive but useless members of the communities having nothing better to do but bring the country and the economy down.
Maybe they really did underestimate the activists thinking that they have no access to the internet.
And because I am connected to more than one egroup, I receive all kinds of emails. And whenever I receive the middle class sentiment, I reply by forwarding the activist sentiment. Not as a statement, no. I have to deny it here lest the stupid police accuse me of “inciting to sedition” whatever that means, but to open the other side of the debate. A lot of my high school friends and even families relate to the middle class sentiment. I forward the activist sentiment to douse the self-glorified middle class voice with cold water, as the activist letters speak not just middle class truths, because they are also part of the middle class, but they also reflect and speak for the majority of the poor.
I see the clash of social classes now in my inbox everyday. It is not only real, but more importantly, sad. Filipinos who used to cut across and go beyond shallow social status for a cause are now divided, not just by class, but by snobbishness, condescending arrogance, callousness and self-centeredness. That to me is the saddest thing of all, and probably the only glaring, brighter-than-daylight realization for me in this pretentious “which-side-are-you-on” fight.
Funny thing is, I'm sure they are all from the middle class. - #-
As proclamation 1017 was dropped and then lifted, media and the noisy people rallying are left in a limbo on the vagueness of the state now. People are getting picked up by going to rallies. As usual, activists sound off their disgust of GMA in the streets where they were most comfortable. This “taking freedom of expression to the streets” has indeed been proven successful in EDSA 1 and 2, and in exercising their right to be heard. But unlike EDSA 1 and 2, the middle class is conspicuously absent in the rallies nowadays. We take middle class here to encompass upper middle class, middle class and lower middle class. These are the working people, claiming to be the silent majority paying taxes, moving at the last minute giving the final push to the peaceful revolts that spanned two decades.
But lo and behold, they are not silent. They may be invisible on the streets but they have brought their sentiments out and turned to the tools at their very reach – the internet, and their voices are singing a different tune. As the untiring activists scream their loathing to a cheat and lying president, the middle class that would rather not go to the streets, because they have work to do and they have to earn a living, says they are now too tired. And in their tiredness, they have resorted to belittling activists.
When I first read a letter that sounded like this, it made me laugh, more because obviously the author was trying to be funny and typical with Filipino humor, sometimes they have to strike out at others to elicit a laugh from their audience. But then that one letter became two, then three, and it is much angrier and more serious. The haughtiness and disdain are real.
What they have failed to realize is that the people on the streets are not just paying taxes, but some lead groups of people, and communities, and some own and manage their businesses. And they have access to internet, too.
Now it is a war on the net. Both sides whip out strong words, producing eloquent documents, seemingly trying to prove the more rightful stand. But the whippings were with spits of fire, leaving the reader hurting and condemned if one does not agree to their sentiments. To counter the accusation of not caring what happens to the country, the middle class lashes out at those on the streets. They hold up their shields of jobs and needing to earn for their families. They strike back with scorn for those that do, saying the people who go to the streets are those that have no jobs and are not paying their taxes making them not just unproductive but useless members of the communities having nothing better to do but bring the country and the economy down.
Maybe they really did underestimate the activists thinking that they have no access to the internet.
And because I am connected to more than one egroup, I receive all kinds of emails. And whenever I receive the middle class sentiment, I reply by forwarding the activist sentiment. Not as a statement, no. I have to deny it here lest the stupid police accuse me of “inciting to sedition” whatever that means, but to open the other side of the debate. A lot of my high school friends and even families relate to the middle class sentiment. I forward the activist sentiment to douse the self-glorified middle class voice with cold water, as the activist letters speak not just middle class truths, because they are also part of the middle class, but they also reflect and speak for the majority of the poor.
I see the clash of social classes now in my inbox everyday. It is not only real, but more importantly, sad. Filipinos who used to cut across and go beyond shallow social status for a cause are now divided, not just by class, but by snobbishness, condescending arrogance, callousness and self-centeredness. That to me is the saddest thing of all, and probably the only glaring, brighter-than-daylight realization for me in this pretentious “which-side-are-you-on” fight.
Funny thing is, I'm sure they are all from the middle class. - #-
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