Do You Hate Duterte? Think: Hate Is An Option

MANILA: After noon today I was talking to Willie V at St Marc Café at the UP Town Center in Diliman and I happened to mention that the next essay I am going to write is this one, with this title: "Do You Hate Duterte? Hate Is Not An Option!" With that title, I'm telling you not to hate. As you can see, I have revised the second part of the title a little to remove the negative and instead put an eye-opener: "Think: Hate Is An Option." In other words, I'm only leading you to the choice of taking the option other than hate. I'm reminding you that you always have a choice.

It was Flarino Fauta, whom I don't know, sharing on Facebook a Manila Times link, "Crimes vs humanity everyone's concern" that prompted this essay; it was activist-lawyer former Senator Rene Saguisag speaking (manilatimes.net):

President Duterte, Justice Secretary Vit Aguirre and Sen Manny Pacquiao may have no right, in my view, to sniff and condemn some of us as sub-humans and therefore cannot have human rights? Bizarre. An apology cannot really undo the damage done by rashness.

The President should not apologize for mistakenly identifying an alleged criminal but for naming and shaming anyone at all in gross violation of due process and the presumption of innocence.

You can feel the heat of the hate.

With Du30, hate is easy. Look at the image above and you get my message. (Image from Aljazeera (aljazeera.com) There is absence of any endearing old charm. You don't like what you see. "In time, we hate that which we often fear" – William Shakespeare.

I was telling Willie that at first, I hated, and I was crying (inside) with every reported death of drug users/pushers, with a teenager in my hometown of Asingan as one of the victims, the son of a friend. You cannot return a life after you feel sorry. Innocent or not, to the person, death is final because it is made executory.

Death, we don't want your sting. Death, we don't want your victory!

Here is a poem / meditation by John Donne that I memorized when I was in high school yet about 59 years ago, at least the first 4 and the last 4 lines (seen here, poemhunter.com):

No man is an island,
Entire of itself,
Every man is a piece of the continent,
A part of the main.
If a clod be washed away by the sea,
Europe is the less.
As well as if a promontory were.
As well as if a manor of thy friend's
Or of thine own were:
Any man's death diminishes me,
Because I am involved in mankind,
And therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls;
It tolls for thee.

All that jazz is a good reason for hate.

And then I realized that when I hated, I was the first victim of my hate!

I had forgotten my own advice of almost 10 years ago, published in the American Chronicle, now defunct, but which essay I preserved in my blog, The American Frank (see my essay "Primate Change? Or Climate Change? You Choose! – The Blogal Village Voice," 03 March 2007, wordpress.com); I now quote 2 lines occurring in different places in that essay:

Do not get mad, do not get madder, do not get even – get religion!

This I am aware of: The end of love is the end of wisdom. This I know: Hate hates haters; love loves lovers.

So to those who are Christian and unchristian, believers and unbelievers, doubters and trusters, religious and unreligious, keepers and fakers of the faith, rich and poor, educated or ignoramuses, bright minds and empty heads, I say it's easy to hate others:

Instead of the mirror, look at others. There's good reason to hate, right?

You have memorized much of the Bible and you can even cite the exact book, chapter and verse to support your assertion – those who cannot and you know who are bad? You know what to do.

Count the reported killings involved in President Rodrigo Duterte's War on Drugs and tally them against Du30. Feel your blood pressure rise.

You are a religious, you think Filipino values are slowly eroding, being twisted, and you are angry and you invite the faithful to rise up against barbarity. Don't mind that you are raising another kind of savagery.

Raise your right hand with a clinched fist because you have learned that Du30 has threatened to abrogate the 2014 Enhanced Defense Cooperation Agreement (EDCA). Raise your left hand, take a selfie while glaring at your imagined President because the Supreme Court has just reaffirmed the constitutionality of EDCA – and therefore, even the President cannot simply nullify it without risking his presidency.

Almost everyone hates Du30 on Facebook – why not you?

You don't have to go to a special place to learn to hate. In fact, in school, in church, in gatherings, and on Facebook, you can easily learn to hate.

You don't need any daily exercise to make it a habit to hate. Hate comes naturally. In Hamlet, Shakespeare says, "Frailty, thy name is woman!" As great a playwright as Shakespeare was, he was wrong; he should have written, "Frailty, thy name is man!" (man embracing woman) Everybody hates.

But here is practical advice, good for the high blood pressure or the hurt heart:

If you want to forget something or someone, never hate it, or never hate him/her. Everything and everyone that you hate is engraved upon your heart; if you want to let go of something, if you want to forget, you cannot hate – C JoyBell C.

The great ones did nothate:

Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that – Martin Luther King Jr.

Stronger than lover's love is lover's hate. Incurable, in each, the wounds they make – Euripides.

Now there is a final reason I think that Jesus says, "Love your enemies." It is this: that love has within it a redemptive power. And there is a power there that eventually transforms individuals. Just keep being friendly to (those people). Just keep loving them, and they can't stand it too long. Oh, they react in many ways in the beginning. They react with guilt feelings, and sometimes they'll hate you a little more at that transition period, but just keep loving them. And by the power of your love they will break down under the load. That's love, you see. it is redemptive, And this is why Jesus says love. There's something about love that builds up and is creative. There is something about hate that tears down and is destructive – Martin Luther King.

If you don't learn to love, here is my final paragraph and final warning coming out of 2007:

Primates, unless we make a paradigm shift to love, in time Planet Earth will make a parabola shift and launch us in a well-deserved orbit either toward the sun (fire) or away from the sun (ice) – then Robert Frost's poem "Fire And Ice" will finally show us poetic justice.

One final thing. When I was telling Willie about this essay, in fact I only had the title in mind, no draft yet, not even a single phrase written. Now that I'm at this finishing point, if you have been following me, you can see that my creative writing is even better now that hate is not in my hidden agenda. I feel much better too!

Think.

Hate is a bait. "You're beginning to dislike me, aren't you? Well, dislike me. It doesn't make any difference to me now" – W Somerset Maugham.

Think better.

"I will permit no man to narrow and degrade my soul by making me hate him" – Booker T Washington. Uncle Him wants you to hate; why do you oblige? "Hate hurts the hater more'n the hated" – Madeleine L'Engle.

Think best!

"Hate is a lack of imagination" – Graham Greene. If you want to be more creative, know that hate is not an option. Hate hates haters; love loves lovers. High creativity is a whole parallel universe. If you want to be highly creative, know that hate is a box – think out of the box!

04 October 2016. Essay word count, excluding this line: 1387