One ought expect that Christmas month would be 31 days of easy relaxation and fun. But not so for us in professions where work always picks up rather than ease off with the coming of Christmas. For Cebuanos, Christmas is only prelude to the City fiesta of the Sto. Niño, the Sinulog festival, and this year: the International Eucharistic Congress.
And so it will be hard hectic work till the end of January. Expect the traffic to get even worse. Expect no rest till Valentine’s Day.
But Cebu is, of course, becoming a big city. And big cities never rest. They hardly even sleep at all as the song goes.
Cebu is a sleepless city, much like so many others in the world right now.
December is an anachronism. The name itself ought refer to the tenth month of the year. But it does not. “Dece” is the Latin for ten. A quick look-up in the net tells us how the calendar itself had gone through many official revisions over the years. The years themselves used to start in March and no months were assigned for the days of winter.
Can they do that? Yes, indeed.
The months of the year are as arbitrary as everything else, especially in the old days when Roman emperors called the shots with the calendar. As with everything else, they were tyrannical in this. They knew they ruled Rome. They thought Rome was the whole universe. As if the planet and stars obeyed their whim. Here, might one go into a musing on the vanity of power. And then realize how tyranny often leads to stupidity, leading eventually to downfall.
Nice thought for those who soften to the idea of electing Neo-fascists to political positions like president.
And he had written earlier how there seems to be a resurgence of fascism all over the world now. And the saddest example of it seems to be in the United States; but not exclusively there. We have our own homegrown politicians and citizens who think that the best way to solve our problems is by electing people who are willing to do what others are not willing to do. Such as kill or murder for the “good” of all.
It is an infantile dream.
Such a dream must be dreamt by sleepless people who in their sleeplessness do not read history. Otherwise, they should have read about the World War II dictator Benito Mussolini and the Latin word, fascio littorio; which word stands for a bundle of rods tide around an axe. It was the symbol of early 20th century fascism. In ancient Rome, civic officials commanded its use for corporeal punishment and even executions which would be as arbitrary as the magistrate required. It was as appropriate to Mussolini’s fascism as the twisted cross was to Hitler’s Germany.
In a fit of nightmarish musing, one wonders what the symbol would be if neofascism should ever take hold here in the Philippines. This is, if neofascist politicians are elected into office.
To be clear, neofascists are those who condone murder and extra-judicial killings as state policy, albeit illegal and done sub-rosa. This last meaning: beyond the pale of people’s knowledge. Or put another way: under the table so the state is not held accountable. Again, to be absolutely clear, this would not be the first time this sort of fascism was ever practiced here. European fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain, was born out of a fear of communism. Martial law was really something of a fascist movement to counter communism here as well.
The neofascism proposed here, on the other hand, is something of a panacea against disorder and lawlessness. The state machineries, the regular police, the judiciary cannot catch crooks fast enough or even effectively. So why not work away from the legal machineries. Why not just murder crooks? And be done with it. The problem is that the word crook is such a mysterious and arbitrary term. And if the executioners themselves decide who the crooks are, then crooks could mean anybody: their enemies, political opposition, you, even he. So why would people even consider it?
One can only conclude that the people who want things done this way are people who live inside a dark fear. Power and fear are always a bad combination. And so the good symbol for local neofascism might as well be a cross. Not the Christian cross. It must be the cross of an executioner’s axe. And since the people who dream of this sort of vigilante order are really dreaming of a superhero to rid them of their fears, the axe might as well wear a dark blue cape, with red underwear wrapped around its handle.
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