Achieving Happiness

She’s all better!
I mean, at least she’s not dying. She’s walking around now, and she’s masungit and stand-offish again (when she was sick she was too weak to be mataray). I always have a hard time getting her to look at the camera, or at least to not have her look away from the lens.
Thank you to to those who sent  kind wishes for Poofy, especially to Me-Ann.

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Nato Reyes in his blog Like a Rolling Store wrote an interesting and well-written entry about the third and final installment of the movies loosely based on the Robert Ludlum Bourne series, the Bourne Ultimatum. He said that the film gave an eye-opening tour of the inner workings of  the Human Security Act which is largely based on the US Patriot Act, as well as the over-all paranoid, always on the offensive orientation of the US military and intelligence  sector.
Kim and I saw the film last Saturday, and we were both freaked by the idea that what we were seeing was actual reality albeit tweaked to suit Hollywood and not to get the CIA or the Pentagon’s ire. But close enough, close enough.
Movies featuring the US military might and intelligence-gathering abilities are not so fantastic — meaning, they’re so closely based on reality. It’s been said that the contents of spy thrillers when it comes to description of technology, methods and means of extracting, collating and synthesizing information are based on real developments, existing technology that’s at most five to ten years old. 
As for the logic and rationality  behind  liquidation  operations against  civilian or diplomatic targets, well, there’s nothing new about that: it’s all cold-blooded reasoning and killing under the guise of protecting and defending US democracy and national security.
Unlike Nato, though, I was more interested in the workings of Jason Bourne’s mind. I mean, he was an assassin, and before he got amnesia, he believed that he was killing enemies of the US government and by extension, the American people. Then, when he was almost killed and his brain was swept clean of memories of his identity and mission as an assassin for the CIA, he had a change of heart (and mind) about what his work and what he thought he stood for. He was hunted down, but instead of simply asking why he was being hunted, he mainly sought to find out who he was and what he did in life to make him a target. He didn’t seem to have any problems about being hunted by the CIA (he knew what the CIA’s all about) , but he wondered why exactly was he a target.

I wonder if the rank and file of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) think the same way — that they’re defending democracy against the scourge of communism as embodied by the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and its supposed legal fronts; and that what they do — conduct military operations including the abduction and execution of political activists and human rights advocates — is in service of the greater good, for truth, justice, freedom and the Macapagal-Arroyo way.
To kill without question, without clear personal, rational understanding, how does one do that? Criminals do it all the time, I know — for financial gain, to protect their ill-gotten, narrow and immediate (okay, sometimes long-term) economic interests; but soldiers?
How do they justify themselves and their work? Trabaho lang? Sweldo at benepisyo lang? May malinaw at malalim ba silang dahilan sa pagtangan ng armas, at paggamit nito?
Am certain Jovito Palparan is nothing like Jason Bourne. Palparan never sounds or looks the slightest like a man who carries deep convictions or genuine love of country and the people. He looks and sounds like a  relatively intelligent serial killer whose main reason for killing is the thrill he gets from knowing that he has power over who lives and dies, when and how they will die.
I also doubt that there are are nights when Palparan (or any of his men, or ordinary members of the ISAFP) lies awake, sleepless, conscience-stricken, shocked and angry at himself for all that he has done in the name of protecting democracy.

In the meantime, there’s T/Sgt. Vidal Doble. I wonder how he really feels about the entire wire-tapping job he did and how he really reacted, what he really thought when he heard Pres. Arroyo telling Virgilio Garcillano to manipulate the May 2004 polls in her favor. Did he twink even the slightest? Did he laugh? Was he shocked, or did he even register the least surprise?

As for GMA, how the hell does she face herself in the mirror every morning? Does she actually believe that she’s a good person? It’s beyond me how anyone doesn’t go stark raving mad at the thought of having done nothing to stop the murder of over 900 civilians. Not a single tear, no expressions of remorse, no nothing.

I am always wondering about people’s motives, how they go about explaining themselves to themselves, how they justify their existence. Maybe most people simply live, they simply are, and ask no questions about  or analyze anything, I dunno.

I don’t know if they’re the lucky ones. Sometimes being socially and politically aware is a curse.

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If I were a character in the Matrix Trilogy, and Morpheus told me to choose between the red pill and the blue pill, I probably wouldn’t be able to make an immediate decision. And yet…

Sigh. I still took the red pill.

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