The Merchandise is Worth Dying For

“He turned the power to the have-nots / And then came the shot”

– Rage Against the Machine, Wake Up

On August 21, 1983, a man took a plane home to his country knowing full well that he was most likely going to be killed. He did this for his convictions, his principles, and his beliefs.

And now we’re using him to sell shirts and sunglasses. The merchandise is worth dying for.

Twenty-five short years and we’ve already forgotten what it was like to live in a time when principles mattered, where standing up for what you believed in was an admirable trait, not an annoyance to tune out. Twenty-five short years and Ninoy is on our money and our clothes. We’ve handed his image over to a multinational advertising agency that doesn’t give a shit about what he did or what he stood for, to companies using him to raise money and get tax breaks from charitable donations.

You’re Ninoy? Please.

“Fist in the air in the land of hypocrisy”

- Rage Against the Machine, Wake Up

I’m not sure I would have seen eye to eye with the man if he were still alive. I’m pretty sure I would find him sanctimonious and possibly irritatingly self-righteous.

But I would have respected his convictions, and his willingness to subject his beliefs and principles to the test. Ultimately the final test killed him.

But ideas are bulletproof.

Unfortunately, they’re also subject to subversion, corruption, and decay.

And that is precisely what has happened.

The merchandise is worth dying for.

“So called facts are fraud
They want us to allege and pledge
And bow down to their God
Lost the culture, the culture lost
Spun our minds and through time
Ignorance has taken over
Yo, we gotta take the power back!”

– Rage Against the Machine, Take the Power Back

He died so we can get further in foreign debt? He died so we can continue to pay taxes to a government that no longer governs, but simply rules? He died so that fatcat businessmen can carve up our country into smaller and smaller pieces for them to keep for themselves while the rest of us starve, while the rest of us labor day and night to pay the taxes that keep them fat and corrupt? He died so that the politicians no longer fear the population that they are supposed to be serving, that they are supposed to represent?

Why do we send the worst of ourselves to be our representatives?

What the hell are we doing? We escaped the darkness and tyranny of twenty years of autocratic rule and systematic oppression, into what? Pointless consumerism? A declining standard of living, of education, of public healthcare and infrastructure? The farce of the administration and the so-called opposition, both sides standing for no principle greater than greed and stupidity?

This is it? This is what he died for? To be reduced to level of Che Guevarra, adorning the shirts of people who have no clue or respect for what these people have accomplished?

And now they get to be Ninoy, too? They get to pretend they bled out on that tarmac? They get to lie in that casket? They get to claim credit for a revolution that was nothing short of a miracle?

The merchandise is worth dying for.

‘iamninoy’?

Don’t make me laugh! Don’t make me punch you in the fucking face for this travesty. Because I will.

And then they try to scare us into letting them stay in power because of a nebulous fear that the alternative will be worse? That chaos would prevail if they did not dictate what we can do or can’t do, say or can’t say, think or can’t think?

Is that a threat?

Then let chaos prevail.

You are not Ninoy. WE are Ninoy, the people. Not the ‘masses’ or the ‘elite’ or the ‘bourgeoisie’, empty categories used to divide the population — and a divided population is easier to quell. No, every single person out there who has been elbowed out by fat bureaucrats, corrupt clergymen, and media spin doctors who want to hog the teat of the motherland, everyone who’s been marginalized and underrepresented just so Congressman Blowhard can watch another boxing match in Las Vegas, just so our corrupt little leaders can feed their corrupt little broods at the expense of all of us.

Us. The people. Everyone who remembers what EDSA was really all about, before the politicians and the Church and the spoiled families of our heroes claimed the credit for themselves. We are Ninoy, not them.

We are Ninoy. And they should be very very afraid of us.

Because we are willing to die for what we believe.

…So what do we believe in?