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Are you hooked on the Fox action/drama series Prison Break?
In the episode where Michael Scofield’s gang
finally broke out, riding a van toward freedom, my similarly
addicted nephew blurted out in exasperation that they can’t
possibly get away. They’d be found out by the police checkpoint
for sure!
Of course the checkpoints were set up when
prison authorities alerted law enforcement about the jailbreak, but
it wasn’t this type of checkpoint that my nephew had in mind.
He imagined the checkpoints are natural fixtures
of the landscape without a massive jailbreak.
I recently had an opportunity to take part in a
US State Department-organized reporting tour for foreign
journalists. The program included a long drive in the wilderness.
Not once did I see a checkpoint.
It struck me how different the conditions there
are to ours.
In private- and government-owned buildings in
Washington, DC, no security guards rummaged through your purse
before letting you in. No security guards at all, actually.
Even at airports, no security guards skulked by
the entrance. And you don’t get pat down after stepping past the
metal detector after checking in.
A couple of protesters standing vigil outside
the White House had become a sort of attraction to tourists that
milled about. Security cameras and a police car were parked right in
front, sure, but nobody shooed the picketers away.
It struck me how a scenario like this is
unthinkable in Malacañang.
At one point during the trip, we had to abandon
our tour bus on the side of the road because it was impossible to
maneuver along a narrow dirt mountain path we were taking.
When we got back hours later, the bus was still
there in the exact condition that we left it. It was not vandalized.
However, leaving a vehicle in the middle of
nowhere and expecting it to still be there when you get back is less
difficult to imagine here than authorities tolerating a picket just
outside the palace grounds.
It’s not difficult to find justifications why
we do not have the same liberties in the US.
The US is not facing a two-pronged insurgency
with communists on one side and Muslim separatists on the other.
That and the robbery gangs would explain why checkpoints do not
litter the landscape of rural America.
People in the Rockies, where we deserted the
tour bus for a few hours, might not be desperately poor to hijack a
vehicle that’s difficult to hide. There just aren’t enough
people in the area, period.
The small sacrifices to privacy that we give
up—like surrendering our bags for inspection or being patted
down—help us all keep vigilant against the enemies of the state.
Somehow, these reasons just do not sound as good
anymore.
These concerns would sound shallow when pitted
against bigger problems like massive corruption, the rice shortage
or the rising prices of fuel. True. But attention is always focused
on these serious problems we rarely pay attention to other things.
We just take for granted that these are small
sacrifices for the greater good.
But I wonder if we can back what we’ve given
up when the time comes that the twin insurgencies are resolved or
when the economy has improved enough that there aren’t as many
desperately poor people?
I still remember the time when my bag wasn’t
inspected at the mall or when joking about plane crashes or bombs in
the airport wasn’t a criminal offense. My nephew and his
generation have no recollection of any of that.
How can they demand for something that they are
unconscious of?
All I’m saying is that there is another way to
exist but it takes an effective government to make it possible. The
Filipino people—especially the ordinary Filipinos—have been
asked to sacrifice too much too many times already.
johnnavg@hotmail.com
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