In the face of this mockery of forgiveness, there is a reason for resentment. According to sociologists Murphy and Hampton, the primary value defended by resentment is self-respect. A person who does not resent moral injuries done to him is almost necessarily a person lacking in self-respect. The land of the free has been forced to spread its legs for a mustached criminal with a pompadour, and then rewards that same man with a handshake and a kiss. So he walks away with a smirk, the same way so many of the men and women who violated the country have, so much so that rape is something we expect. So we rail at the pinpricks, condemn the Malu Fernandezes, petition the producers of “Desperate Housewives,” in the hope that we can get some of that lost dignity. And that’s well and good, it proves we’re still alive—but are doctors and OFWs the only people we’re willing to stand up for?
By all means, let us resent—resent the moral injury against the country, resent the arrogance that assumes we are so lacking in ego that we care nothing for our dignity. Resentment is both a protest against injustice and a defense of self-respect. We’re the battered wives who take every blow and forgive the drunken louts who smile at us the next morning. We’re the admiring crowd that steps aside for the tall woman with a thousand shoes. What Nietzsche says applies to the Filipino—here, forgiveness is a vice, not a virtue.
This pardon does not mean stability, or healing, or justice. It is Estrada’s middle finger shoved up the country’s collective consciousness, but it’s happened so often that it feels almost normal.
- Patricia Evangelista
By all means, let us resent—resent the moral injury against the country, resent the arrogance that assumes we are so lacking in ego that we care nothing for our dignity. Resentment is both a protest against injustice and a defense of self-respect. We’re the battered wives who take every blow and forgive the drunken louts who smile at us the next morning. We’re the admiring crowd that steps aside for the tall woman with a thousand shoes. What Nietzsche says applies to the Filipino—here, forgiveness is a vice, not a virtue.
This pardon does not mean stability, or healing, or justice. It is Estrada’s middle finger shoved up the country’s collective consciousness, but it’s happened so often that it feels almost normal.
- Patricia Evangelista
