MANILA, Philippines - You kind of remember the cold war when the US and the USSR kept a pacific front while their proteges fought their proxy war for them. The USSR propping up the socialist countries and supporting the wars of liberation in the Third World on one hand and the US propping up the ?Free World? and supporting the tyrants like Pinochet, Idi Amin, and Suharto/Marcos who were trampling democracy?along with the communists?underfoot on the other.

That?s how the war between GMA and JDV is coming along, the two of them trying to keep a pacific front, even a genial one in photo ops, while their progenies are battling it out in the open. It?s a vicious war just the same, though I for one am rooting for it all the way. It?s the kind of war you hope would end up in a Pyrrhic victory, the kind that devastates both sides.

The public can?t care much for either of them. I don?t. Not even for JDV notwithstanding that he?s at the receiving end of GMA?s most recent offensive (never has that word resonated with meaning) and has been desperately trying to cut an aggrieved, if not tragic, figure before the public. I refuse to forget that he and Fidel Ramos were the ones who flew to GMA?s side when the world had abandoned her for abandoning principle, or plain stealing the vote. If not for him and Ramos, GMA would not be there to torment anyone anymore. He deserves to be tormented this way, and more. I?m just waiting for when Ramos gets his just desserts too.

With her war against JDV, GMA will have completed her 180-degree turn. She will have spited the one person who shoved her to power and the one person who kept her there.

The first refers to Cory Aquino who, along with Jaime Cardinal Sin, was most responsible for spawning GMA in 2001. Well, Cardinal Sin is dead, so he needs only be showered with faint praise. But Cory is alive, so GMA has repaid her by calling for Edsa II to not be celebrated and for Ninoy?s killers to be set free. The second refers to JDV, toting the might of Congress as he did with him when he came to rescue the damsel in distress; Ramos brought with him only words of encouragement. JDV would go on to thwart every effort to impeach GMA, probably believing the Persian saying, ?You have saved my life, now you are responsible for it.? So now GMA repays him by ousting him as Speaker.

Didn?t the scorpion say, ?Alas, but it?s in my nature to sting??

JDV has two choices. He can go on buying GMA?s assurances that she is all for him while her sons gather the knives in Congress to stab him in the back, though I cringe at the Caesar image. Or he can do the country a service by making sure he doesn?t die?figuratively, of course, though his son will not discount its literal pass in his case?in vain. Tell all.

I did say the last time I wrote about this that he can take comfort from the fact that this country has a history of turning blackguards into white knights by a sudden, desperate and completely self-(pre)serving act of grace. Juan Ponce Enrile managed the transformation by holing up in Aguinaldo after Marcos discovered his plot and Chavit Singson did so by squealing on Erap after he survived an attempt by Atong Ang to ambush him?or so he thought. This country has the memory of an old XT computer (the kind that used floppies) and forgets villainy as easily as it forgives murderers. Maybe JDV can still reinvent himself.

But which brings me to the heart of the matter. Why on earth have we allowed ourselves to reach a pass where we are compelled to choose between GMA and JDV? Which is but the current version of what used to be a choice between GMA and Erap. Why on earth have we allowed the most corrupt, unprincipled and ruthless men and women to govern our destinies and left us only to pick the one or the other?

These are ?trapos? through and through, the word ?trapo,? or rag, nowhere being more appropriate. Rags are the repository of dirt whose ultimate destination is the garbage dump, or should be. We?ve excoriated entertainers for polluting politics with their breath. Well, ?trapos? are worse, far far worse. Entertainers only stop being entertaining when they are elected into office. Traditional politicians stop being traditional when they are elected into office only in the sense that they blaze new paths in crookedness, murderousness and ripping off the public. Pray, how does Prospero Nograles represent an improvement in our lives in place of De Venecia?

Even as the most exciting things are happening in the country that conscripted us into a terroristic ?war against terror,? the two leading Democratic candidates, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, heralding change, or at least promising an end to paranoia and Neo-Con imperialism, here we are mired ever deeper in the politics or greed and backstabbing, in the politics of blackness and evil.

I know that Napoleon said, ?Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.? Which has also been put as, ?Never interrupt your enemies when they are busy destroying themselves.? But surely now is the time for someone or some persons to rise from the ashes of this scorched land, like the unlikely Obama and Hillary, to vow to stop our free fall into a living hell, or hold the promise thereof? Even better, surely now is the time for all decent folk to cry out bitterly like the Prince of Verona who has just witnessed the tragic effects on the innocents of the enmity between the Montagues and Capulets, ?A plague on both your houses!?? Best of all, surely now is the time we rose as a people to exorcise these demons from our souls?

There is no honor among thieves. If that lesson should be plain to thieves, it should even be plainer to their victims.

Surely it?s time we did something about our lives being stolen from us?

More Inquirer columns

Previous columns:
Freedom 101 - 1/31/08
?Titser? - 1/29/08
War president - 1/28/08
Running scared ? 1/28/08