I SAW Raul Gonzalez on TV fuming. He was mad about it, he said, and wouldn't mind seeing the perpetrators burn in hell or in the electric chair, or words to that effect. He was referring to the authors of the bank robbery in Laguna, which left a trail of bodies in its wake, the product not of a bloody shootout but of a cold-blooded execution. All the victims were shot in the head.

It is something to fly into a rage about, the way the beheading of 10 hostages by the Abu Sayyaf last year was. That one also stoked government to fury. "We cannot tolerate these barbaric acts," said Army spokesman Ernesto Torres. "The beheadings once again demonstrate the Abu Sayyaf's ruthlessness and strengthens our resolve to neutralize them," said Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

True enough, some crimes cry out to the heavens for retribution, and as I said last Tuesday this one does. It's not just the number of the dead, though the mathematics of death matters grievously as well, at least to the bereaved. It's the way they died too. The only thing more horrific than madness is perverted logic. You can understand how in the heat of battle, a crazed combatant might commit an atrocity, beheading enemies or gunning down men, women and children in villages. You cannot understand how in the quiet of peace, or in the womb of a bank or jungle, a perfectly sober person would deliberately wreak wholesale carnage. The first for all its madness retains some reason; the second for all its calculation boggles the mind.

But if that is so, how can you seethe with rage over the systematic execution of the Laguna bank employees and not burn with greater fury at the methodical execution of political activists and journalists? How can you cry out for unsheathing the sword of vengeance or retribution, whichever comes first or more handily, at the authors of the Laguna massacre and not shout for unleashing the Furies or letting fall the hand of justice, whichever comes last or more forcefully, at the perpetrators of the nationwide slaughter? For while fuming at the atrocity in Laguna, Gonzalez has been laughing at the obscenity in the country for several years now. While being furious at the cold-blooded execution of the hostages in a bank, Gonzalez has been facetious over the cold-blooded "salvaging" of abductees by cops and soldiers.

You can understand how in the heat of battle, crazed soldiers might commit a savage act, wreaking a massacre upon a village. You cannot understand how in the quiet of peace, or in the tomb of cities and in the dead of day, government can commit a barbaric act, wreaking wholesale slaughter upon some of the country's best and brightest. That's what the journalists and political activists are, the latter often in the flush of youth--they are some of the country's best and brightest. The first for all its senselessness retains some sense; the second for all its justification is unforgivable.

Find the Laguna killers and let them burn in hell? Jovito Palparan is still free and enjoying heaven. He's still committing atrocities while at it--if, these days, of quite another kind.

If you can get mad at what happened to the hostages in Laguna, you have to get madder at what has been happening to the activists and journalists who are hostage to government's policy of keeping "killing fields." As numbers go, compared to the latter, the Laguna massacre looks like a footnote to the annals of horror. The sheer abundance of political activists and journalists killed in this country has so alarmed the world community it has been railing against the "culture of impunity" that has made murder our fastest growing cottage industry.

If you can get mad at the pitilessness with which the bank robbers in Laguna shot their hostages in the head, you have to get madder at the mercilessness with which cops and soldiers seize union officials and strike leaders, often from the embrace of their wives and children, and make them reappear with bullet wounds in their heads. The latter is no less savage and barbaric because the murder was not seen, or because the bodies materialized only later in a state of decomposition. Which is more horrifying, the lack of compunction with which the bank robbers gunned down a bank manager, whose only crime was to be in the right place at the wrong time, or the lack of trepidation with which government agents kidnapped and most probably "salvaged" the son of the one journalist who helped free this country from tyranny, whose only crime was, just like his father, to do the right thing whatever the time?

That brings me to the last thing about why, if you can get mad at the massacre of the employees of a bank in Laguna, you have to get madder at the pogrom of activists and journalists in this country. Which is that the atrocity in Laguna was wreaked by people you expect to commit atrocity, while the obscenity in this country is being wreaked by an entity tasked with maintaining decency, or a reasonable facsimile thereof. The perpetrators of the Laguna massacre are outlaws, they carry with them a sentence to be shot and killed on sight. The perpetrators of the slaughter of activists and journalists are the law, they carry with them a mandate to protect the citizens. Who is the viler criminal, the one who murders cold-bloodedly while existing outside the community and living the life of the hunted, or the one who murders wantonly while holding pride of place in the community and enjoying the pelf and privilege of the hunter?

By all means let's rail at the malevolence that was the Laguna massacre. But to froth in the mouth over it while curling the same mouth into a sneer over a bigger monstrosity, that's not being mad.

That's just being stark raving mad.