Here in Tagaytay City and environs, Aguinaldo Highway is so full of vehicles that there are traffic jams at critical junctions.

?There are so many tourists,? I mutter, and my daughter laughs at the note of disdain that has, apparently, crept into my voice when talking about weekend visitors ever since we moved into our weekend home.

At the new Robinson?s Supermarket, shoppers are crammed into the fresh fruits section and we cannot help but join them in the search for round fruits, talismans of good fortune and protection against the bad luck that the coming year promises.

Isn?t it pathetic? All we can do to stave off the round of worse news coming our way?after two months of really bad news?is to surround ourselves with symbols of good luck. All in the hope that the symbolism will somehow rub off on us. If fortune will not smile on us and take us to a higher tax bracket in 2009, we simply hope that we will at least be shielded from the harsher effects of recession, the credit crunch and mass homecomings of overseas Filipino workers.

Maybe this explains the rather desperate air at the fruits section, with many of us grabbing at whatever orb-like fruit is available and squeezing through the tight aisles to look for more. Perhaps it is the knowledge that there is little we can do to shield ourselves from the crisis. How can we initiate a defense plan when we can barely comprehend what?s going on? And how can we judge the soundness of various solutions proposed by authorities when we hardly understand the causes of the problem? So we take them at their word, hoping that this time they truly will help us out of the woods.

* * *

But what can we do to cushion the blows of the harsh future, apart from filling our baskets and trays with good luck charms?

For many, the mantra has become ?love your job,? for you are lucky simply to be holding on to one at the moment. Things may not look so rosy, the boss may be cantankerous and petty, and the penitence involved may outweigh the perks of the job. But love it just the same. At this point, it?s the only job you have, and may ever find in the near future.

Cutting costs is also another survival tactic. The Electricity Nazi who looks uncannily like the hubby is ever more relentless in his monitoring of lights left on, TV sets still on standby mode, electric fans buzzing with nobody in the room. A new rule in our home is that there have to be at least two people in the master?s bedroom before the air-conditioner can be turned on. He measures distances traveled in our daily commutes, and we spend hours over dinner planning the next day?s route, to take him and my daughter to work and me on my various appointments, in the most economical means possible. Gas prices may be going down, but every centavo still counts, so cost-cutting has become the brand-new hobby of the desperate middle class.

* * *

An editorial in this paper said the story of the fracas on the golf course involving the De la Paz family and that of the politically influential Pangandamans is a ?nightmare for the middle class? of this country.

By and large, the bourgeoisie, the class that ranges from schoolteachers to jeepney drivers, from professionals to employees, from families of overseas Filipino workers to office schleps, is an invisible, silent cohort. We don?t have the teeming numbers that give the poor their power; nor do we have the wealth and influence of the truly rich. All we have are thin margins of security?some savings, a home or an apartment we are renting, a steady income, reasonable good health (for some, a health crisis is enough to drive us south of the poverty line)?and not much else. We are not easily angered, and even while we are seething inside, we rarely get our act together to give vent to our emotions. Our pleasures are simple, including a round of golf on weekends for those in the upper bracket of our class.

So it is indeed a nightmare for a family like the De la Pazes to suddenly find themselves confronting the naked brutality of the political and social elite. I heard on radio the son of Agrarian Reform Secretary Nasser Pangandaman, who is himself a public official being a town mayor, defend himself against charges that he and his companions ganged up on the De la Paz family?a father, his 14-year-old son and 18-year-old daughter. It was the elder De la Paz who started the fight, Pangandaman said, and whatever blows he landed were only in self-defense.

As De la Paz and others have pointed out, it seems illogical for a father to instigate a fight against five grown men when he only had his teenage son and daughter with him. And the fact that it was De la Paz?s daughter who broke the story by writing about it in her blog indicates that at least from her point of view, they were the aggrieved party. They were also the first to file charges against the Pangandamans. Everything the secretary and his son the mayor has done since seems only part of a cover-up.

* * *

Middle-class Filipinos, as with our counterparts elsewhere, fervently wish only to be left alone. We do not aspire for a revolution or to gain more power. We only want sufficient freedom to pursue our professions, make a little money, and live as we please.

But when one can get beaten up in the middle of a golf course, with security guards, receptionists, caddies and officials looking the other way or even warning that it?s unwise to cross the other party because ?they have guns,? then even the faint sense of security we aspire to is blown to smithereens.

Nobody has any illusions anymore that we live in a democracy, or in an equitable society. Not when people in power can trample us underfoot. Not when a public official apologizes but refuses to accept responsibility. And not when that official?s boss blithely ignores the scandal.