Intolerance in the ‘Land of Freedom’

New York City—It is something else to watch CNN International or Fox News in the comfort of a Filipino home across the vast Pacific, protected on our eastern flank by a great ocean, and on our western shores by several seas and continents, creating a physical barrier that allows our myopic infatuation with local politics to insulate us from world events.

It is quite another to actually hear of spreading fears and hate right in the neighborhood where these happen and then, stepping outside and having to look over your shoulder, wary that what violence and terrorism seen on television might not suddenly become a personal reality.

That American media are focusing on the Orlando massacre as a homophobic assault against the LGBT community more than as an ISIS-inspired act of terrorism reflects a disturbing reality.

We suspect it is a form of denial. In substance, it is both a hate crime and an act of terror. June is the month for gay rights and the repercussions that ISIS had once again slipped through home security would be too messy to contemplate.

The focus on LGBT rights, however, does not dilute its heinousness in any manner. In fact, the LGBT aspect deepens the hate, racism and cultural foundations of this demonism more than we imagine these conflicts to be.

From whatever perspective, it is still all about extremism and deadly intolerance in the land where freedom is most cherished and tolerance a necessary and basic ingredient.

Back home, both the sympathetic feelings and the apparent ironies might not run as deep or as passionate for freedom. Filipino reactions lie in surrender and tolerance.

Tolerance is integral to our legendary resilience.

Unfortunately, there is another that is integral. Our myopia. That’s not very flattering. And that is even more disturbing than active denial. Part of it comes from parochiality, ignorance and the inability to relate to global events.

Test it. Ask most Filipinos to spell out or perhaps just simply define what the letters I-S-I-S or I-S-I-L means. Despite its murderous rampage in the Middle East where a good number of Filipinos have sought better employment, back home, not many will be able to give a satisfactory answer. Ask how those behind those same letters affect Filipino lives and the answers go from moderate ignorance to almost sheer apathy.

Even with a separatist movement a scant hour’s flight south of Manila, there is no real fear of related political violence in most of our traffic-congested streets. We do not experience that kind of deep-set anxiety as we congregate in large groups for those activities typical in the land of the free where a mixture of both fear and defiance have set in.

While the American LGBT community declared that the exercise of freedoms would continue, these were, nevertheless, amid tears and dread.

We do not share the same global fear of terror, save for those in Mindanao. There, in its war-torn areas where soldiers hamlet communities and heads are occasionally lopped off, the story is different.

But still, the Philippines does not boast of freedom among its most cherished values. We also do not quickly engage those who threaten it, whether incendiary differences are cultural, religious or political. Note how we value freedom. When we celebrated our independence there was embarrassingly little pomp and pageantry of the same kind Americans celebrate theirs with.

Perhaps, that is where our apathy lies. Our inability to discern differences, connect to bigger pictures and empathize with global principles. It is easier to simply surrender and allow ourselves to be swallowed up. It is less hurting.

After Orlando the Americans are hurting because they engage those who threaten their freedoms. They are globalists. We are not. And we do not hurt because we are apathetic.