DYSTOPIAS

ALL these environmentalist posts I made yesterday on Facebook, of the YouTube videos above profiling this year's non-partisan Goldman Environmental Prize awardees, could perhaps together have acted (qua posts/shares) as also my way of explaining to my Facebook friends why I cannot be for the Bongbong Marcoses and the Mar Roxases and the San Miguel Corporation-backed Grace Poes of this world, and why I cannot be a loyalist of any of them, unlike some of these Facebook friends of mine. And I said I'm sorry, even though I can't really be.
    Now, the non-partisan, anti-loyalist rationale behind those Facebook posts or shares is also what's behind my belief that says . . . the Duterte government's support for, on the one hand, environmentalist baby Gina Lopez and, on the other, mining baby Bongbong Marcos, is really nothing more than a fragment of Rodrigo Duterte's Big Tent ploy to get contending forces inside his government to fight it out on policies; he'll just watch who will finally come out the winner. And these contending forces will continue to fight it out from under that Big Tent while he, the President, dangles to all of them bits of promises to keep them all within his side of the fence and still in line, so he can do whatever he wants from that secret of a soul that he has, unimpeded by any real opposition, if ever there is going to be much of an opposition left in this everyone-promised landscape. It is my belief that this Big Tent ploy is certain to unravel in the end, although the pessimist in me senses that that unraveling will not likely be happening soon, despite recent changes in the Cabinet, which were minor. So, the Bongbong Marcoses and Gina Lopezes operating within such Big Tent governments as Duterte's will continue to fight it out from within their shared Big Tent matrix, with the Dutertes of Big Tent governance laughing all the way to the (seas') horizon to meet the oncoming realization of their public and private utopias.
    The current formation of impending utopias will shape the dystopias of our tomorrow. Our dystopias. Mine, and my Facebook friends', whichever side of the various loyalisms they now happily belong to. Our planet’s natural environment has its own big tent, and it is somewhat of a dictator itself: it asks us now whether we’re for it or against it. In the end, it doesn’t really care about us. [S / -I]