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Why not wait for the campaign which begins next year, and unleash all your ‘bombs’ against Sara Duterte?
WILLIAM Safire wrote a speech for Spiro Agnew, the vice-president of Richard Nixon, in which the most memorable phrase was Agnew’s attack on the “nattering nabobs of negativism,” referring to the anti-Vietnam war critics of the administration.
Agnew described “a spirit of national masochism encouraged by an effete core of impudent snobs who characterize themselves as intellectuals.”
The disgraced Maryland politician can hardly be anyone’s role model of a statesman, and his use of the adjective “effete” is now politically incorrect. Yet speechwriter Safire made him the mouthpiece to revile the pretentious actuations of the vociferous few.
Yet this writer finds his description of those “nabobs” as befitting some of the Diehard Duterte Haters who simply see nothing good about the previous administration and have already prejudged the impeachment case against Vice-President Sara Duterte.
The latest outbursts of such negativism showed itself in the condemnation of the recent transfer of power from the Senate majority led by Tito Sotto to Alan Peter Cayetano.
Immediately these nattering nabobs of elite society, or those “legal experts and political analysts” who sound intellectually superior to the rest of the Filipino population when they criticize, nay, demonize the object of their undying hatred, pounced on those who defected from the camp of Tito into the tent of Alan Peter.
Conveniently they have pre-determined the guilt of Inday Sara over the accusations made in the House, accusations first brought out through a series of inquisitorial hearings in 2024 and refurbished this year with testimonies from fools or slanted evidence intended to demolish her integrity even if these are not conclusive of malfeasance.
The same House twitted her for not appearing before them, but why should anyone of proper mind dignify a lynch mob?
Now these nabobs of negativism have used every platform, from bishop pulpits to student councils to even alumni of universities who graduated the senatorial objects of their hatred.
And media, many of whom harbor resentment after a giant network was deprived of franchise under the previous dispensation, gives full play to the demolition.
Meanwhile, the silent but overwhelming majority, whether middle class, subsistence-paid working class and the poorest of our poor could not bother with the political noise, worrying instead about how the next meal could be sourced given the higher than high inflation.
And the leftists who previously decried how the ruling classes have amassed wealth at the expense of the many, have now become fronts in the trenches, simply because they thrive in chaos and still dream of capturing State power while the ruling classes clash among themselves.
All these for what?
To throw out a vice-president whose elected office holds no power unless the president dies, resigns, is impeached or is otherwise declared incapacitated.
What harm to the security of the State and the public welfare can the holder of a useless post do to us? Is that potential harm not the underlying reason why there is impeachment as a form of ultimate redress?
The president, by his own declaration, is as strong as a carabao, so why worry that your hated Duterte will take over?
The obvious intent, with consuming hatred disguised as exacting accountability, is to eliminate her from the presidential race two years hence.
Why not wait for the campaign which begins next year, and unleash all your “bombs” against her? Why not convince your santa-santita or build up a holy cow of an opponent against her in the meantime?
But no, these nattering nabobs of elite society, fueled by the greedy who dominate our politics, the handful of oligarchs who control our economy, and the contractors who fear proper accountability for their collusion with the dynasts in public works and other immensely corrupt deals, simply must finish their dirty demonizing, Now Na!
They call the new Senate majority “scoundrels” and have prejudged their conduct of the impeachment trial, even if an Alan Cayetano is an accomplished lawyer armed with competence that a Tito Sotto, despite years in entertainment and politics, cannot equal.
An impeachment trial requires competence in the law and its procedures, with a judge able to dismiss chaff from grain, empty accusations from the unvarnished truth, because while impeachment is a political act, the decision it renders must be legally defensible.
The Supreme Court justice then, Hilario Davide, presided over the unfinished trial of Estrada. Juan Ponce Enrile, inarguably one of the country’s most brilliant legal minds ever, presided over the conviction of a Supreme Court chief justice.
But the nabobs of elite society, most of them pretending to have the “proper” morals and the “competence” of the intellectual class, would rather have a presiding judge who entertains revising the 1987 Constitution which these guardians sanctify as “ark of their holy political covenant.”
The state of a hopelessly divided nation.
