Can rape be ok? I blame the media

I don't think I am a judgmental person and I even thought I had a wide tolerance for ideas that do not coincide with mine. But the other night I almost stormed out of a conversation I was having with a driver of an FX vehicle while on the way to Ortigas.

At first the driver was just complaining about life's difficulties. To be polite, I nodded in agreement and even expressed my fear of future increases in the prices of basic goods and services. Encouraged by my response, he then went on to express his unsolicited views of things which made me wonder where he got his information and ideas.

First he blamed former President Cory Aquino and her supporters for being responsible for the high cost of electricity today because she "gave" back MERALCO to the Lopezes. For him it was only right that then President Marcos confiscated MERALCO from the Lopezes because according to him the latter owed the former dictator a huge amount that they could not pay back.

I knew right then that our conversation was going nowhere so I cut back on my chit chat and simply grunted an interjection of "is that so?" from time to time.

From there he proceeded to tell me of his time in Kuwait working as a waiter in a Japanese military base. He told me of the time when Iraq invaded Kuwait and the atrocities he witnessed committed by the invading Iraqi soldiers.

Among the things he witnessed was the rape of Kuwait women done openly on the streets and which he watched with his companions from their place of hiding.

My mistake was to ask if he knew of Filipinas having been raped. He said he did not personally witness any but he was sure there had been such rapes that happened in other cities.

What jolted me though was his comment that Filipinas who were raped were "lucky" because they were amply compensated by the Kuwait government for their ordeal and they became rich. He also said that those Filipinas probably did not mind what happened to them as what they experienced might have satisfied their natural urges as well.

I could not believe what I was hearing. I told him that rape is a horrible ordeal and that I don't think there is any amount that can compensate for it. There were other women passengers in the FX and I felt ashamed that I was in that kind of conversation with the driver. I just shut up and thought of just getting off the vehicle and walk the rest of my way to my destination. As I was late for my appointment though, I just decided to sit it out and tried to change our topic.

Reflecting on this incident, I was reminded that he was not the only man on the street that I had talked to with very strange ideas although his was especially repugnant. I once witnessed two people debating whether clouds can be higher than the moon. I also talked to a former seaman who believed that in the old days, trees can bear different kinds of fruits and that there were islands with caves that open and close which are used by sea pirates to hide their ships and loot.

The question in my mind was how many people think like these trio of crackpots(?) and how can adult Filipinos get to have such kind of thinking?

As I try to answer this question, I can only blame media for their failure to help upgrade and develop the quality of our minds. The big three broadcast media use the news to pursue profit and not to properly inform and educate the viewers. Thus in their attempt to attract viewership that will translate into ad revenues, they draw no line between items of public interest and showbiz entertainment. They focus on the sensational instead of the intellectual. They do not distinguish fact from fiction such as when they feature seers and fortune tellers speaking as authorities in their supernatural field.

In their greedy pursuit of profit, media has seriously damaged our mental infrastructure. We should not let them go on with this anymore.