Starter Book on Politics

Not just your everyday political democracy but royalty descended from divinity.

This started as a thought on the first book I ever purchased then went on to the first book officially owned all by my bratty self, without share of bragging rights with my older siblings.

It was a book entitled "Ang Masasayang Bata = The Happy Children", a requirement book in grade 1. The book was about happy children who are virtuous or about virtuous children who are happy. It was big and every page was illustrated with a well-fed, smiling boy and a pink, happy looking girl overlooked either by a proud parent or an angelic angel every page of their virtuous life. At the top of each page a virtue: ang masasayang bata ay matulungin. In the middle, the illustrations: of the boy helping the girl cross the street with the ever present angel at their backs. At the bottom the translation: happy children are helpful.

Then I have an epiphany, the images of the angel, parents and children were the images of the "divine Marcoses", back when they were at the height of their delusions of grandeur. When they make believe they were descended from the gods and the Filipinos were their subjects. Anyone who has read Imelda's books would know what I'm talking about. That "royal family portrait" in one of her books was all over my bilingual first book. Of course no one in my hometown ever saw that portrait until after they were kicked out of Malacañang and the treasures in it were revealed to the public for the first time. But I'm pretty certain everyone saw the ubiquitous first couple portrait so I wonder now if my parents and teachers saw the similarities of the book illustrations to the Marcoses and what did they think when it occurred to them that the father in the book looked a lot like their president or prime minister or whatever Marcos called himself during his dictatorship. Whatever they thought they would have kept quite unless it was a practice in ass licking kind of thoughts.

If they could have a great painting of their divinity, why not make a book about it too and feed it to the innocents. Start them young on the proper reverence for divinity and royalty. The book is somewhere at home in my province. The details of the Marcoses's delusions of grandeur are rarely mentioned in Philippine history books and it should be because it was part and parcel of that whole era.