Manila, Philippines. A nation weeps, or at least feigns weeping for the cameramen, after a classroom in the tranquil town of Tagaytay was transformed into a slaughterhouse by a student nursing a grudge. Three bodies, two of them children of privilege, one of them a teacher who probably just wanted a quiet retirement, now lie cooling under fluorescent lights.
The culprit? A boy, they say. A boy who was tired of being bullied.
A boy who decided that the only way to silence his tormentors was to silence them permanently. And now the global machinery of fear grinds into motion. Calls for mental health support.
Outcry over school security. The usual paraphernalia of hollow gestures. But ask yourself this, dear reader: when will we admit that the real disease is not the bullying, not the guns, not the lax security, but the fundamental absurdity of a society that herds its young into institutions that mimic prisons and expects them to emerge as angels?
The boy, whose name I will not dignify with repetition, is now a statistic. Another data point in the endless graph of human stupidity. The Philippines, like so many other nations, will now engage in the sacred ritual of Doing Something.
They will form committees. They will debate policies. They will probably ban something irrelevant.
And the next bully, the next ostracised child, will take note. This is not a story about a school shooting. This is a story about the theatre of safety, the illusion of order, the eternal human craving for a villain.
Here, the villain is a child. But the real villain, the one who orchestrates these tragedies from the wings, is the society that built the stage. So mourn the dead, if you must.
But do not be fooled: the curtain has only just risen.
