Buried under the season’s shuffle

"Neutering," as one of my astute political observer friends wonderfully has it, aptly fits the bill for what former president Rodrigo Duterte and his increasingly isolated merry band of loyal cohortsare presently undergoing.

Goingby the Britannica dictionary, "neutering" has two effective meanings. In the veterinary sense, it is "to remove the sex organs from (an animal)." In a more general sense, it is "to make (something) much less powerful or effective."

Neutering's general sense suitably informs our immediate political purpose.

Since "neutering" denotes a process, the related synonyms "castrated," "emasculated," and "eunuch" immediately spring to mind, and the humor bone as the best conclusions to Mr. Duterte's present political travails.

But hold off momentarily on the celebratory gallows' guffaws, however.

Mr. Duterte's political neutering, as yet is far from over. It's only beginning. He admittedly is still far from the political eunuchs of ancient China, where the politically "castrated male" had immense value as a respected court adviser of the reigning emperor.

If anything, Mr. Duterte's neutering must come to a credible definite end before he does become an eminent political eunuch in our present stagnant and corrupt political landscape blighted by preening, audibly squealing political half-wits and mediocrities.

Also, if we look upon our political landscape as a family, it is where to use George Orwell's wonderful phrase, "the wrong members are in control."

At any rate, how long will it take, and to what extent will Mr. Duterte be neutered?

But it is a given that his political neutering is an instance of the graphic shift in political power.

It is also a given that he will have to acquiesce one day to whatever the present powers have in store for him before he can be sufficiently recognized as a political eunuch.

At any rate, Mr. Duterte's political neutering has undoubtedly begun publicly, in the form of a 14-day preventive suspension by the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board of his "Gikan Sa Masa, Para sa Masa" program over at Sonshine Media Network International.

Depriving him of his browbeating bully pulpit — which Mr. Duterte can't seem to do without ever since he embarked on his lively populist career and even in his political senescence — is certainly a no-holds-barred instance of political castration. 

Duterte-ally SMNI has been castrated too, barred from airing for 30 days by the National Telecommunications Commission on allegations it violated its congressional franchise following House investigations for peddling fake news, disinformation and red-tagging.

As expected, Mr. Duterte and his ardent partisans have raised spirited tirades over the suspensions.

But it was Mr. Duterte's sheer bad luck (or was it by malicious design?) that the double-barreled suspensions came amid a time when everybody was drowning in the "collectivization of gaiety and the compulsory inflictions of joy" of the holidays, preventing the mind from focusing on politics for very long.

It also didn't help their cause when the suspensions landed right smack at a time when all and sundry were hypnotically wrapped up in celebrity breakups.

Bad luck or not, the holidays and the wild rumors of celebrity breakups had imposed their own unique humiliations on Filipino populism's strongest advocates. 

Moreover, the defenses they mounted involved shady hypocrisies regarding free speech and press freedom, which, more than anything, sounded offensive, even downright insulting, to anyone with anything of a political memory. 

As one journalists' group put it sarcastically: "Even as SMNI and its supporters cry press freedom and freedom of expression now, may they also reflect on how they cheered on and abetted similar moves when these tactics were being used against journalists and newsrooms."

Despite the astonishing hypocrisies, however, the Duterte camp persists in its cause, conclusively betraying its stubborn refusal to admit that the apogee of their near-hypnotic control over Philippine politics has definitely passed and can now be neutered.