The present-day political situation exhibits many moving parts. A growing constellation of actors, players, sectors, religious faiths, interest groups, change agents and kingmakers — as they stir their parochial narratives — creates, in the process, a huge nebulous cloud of doubt, confusion, uncertainty and indifference in the people’s hearts and minds.

The evolving scene becomes a crowd, theoretically a microcosm of Philippine society, rallying behind Senator Rodante Marcoleta, whose fighting style against unprecedented corruption is old-school orthodoxy, for better or worse.

Reported crowd estimates were 15,000 on 30 June, 6,000 on 1 July and 8,900 on 2 July. Trend observers were quick to dismiss this INC-led mass action as falling far short of reaching the critical mass needed to parallel past People Power movements, which were blessed with an uninterrupted exodus of sympathizers.

There had been a series of events, although it is difficult to conclude that they were interrelated. As Newton’s law of physics teaches, “forces always come in pairs.”

Thus, because of the ensuing warrant of arrest against Marcoleta, the mass protests that followed registered their opposition to such a move. As the INC spokesperson argued, they were all for “transparency, accountability, justice and peace.”

Such rallies must have invariably been joined by other anti-government demonstrators and protesters calling for the expeditious resolution of the flood control scandal that allegedly looted government coffers.

Opposing forces are colliding head-on. Force A wants senators and congressmen found involved in the looting of public funds charged, jailed, punished and made to return the money allegedly stolen or embezzled.

Force B wants Vice President Sara Duterte impeached, convicted and perpetually disqualified from serving in elected or appointed public office over the controversial confidential funds.

Two significant comparisons between the weight of Force A and that of Force B, when measured on opposite sides of the scale, may be drawn.

At its most basic, the amount of public funds involved, which should be the proper subject of freezing or recovery, is light-years greater in Force A than in Force B.

The total aggregate amount of somewhere around P600 million to P700 million is dwarfed by the cumulative amount, allegedly breaching P1 trillion, siphoned from the National Treasury and consigned to only a few top government officials.

For the government to preoccupy itself with an impeachment that could only fuel mass unrest rather than wrap up the flood control probe with the end goal of putting the culprits behind bars and recovering the loot could only trigger a “butterfly effect.”

So far, in the latter, the tip of the iceberg forebodes more bad things to come. In the former, it is only meant to spawn further disillusionment with the powers that be.

The state has telegraphed all of its punches, making all its moves entirely predictable.

The retaliatory acts of an offended government single out key personalities with pivotal roles in the affairs of government — those who are vocal and who deliver sustained attacks on government action and inaction.

Quite clearly, there are, to this day, two diametrically opposed forces in what Francis Fukuyama describes as the “uneasy tension between liberal democracies and dictatorships,” and unmistakable signs of decay have emerged.

There appears to be a deceptive semblance of state “triumphalism” amid the disequilibrium and chaos arising from these sustained dialectical conflicts, but this should serve as a wake-up call to every freedom-loving Filipino in this doomed republic.

Meanwhile, the events that follow are best characterized as steps along the path toward the further degeneration of Philippine society writ large.

In the end, the authorities can weed poor Marcoleta out of the Senate, frustrate Sara out of the 2028 presidential race, and remove all stumbling blocks to an extension of term without elections.

If all these happen, we reach the point of what Alexander Hamilton described in the administration of our laws as, in both theory and practice, a “bad government.”

Mr. President, are you not “partly to blame for the mess, having changed the power structure (citing Diokno)”? Just asking.