Category Archive for: bayan

kultura

Badoy, banned books, and the Marcos challenge

Every day, I spend a good hour on a Tiktok algorithm that I’ve nurtured since last year, when the election campaign began and I realized that the Marcos campaign was releasing videos and photographs from the old man Marcos years (Papa FEM to this Tiktok algo), which I thought then was, and think now is, important.

But also, it is on Tiktok that I catch what government is doing, every day: what the First Lady is doing, what Bongget (that’s President Marcos V2 to the rest of us) is busy with, which government officials delivered the best soundbite. It’s also here that one realizes how much the algorithm lives off the press briefings of Press Secretary Trixie Angeles, who is celebrated and touted as one of the better voices from the new administration. Often, this algorithm fascinates me in its complete and utter removal from the echo chambers my algorithms on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram keep. It still confounds me, sure, but only in the way that the unfamiliar always does.

But then on certain days, even I have to say that the Tiktok algorithm makes more sense. That’s what happens when you listen to Lorraine Badoy, speaking on her new show on Quiboloy-run SMNI, where for two hours every day, she is free to spout anti-activist and anti-Left rhetoric like it’s nobody’s business—which is to say to absurd proportions, which is to say to attack anyone at all, really, and tag anyone as “red.”

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komentaryo

Pointed appointments (Part 2): Bring on the women #MarcosV2

Depending on what echo chamber or algorithm you’re in, you might be seeing any (or all) of this on your social media feeds, private GCs, and public channels, since June 1 hit:

  • Complete and utter denial: we were cheated! you say. Here’s a petition! Sign this petition! Or that petition! Or this one!
  • Untrammeled anger: against anyone and everyone that you assert “enabled” this Marcos-Duterte win, which means calls for boycotting non-pink establishments and businesses, tendencies towards attacking private individuals on public Twitter, and seeing everything wrong with everything said and done by the old (Duterte) and new (Marcos) leaderships.
  • Sardonic elitism: “Ang taas ng presyo ng bilihin? Bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Ginusto niyo ‘yan.”
  • Non-profit hope: Let’s go Angat-Buhay-NGO!

Unless of course you’re part of the other side of what is left of the political opposition. Which means you might be part of the Left and dealing with massive attacks, one after the other, across protests on the streets and in farmlands, to websites and social media, all via the ever reliable fascism of one Lorraine Badoy and NTF-ELCAC. It has been the most horrible way the Duterte government has kept the Left preoccupied the past five years—as if the incompetent anti-people governance wasn’t enough to make anyone’s head spin, and keep one’s people and resources perennially exhausted.

And then there’s the rest of us, of which I’d like to think there is a far larger number, who have so decided to just get back to our lives pre-electoral anxieties and post-electoral stresses. On the one hand, a seeming privilege; on the other, also one we have in common with the mass electorate that put Marcos-Duterte in power. After all, what is there for us to do after an election is won or lost? (more…)

komentaryo

Pointed appointments (Part 1) #MarcosV2

I totally understand many in the liberal opposition that have decided to deepen the political divide and decided to just live in their echo chambers. It is easiest thing to do. And certainly, at this point, maybe the mental and emotional well-being of many depend on this cutting off from the real.

But I draw the line at disbelieving the loss. I draw it at insisting that the 31 million isn’t real, then insisting that we are proud of being one of the 15 million. This defies logic and reason: you cannot believe one number but disbelieve the other. And if you decide you disbelieve both (and even say that the 2016 results were false as well), then you’ve got a problem: the powers were different in 2016, but Duterte won anyway. And really, if we cease to believe electoral results, then elections also cease to be an important democratic exercise for you. Turning anarchist is good, if you’re conscious that you’re doing so. Too: if the elections are not credible to you, then there is no reason to engage in it as an exercise.

I’ve said this often enough: choosing to be blind is a terrible thing. Especially when blindness means practically disassociating ourselves with what’s real. And right now what’s real is this: Marcos is President, and he is making very interesting appointments if we’re looking at all. These appointments are also very important, as these people will dictate what kind of leadership we will see the next six years. They are interesting because they are of course more than just people, but what they actually represent.

The strategy is clear in many of these appointments, if only we were looking. (more…)

komentaryo

Robbed #Halalan2022

A little over a week since the May 9 elections, and one understand why those on the side of democracy, Left, Liberal, and civil society, feel like we’ve been robbed.

In that sense, everyone’s performing like victims. Some are raising their fists against the irregularities on election day—dysfunctional vote counting machines, dysfunctional SD cards, long lines because of both, voters disenfranchised. Some have flexed their privilege: not going to help the poor anymore, not going to help nation anymore, bahala kayo sa buhay niyo. Some have shot back at actual people who they know voted for Marcos: magbayad kayo ng utang niyo! A day or two after elections, we heard of some small NGOs losing their funders—purportedly, people were not wanting to help the new government at all, and that is equated with not wanting to help the most vulnerable.

Many are spreading all sorts of disinformation about the president-elect, letting this permeate social media accounts in the way that rumors do. It is fueled, shared across platforms, thrown around Viber and messenger GCs for good measure. Never mind fact checking—it always feels good to have our perceptions proven right by any kind of information at all.

But I guess we want to forgive ourselves for these responses? Emotions are high. We thought we were going to win after all—especially if we believed surveys were unreliable. And now we are grasping at straws, picking the stories and narratives that serve our purpose, because it is the only way to keep the fire burning.

But at a time like this one, these responses, public as they are, do nothing but fuel this divide that already exists, a polarization that we now know is really about 14 million vs 31 million. And we need to understand that it doesn’t matter whether or not you think or believe polarization is happening—the fact is, it already is.

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komentaryo

26 days: Kawomenan sa #Halalan2022 #LetLeniSpeak

I was asked in a women’s month forum about what to do with comments on women being weak leaders, the kind that we encounter on social media when we talk about being on the side of Robredo-Pangilinan in this heavily polarized electoral exercise. The context of course is the notion that we remain a heavily patriarchal society, and as such, there is a basic, illogical, refusal to even consider a woman leader.

My answer was simple: I do not think that VP Leni’s womanhood is what’s being attacked, as much as it is her person. And yes, those can be one and the same, but in this particular case, given propaganda against her that’s run its course the past six years, and has escalated across this campaign, hindi ito tungkol sa pagiging anti-woman, tungkol ito sa pagiging anti-Leni.

This is the same VP Leni that’s been called Leni Lugaw for years, na nag-evolve to Leni Lutang, at nag-evolve to Lenlen nitong nakaraang ilang buwan. These three things are interconnected, and are part of a bigger narrative against VP Leni that the other side has galvanized into massive black propaganda. And sure, Leni Lugaw started with Duterte supporters and propagandists, pero ang matindi sa social media, wala naman nang tumitingin saan nagsimula. Ang lagi lang natin nakikita ay kung ano ang nasa harap natin. Ibig sabihin, sa iba man nagmula ang Leni Lugaw at bagama’t simpleng paninira lang ito noon, iba ang gamit nito sa kasalukuyan ng kampanya. That the other side has been able to evolve it into two different things based solely on the exercise of spreading spliced videos and fake news that frame the vice president as  incompetent and un-presidential—is the success of its campaign strat. They didn’t rest on the laurels of Lugaw, and as that was being turned into a positive, i.e., they shifted quickly to Lutang.  (more…)