Category Archive for: social media

komentaryo

Driven to exhaustion: Privilege and possibility #2020

There are many things we might have in common, living where we do, under the leadership that we have, in a 2020 riddled by crises. Here where it wasn’t (isn’t) just the pandemic, as it was a Taal Volcano eruption early in January 2020, government’s refusal to ban Chinese mainlanders from entering the Philippines despite the threat of Covid-19 spread in February, the longest lockdown/quarantines in the world from March 2020 to the present, strong typhoons and massive flooding in the last two months of the year.

It is easy to think this is all a matter of being Filipino, but it seems important to highlight how this is also a matter of social class. Of course one is mindful about using the term “middle class,” tenuous and unstable as that category is, especially given the pandemic. To my mind though, the category suffices to define this particular privilege that is important to acknowledge, as it is important to address. Because we are often told to check our privilege, which also inevitably silences us: the majority after all, have it worse.

But why invalidate this particular experience of the middle class? Why be silenced by the notion of privilege, when while we are not the majority who are poor, neither are we at the opposite end of this deepening wealth gap? We are not the 5% who are oligarchs and old rich, for whom half-a-million beach trips and vacations is part of this new normal. Neither are we influencers and celebrities who are selling a new normal of spending thousands on Covid-19 tests just to go on a beach trip, or to party with friends. (more…)

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Kumusta? #TerrorLaw #Covid19 #Freedom #Protest

It’s a question we ask more and more now, I think more sincerely and honestly than we ever have, of friends and family, even of Facebook contacts and acquaintances. It’s never seemed more important to ask people: how are you? As opposed to “what’s up?” or “what are you doing these days?”

Because we all know what’s up, and regardless of what we’re doing, we all know that on a very basic level, we’re all just trying to survive. The pandemic takes its toll on the best of us, and on this fifth month since a lockdown was first declared, I think the mental toll is one that’s almost paralyzing.

Almost. Because privilege teaches us that some are luckier than others—we are luckier than the majority who did not only lose jobs during the two-month lockdown, but also had their communities taken over by police power, were disenfranchised from government assistance packages, silenced by fear, and disregarded by policy. Yes, we are all victimized by the Duterte government’s lack of an efficient, sufficient, and scientific Covid-19 public health response, as we all are by its Cabinet filled with incompetent and unkind officials, but as with many (all) things, social class difference puts things in perspective.

No, this is not a treatise on gratefulness, as much as it is a promise of solidarity. (more…)

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Defending a rapist? Sobriety and hunos-dili, please!

Hate and lies don’t stop in a time of a pandemic—we are after all under a government that lives off this kind of propaganda. But when it comes from regular people who deserve respect for fighting for the poor and oppressed, the farmers and the peasants and the workers, you can only be taken aback, to say the least. That they would even take the time to fashion you as enemy, throw shade in your direction, especially on social media comment threads where discrediting a person is quick and easy, here and now, well, there is a time of reckoning for that.

This is not that time, but it is the time for some clarification. So let me take precious energy to talk about the accusation that I “defended a rapist” last year. A controversial, sensationalist statement to make, a juicy piece of news to hear about the person who wrote a review of Ang Huling El Bimbo in 2018, and questioned its handling of the rape of the lead character Joy; the same person who likes to see herself as a feminist, who writes about being woman in this country, who builds upon the kawomenan of many others. But of course via people like artist and peasant advocate Donna Miranda, what will surface is nothing at all about what I’ve written, or the play in question. Instead it will be this statement from her: “Gusto ko man basahin ang review na yan nahihirapan ako bilang nagtanggol ng rapist yung manunulat a year after.”

What a way to take down a person: throw a one-liner, attack her, try to ruin her credibility. Who cares if it’s true?

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DOH, #Covid19, public information: crisis and gov’t distrust

Here’s something that’s become clearer now: Duterte’s rhetoric—that one that’s been sold as a personality quirk, that cracks inappropriate jokes, that same one that shifts towards violence every chance it gets, that dismisses important issues by saying it’s fake news, that evades critical demands of nation by delivering empty soundbites and/or talking about the drug war over and over again, or his perceived enemies like media and America—this Duterte rhetoric is government’s communications policy.

Sure, it might not be written anywhere, but it is the rhetoric that Duterte’s men and women have used, especially when faced with questions from a populace now unable to contain its dismay and disgust. Keeping us preoccupied with soundbites also means we lose precious time for piecing together the parts of the various crises we face.

We see this strategy being used for the COVID19 crisis.

Click here for the rest of it on Disquiet.ph.

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Duterte winning: The VFA, timing, divide & conquer

I’ve written before (and often) about the Duterte strategies that have kept him and this government afloat. When I did so, he was still awake most of the time, and not disappearing on us in times of tragedy, there was no major public health concern like COVID19, no volcanos exploding, no communities losing their homes and livelihood while the President slept.

We are undoubtedly in worse times now, and yet we still don’t get it.

Proof of that pudding? When Duterte declared the cancellation of the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). And what did we see? The members of the Left, supporting Duterte on this declaration, asserting that it is “just and necessary”, and the Liberal stalwarts putting it into question by highlighting this government’s pivot to China. On social media the rhetoric is vicious, where the discussion is limited to “tuta ng Kano” o “tuta ni Duterte”; where anyone who even so much as refuses to stand with Duterte on his VFA declaration is seen as a US-ally, or as an enabler of US Imperialism.

Probably the worst example of how terrible things are is Walden Bello attacking retired Justice Antonio Carpio for being on “the wrong side on the VFA issue.” But one must ask: is the Duterte side, the right side to be on?

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