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.

So in the meantime, let this awareness of privilege suffice. We are not the ones at the mercy of ayuda, we are not the ones at the receiving end of government’s brutality in communities, we are not the ones who barely survived 2020. We might not be the ones who suffered from hunger, who lost our jobs, or who have been made to go back to our jobs no matter lack of testing, possible virus spread, and lack of safety nets for employees. We aren’t the ones who have been victimized by the violence of checkpoints, of being crammed into already filled jail cells, or put inside cages for “quarantine violations.”

Instead, we have kept our jobs, or gotten ourselves extra (or new) gigs. We have an amount of spending power, can dip into savings that exist, and when the worst comes we have family, friends, community to tide us over. Some of us have lost more than others, and we might all have lost someone we know to Covid-19 at this point, if not to the contingent stresses it has brought to the already ailing. Some of us have closed down businesses, what with government only focusing on providing tax shields and incentives for big business.

Some of us have started small(er) businesses, maybe to augment income, or to shift energies towards another source of income altogether. Some of us have sold our things, let go of precious collections; many have left community and rented houses, going back to family homes for lower overhead costs. We might be in industries that have decided it is better to keep workers safe from the virus, instead of risking our lives in the workplace. We have food on the table, keep up our maintenance medicines, can afford a treat or two. We can afford to stay home.

But none of this has meant an easy 2020. And the difficulty is unique to our level of privilege.

We overworked ourselves, unable to complain about terrible work conditions and impossible expectations, out of (a) fear of losing our jobs, or (b) gratefulness that we have a job at all. We adjusted to doing everything online, spent more time and money on the internet, built workspaces that would make us imagine work to be easier. We did this while caring for home and family, tending to senior parents, making sure they had all they needed; and/or taking care of children 24/7, and doing teacher-duties for online classes. This, on top of caring for house and home.

But as we overextended ourselves physically, our mental and emotional health took a beating. We are after all the ones who keep track of the news, of this President, of his militarized Cabinet. We watched government idiocy unfold, as Duterte refused to have doctors define and control the manner in which this public health emergency must be handled. We watched the most unkind and unjust Covid-19 response, starting with the declaration in March of “no exceptions” to rules, which meant a government deciding to be deaf, dumb, blind to emergency needs and even just basic humanity.

We watched as Duterte used the pandemic to impose Martial Law without declaring it, constantly building upon the climate of fear courtesy of abuses from the military and police. We watched in dismay and disgust as Duterte killed our right to information by fulfilling his promise to cancel the franchise of ABS-CBN, the largest media entity in the country. We watched as his men in Congress railroaded the anti-terror law, which penalizes us, the people, for what we think and what we believe, our ideological leanings and our words, which this government easily, freely, deliberately construes as “terrorist acts.” As those who he deemed as enemies were killed in their homes, or arrested at 3AM, or illegally detained in cramped, unsafe, Covid-infested jail cells, Duterte denied us our freedom of movement, as he did make us fear collective action.

We always knew the climate of fear was upon us, but the pandemic has actually meant constant, unshakeable dread. And it isn’t just because of the virus that is killing our family and friends and acquaintances, as it is the fact of a leadership that is incompetent and violent, and seemingly deliberately so. What to do with a government that refuses to listen to doctors, that insists on keeping corrupt officials, that denies the public transparency, and does not hold appointed officials accountable for recklessly endangering people’s lives?

What to do with a government that has refused to take responsibility for actual pandemic response, insisting that it is local government units and businesses that must ensure public safety? What to do with a government that has NOT done one thing right as far as this public health emergency is concerned?

Having watched 2020 unfold, it also sinks in: this is proof of how Duterte propaganda has worked the past four years. Slowly but surely, strategically and systematically. It ate away at our ability to keep track of important issues, sowed divisiveness, discredited the Left and the Liberals, took advantage of the crises of paid media, of call-out culture, of social media noise, intimidated media into self-censorship, publicly threatened uncooperative and critical big business to do its bidding. The clarity of 2020 is that it is the icing on the cake that’s been baking since 2016.

It is no surprise we are exhausted. Here’s the thing about this particular privilege we have: we are the ones who make the time, find the energy, to care about nation in this particular way. We are the ones who are built to believe that we can change things, because we know of the state of the nation, and we know we deserve better. And I think for the adults here (and I do mean that literally and figuratively), especially Generations X and Y, this sense of civic duty has been strengthened more and more the past year.

Which is why 2020 was grueling, and almost violently so. Because we realized we cannot afford to fall silent anymore, and cannot afford to be afraid. We also cannot not care. And this is borne of privilege, the one we are being told to check, which we then take as a signal to fall silent. But to invalidate this experience, to shut it down, to deny ourselves the opportunity to talk about what it’s been like, will only benefit Duterte himself.

Because we are a crucial part of the change we deserve, and not talking about this space we navigate keeps us from realizing that we are a collective, too, one that can get (needs to get) organized and mobilized, one that has an important function in the exercise of citizenship and the transformation of nation. History proves that we hold a particular kind of power that is probably the scariest for this government and its cohorts, because while it’s all possibility at this point, it is also unknowable.

Imagine what happens when we finally harness it.

I know fear as much as the next person, but with only 16 months to the next election, here’s something I’ve told myself over and over in 2020 to keep myself sane: ours are the generations that have lived off the fruits of the freedom won by our parents and grandparents in 1986. This is the first time we are being challenged to defend democracy.

There’s nothing like the adrenaline of taking on a dare to shake off the exhaustion. ***