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.

Because there nothing at all to be thankful for with regards this pandemic. No, not even what it has done for the environment (yes, Piolo Pascual, you can shove that poor excuse back down where you got it), and not even our sense that this is a time of reflection and taking stock, though understandably that is where our privilege takes us when we try and rationalize these times. At most one might acknowledge how the standstill of industry, the pause on market-driven inessential businesses, has taught us more and more about the failures of the capitalist system that we have been at the mercy of all these years. At the very least we see that what this pandemic has surfaced is inequality and its contingent injustices, which forces us to acknowledge that things have to change.

At most, we know, and we agree, that the change that needs to happen is urgent. This pandemic revealed the kind of government we have, and we now agree on this side of the fence that its policies and actions are untenable and unacceptable. We all agree that it has been unable to handle a public health emergency competently and credibly; we’ve seen how it has controlled information as much as it can so that it can pretend it’s doing the work that needs to be done. We know that it is driving us deeper into debt with loans, and yet this doesn’t translate to actual public services on the ground. We know that it has defunded our health sector the past four years, and in the face of this pandemic has refused to listen to our medical professional, our scientists, and our public health workers.

We all already agree that the Duterte government’s handling of this public health crisis is probably one of the worst in the world—and certainly the worst in Southeast Asia—as both the facts and numbers reveal.

But this government is much much worse. It has used this pandemic and to declare de facto martial law. The policies on the Bayanihan We Heal As One Act are the tip of the iceberg; what is worse than the words that are there is how it is implemented on the ground, where military might and police power are king. We of course had this coming: we watched the past four years as Duterte appointed military men into the Cabinet, one after the other; we watched as he emboldened the police by telling them to kill, and condoning their abuses; we watched as he jailed Leila de Lima, unseated CJ Sereno, jailed activists on trumped-up charges; we watched as the body count grew.

This pandemic was all Duterte’s government needed to get all its other unjust, extrajudicial policies to happen. Cancel the ABS-CBN franchise based on the President’s personal gripe? Check. Pass the anti-terror law that will legalize the tagging of activism as terrorism among the violation of our rights? Check. Put Charter Change back on the table? Check. Allow the Aerotropolis airport in Bulacan to push through despite displacing fisherfolk and it environmental repercussions? Implement the jeepney phaseout that will disenfranchise thousands of jeepney drivers who are being made to go into debt for a modern vehicle in this time of crisis? Check. Disallow protests, and arrest without warrants any group, no matter how small, that dares do a protest? Check.

The latter is of course key: the past five months, we have seen how incompetent and violent, how shameless and thoughtless this government is. At any other time we would be out on the streets, raising a fist. In the time of pandemic, we are disallowed from doing so, and with a Terror Law now in place, acts of resistance like that can easily be construed as acts of terrorism. The fear is valid, but so is the anger.

Especially since it get worse. Duterte’s propaganda machinery is so head of us, with it’s game so strong, that it has been able to control the narrative of this pandemic and the government’s contingent abuses.

When the numbers don’t go up quickly, Duterte is praised by his Cabinet on nationwide television: good job with your decision to lockdown the country. When he started easing the lockdown, they declared: if the numbers start going up, it will be the people’s fault! And as the numbers start going up, we are threatened: if this continues, we will lock you down again!

When they impose a balik-probinsya program, and forced LGUs to accept balikbayans, Covid-19 spread to the provinces. When students and parents are being forced to grapple with notions of online learning in the midst of a pandemic, never mind hunger and need and poverty. When thousands lose their jobs, because hundreds of small and medium enterprises are suffering, with no hope in sight. When thousands go hungry given the dire lack of government assistance and relief packages.

Sure the government is blamed, but it takes one news cycle and we’re back on the silliness of Roque trying to defend Duterte’s words, the idiocy of Duque saying we’ve flattened the curve, the incendiary soundbite from  <insert Presidential ally here>, and the slurred speech of the President inciting violence against the people.

In this propaganda war, government has been winning. Where they have the resources and the funds, plus the cronies and dynasties and allies already looking to 2022; we are here unable to look beyond our noses, unable to go beyond firefighting. In September 2019, I broke down Duterte’s propaganda machinery into:

Dividing the opposition and conquering the discourse;
Undoing democracy by abusing the laws and sowing fear in the bureaucracy; 
Tagging the Left as terrorist and
Escalating the attacks against activists;
Razing the elite i.e., the Liberals;
Triggering the base by pinning the blame on anyone but Duterte; and
Exhaust the populace, with every bit of terrible thing you do.

If the coming SONA is any indication, it seems it’s only the divided opposition that has changed. Everything else still applies, and maybe now it’s worse: one gets the sense that we are not only always losing, but that we are always outplayed, our moves and acts of resistance always anticipated and addressed even before it happens.

The narrative we’re following is still that of this government’s. We’re still all just reacting to all that it does, given the nation it is building. But what if we start refusing to be part of that narrative? What if instead of simply being reactionary, we start proactively talking about the nation we would like to fashion? What if we build an alternative narrative of nation for ourselves? Maybe if we refuse government’s control over our headspace and our emotional lives, we can actually start thinking better about ways to do protest. The kind that’s a way of life, that’s in the mundane activities, but is persistent and consistent, relevant and relentless? And unexpected.

That last bit is the only way we will win against Duterte who, for all the lasenggo rhetoric and obviously unhealthy state, has a solid propaganda team plus what we’re told are ad companies, troll farms, huge funds, and oligarch-supported, to keep his government afloat.

So. Maybe it’s time to figure out how to sink that boat?

Ikaw, kumusta? ***