If there’s anything six years of Duterte taught us, it’s that a government can survive simply on propaganda, especially one that surprises the populace with its utter kabastusan, its impropriety, where soundbites are all mainstream and social media need to ensure that news cycles keep moving and that they keep and grow their audience.

Now, under a Marcos Jr. leadership, the Duterte propaganda machinery is still at its best, doing what it knows to do: get attention. They know that it doesn’t matter if it’s considered as “good” or “bad”—all that matters is that they take over newsfeeds across our platforms.

Here is where we realize that while algorithms dictate what we see on every platform, i.e., Facebook, X, Tiktok, YouTube, etc., when all those algorithms actually show the same thing, then someone did their jobs right.

And as far as one can tell, it’s the Dutertes that have the power to cross over the different platforms, with as little as a soundbite during an otherwise random ambush interview with the media.

But here’s the other thing with Duterte propaganda: it is relentless. It cares very little about those of us who are critical of that family, or who think them despicable. Certainly it cares little about delivering actual data and facts about what it was like living under that misogynist, sexist, violent leadership. In fact, what it does consistently now is to highlight how much better Duterte years were than the past two years under Marcos. It doesn’t matter that this is untrue in terms of basic human rights, vicious rhetoric, ethical governance, compassionate leadership. All that matters is that they are repeating at scale this propaganda that Duterte was the best, across various platforms.

So close to the SONA though, and now with the rift-made-public between the President and Vice President, it’s also become crystal clear that we are as much players in this two-player game even as we seem to be outside of it.

“We” being the ones who abhorred the Duterte years and are suffering through different versions of PTSD because of it; “we” who are just as critical of the Marcoses, and still cannot believe that they have returned to power; “we” from which a civil society, an opposition, should rise, united against the common characteristics of corruption, lack of transparency, violence that these two political names stand for.

But “we” are in over our heads. Or maybe “we” are exhausted? Disillusioned, too. Probably also ill-informed and unable to make heads or tails of the political landscape. But that is exactly what Duterte propagandists are depending on. It depends on “us” being uncertain about where we stand. It banks on the fact that “we” are generally anti-Marcos and are wont to refuse to give this leadership any credit or praise—even when they might deserve it.

It banks on our inability to articulate the fact that Duterte was much much worse than this Marcos. It banks on our inability to actually talk about how bad it was for us during the years of Duterte, and how we cannot go back to that—not in 2025 with a Congress or Senate filled with Duterte’s men, and certainly not in 2028 with another Duterte presidency.  It banks on us being unable to take a side between Marcos and Duterte.

As it does bank on us not learning the right lessons from recent history.

In 2016, Rodrigo Duterte controlled the news cycle as an unknown candidate that was to battle it out with incumbent national politicians, VP Jojo Binay, then DILG Sec Mar Roxas, then Senators Grace Poe, and Miriam Defensor-Santiago. Duterte was a nobody compared to all four candidates, but mainstream media covered every soundbite of his, every push and pull to get him to run for President, built the sense that there was a “clamor” for his candidacy. By the time he confirmed he was running, media had set the stage for his win.

Media made Duterte win in 2016, and it will do the same for Duterte’s people—if not the Dutertes themselves—for 2025 and 2028 if they refuse to be more thoughtful about the news they carry, the stories they deem important, not to mention the money and mileage and clicks they want.

Proof of this media crisis: Sara Duterte resigned as Dep Ed chief on June 19. On June 25 she announced her brothers and father would run for the Senate in 2025. On June 30, Duterte the father said no one should believe his daughter. On July 11, Sara delivered the designated survivor soundbite. Media carried each and every bit of this unfolding, and I bet everyone’s waiting with bated breath for the Dutertes’ activities on SONA day.

Mainstream media practitioners insist they remain important, that when shit hits the fan, the public still turns onto their channels and listens to their journalists. But what about just for the everyday? How does media function for us at this point in time, in a democracy that is unstable at best, where our freedom to choose the information we will believe has ceased to be a matter of perspective, but a superficial choice between lies and truths, a skewed sensing of the political landscape, a blind belief in personalities as opposed to an informed assessment of what nation needs, and what the people deserve?

Media personalities keep talking about their value to a democracy and insist that they are important and necessary and relevant. But we have a voting population that has found sense and reason from other voices which capture the present—its crises, its needs, its demands—more than mainstream media is able to.

In this battle for the attention of the populace, mainstream media decides that the way to win is to choose in favor of what will get the most clicks and likes and shares. In reality, and as we proved in 2016 and across the six years of Duterte, this is how we lose.