It would be silly to talk about the present of politics in this country without acknowledging two, maybe three, things.
First, that we are at a standstill. From the ranks of our specific educated, middle to elite classes, generally woke and politicized, that campaigned hard for a Marcos-Duterte loss in May 2022 — there is little movement happening. Sure we went back to our old lives since May, we went back to the daily grind, but that is a movement that is about survival for majority of us — we have no choice given skyrocketing prices and the multifarious crises nation faces. We have no choice, and know no other way, but to go back to the lives we had pre-elections, no matter how frustrated, angry, sad we are. No matter how little we understand (or how much) of why things turned out the way it did.
Which brings us to two: here, where we are, a year after the 2022 elections, we have to admit the possibility that we have stood still all along — because that is what happens to movement when all it does is go around in circles, or repeat its own mistakes, or deny how big the enemy is and how the battlefield has changed.
It is what happens when we cannot get over ourselves, when we only listen to what we have to say, when we insist that we are the only ones who know what’s happening, who know what should be done, who have the answer to questions — because we lived through a past that was similar, because we are older, we are the fourth estate, which is replaceable with what’s unsaid: we are the gatekeepers, we are the bearers of truth, we are sacred cows, not to be questioned, not to be critiqued.
It is what happens when we refuse to see the possibility that maybe we should start with first asking the right questions, so that we get the productive answers, in dialogue with as large a group of people as possible, open to the probability that the ways we know, the perspectives we take, might not apply to the present anymore.
It is what happens when we refuse to engage with bigger pictures, when we decide that we can only deal with what is on the surface, what we understand, what is familiar, what feeds our privilege, what repeats our insights. It is what happens when we decide that it is all black and white, yes and no, and we are quick to name call and hate on and label those who engage in acts of fleshing out, understanding, making space for dialogue, and (still hope) for silver linings, despite. It is what happens when we become the monsters we want to slay, the same evils that we insist are only and solely on the other side.
Third. We have fallen silent. As we have silenced one another. That is what happens when what dominates any public discursive act is groupthink, which is really the only way the us VS them, good VS evil way-of-thinking will survive. We nurture each and every divide by insisting that the mob, the groupthink, the louder voice, is the one that holds the truth, the one that holds the power. In this space, it is not people that are silenced, it is the possibility that the group might be wrong after all. In this space, it is not just dissenting voices that fall silent, it is also the voices that only want to ask questions, who want to understand better, as they are made to feel that even the act of asking is an act of criticism, which of course is unwelcome.
As such, we nurture these silences. We encourage it without thinking. By invoking us VS them, black VS white, we presume that everything is clear-cut and without nuance. Yes, we ensure agreement, but we do so in place of discourse. We exist on this surface — this pretence — of unity and togetherness. We sacrifice the possibility of building a space that welcomes critical thinking and new creativities, and at the very least, productive disagreement.
It seems important at this juncture to admit that we are stuck here. And when I speak of “we”, I do make a distinction between those of us who suffered through six years of Duterte, who lived through it, and survived it, with no option or privilege to leave, no way to even imagine that possible; and those who had the choice to leave, that had the capital, the funding, to leave while the nation was in the ever deepening hole that was Duterte governance.
We may have all been in the same boat in the first half or so of Duterte leadership, but soon enough it was clear that there was a privileged class that could jump ship and then talk about that boat as if they were still there, even as it was clear that the rest of us who were left on it were barely keeping that boat afloat.
Yes, we don’t like to point fingers, and sure we’d rather not mention how some of the privileged in the fourth estate and the liberal boat could just up and leave and find their safe(r) havens elsewhere. But that is also part of our crisis, isn’t it? That we don’t even want to name our problems anymore, I hazard a guess we can’t even look at our own reflections. It’s the only way after all that we can refuse to acknowledge that there is bad on our side of this democratic space, too.
The insistence, across the six years of Duterte, was to not name our problems on this side of the fence, because we have to keep the peace, because we should target the bigger enemies on the other side. But this was always problematic for two reasons: first, because it only encourages the problematic behaviour on our side; and second, it only ultimately made criticism and critical thinking a bad thing, which it isn’t.
Which is what brings us to this point. When so many are (still!) in denial about the electoral outcomes, still insisting that we were cheated of an election, still insisting that surveys (even the most recent one!) spread disinformation. Because critical, difficult conversations are unwelcome, we have yet to process what went wrong (and what the other side did right) in 2022, and so many of us have just gone back to living our lives the way we do — by paddling along, surviving inflation, and for middle-class stuck-in-the-Philippines-us, just living off whatever self-care routines we can still afford.
The malaise is real, as is the apathy. Let’s not even begin about exhaustion, and variations of trauma. And it is the push and pull among these things that has led to my own personal distancing from the exercise of writing, which has always been my way of making sense of the world, of nation. After all, when you become the butt of attacks by the liberals and the left and John Nery and Rappler, there is every reason to believe that none of what you say matters. After all, when you are at the receiving end of a shrinking democratic space, and not because of Duterte-Marcos but because of the side that believes itself to be on the side of democracy and free speech and freedom — you know, “the better side” — then your trauma and exhaustion is not only fact, it is also unique, as it is valid.
Because there is nothing more traumatizing than to realize that it is those who claim to stand for democracy will be first to make sure that you don’t enjoy your own freedom to speak, or write, or think. That they will be the first to deny you the freedom to ask questions and demand for better.
We wonder why it’s been difficult to rise from May 2022. Maybe it has everything to do with the kind of silencing and violence we’ve nurtured against each other. At least the side of Duterte-Marcos are freely arguing with each other. We can’t say the same for us. ***