It seems apt that the last State of the Nation Address of the worst, most violent, most incompetent president of our lifetime happened right smack in the middle of a vicious Delta variant that State propaganda denies is spreading, 17 months into the Covid-19 pandemic and government’s failed, unscientific, anti-people response.

It also happened after almost a week of endless rains that have sunk the poorest of our communities in flood waters. Which followed a Taal Volcano eruption that meant whole communities being forced to evacuate. Two days before the SONA, there was a level six earthquake in the wee hours of the morning.

None of these warranted an appearance from this president. Then again, that might have been a good thing: after all he thinks cracking jokes in the middle of a crisis is okay, and he believes that every problem can be solved by police presence—just like he finds comfort in IATF briefings filled with retired military generals who know nothing about science or medicine, pandemic response or public health.

Propaganda lang malakas
In the five years of Duterte the only thing it has maintained, has done well, and has succeeded in is its propaganda machinery. It’s so so good that those of us on the side of democracy like to deny it exists, if not like to deny the kind of power it has. Our denial of course is part of why Duterte has stayed in power despite our anger and disgust, the movements we have fashioned. There is no winning a war we are in denial about.

That doesn’t stop the war at any point. This machinery is well-strategized, unrelenting, and always 10, 20 steps ahead of us. It has one goal: keep Duterte in power, protect him at all costs. And we know this to be true because even when propaganda actors do not get along (i.e., when they disagreed about gay marriage, when they all ganged up on Lorraine Badoy, when they fought among themselves and factions were formed), all the disagreement stops short of putting Duterte at risk.

These actors are also at the forefront of ensuring that Duterte is never to blame for anything that goes wrong, and so they are also first to draw blood against appointees, members of the Cabinet, Congress Reps, Senators, Mayors—everyone is at fault but Duterte. And anyone who dares point a finger at Duterte gets attacked. We saw this happen to Mayors Marcy Teodoro and Vico Sotto for wanting to work on pandemic response with more kindness and compassion (not to mention common sense); Jonvic Remulla got a taste of it when he took down NTF-ELCAC tarps; and Isko Moreno has gotten much attention since he started questioning the lack of vaccines in Manila.

Of course the king of this blame game is Duterte himself, who has wasted precious pandemic time reading names of purportedly corrupt barangay officials who he blames for every failure in the delivery of pandemic assistance.

It’s clear that Duterte points a finger and your dead—sometimes figuratively, often literally.

Disunity lang malakas
When one considers how Duterte’s propaganda actors are able to actually go beyond their differences, or set these aside, towards their bigger goals or just the one task of keeping this government afloat and Duterte unharmed, one is hard put to explain why those of us on the side of democracy have failed at consistent, credible, and relevant unity the past five years.

I’ve always said that the fundamental differences between the Left and the Liberals was further fueled by Duterte propaganda. 1Sambayan likes to claim that it has in fact bridged this gap, because Magdalo is a convenor along with Makabayan. But this show is a drop in the bucket of a divide that surfaces in multifarious ways, especially on social media.

For example: some members of Left organizations refused to give the Liberals the time and space to grieve and pay tribute to Noynoy Aquino when he died. In the same way that those on the Liberal side are always quick to remind the Left about having worked with the Duterte administration in its early years. All these unfold very quickly and viciously on social media, often Twitter, where the echo chamber is as real as the kuyog that comes with those who don’t think the same way.

Campaign season makes the possibility of unity even more bleak. With the VP Leni social media campaign in full swing, the old words and taglines used for the Liberal campaign of 2016 are surfacing: disente, may dignidad, walang bahid ng korupsyon. It might work for a younger generation that had no sense of the PNoy years and the Roxas campaign; but to those who were wide awake for those six years, it is difficult not to cringe at the moral high ground. And then it is becoming more and more difficult to bite our tongues, to keep from reminding them of the Liberal years’ own foibles, how its elitism might have led us straight to a Duterte presidency, and how it is this same arrogance and notions of purity that made them lose in 2016 and 2019, and what is already starting their 2022 campaign on the wrong foot.

Sino pang malakas?
I’d like to say the people, but we are all obviously exhausted. Pandemic depressions and anxieties are setting in, the crisis is endless, and government’s kapalpakan is so massive, even Olympic medals can distract us only so much.

And we shouldn’t be. Because May 2022 is 10 months away. 10 months. And now is the time to speak up—and differently—about how we can get back democracy in 2022.

As I have said all this time, given the cash and power of the enemies—whether Duterte, Marcos, or Pacquiao—and the kind of propaganda war they’ve been winning the past five years, I do no think this is the time to dream of miracles, or to romanticized the elections being about good winning over evil, or VP Leni winning against the five people above her in surveys.

And while I will not say I don’t believe in miracles, I will say believing in them for 2022 is too high a risk to take when it could mean delivering this election to Duterte. After all, when the Liberals think that talking disente VS bastos, corrupt VS hindi corrupt, may dignidad VS walang dignidad is the right campaign message for the opposition; when it thinks the high horse is again the position to take to win an election, then that’s just 2016 (and 2019) all over again.

And we know the outcomes of both elections. ***