Filipinos are well known for a lot of things: singing, misplaced pride, and poor memory just to name a few.
Nine justices of the Supreme Court sang on Tuesday, Nov. 8, to the tune of a burial march for a dead dictator whose body has been kept waxed and refrigerated in Ilocos due to the refusal of his family to bury him in any of the 7,107 islands of this country, except in a tiny parcel of land in Taguig.
People loyal to former President Ferdinand Marcos, or Apo Lakay as some would religiously call him, are prouder than ever of their supposed great leader and alleged war veteran who, after some three decades in a freezer, will now be buried along with other exalted figures of times past.
It is alarming to see young people, with their blissful unawareness of history, turn into Marcos apologists on social media, when the Marcoses have never even apologized in the first place – even falsely claiming that there were more human rights violations during Aquino’s time compared to the Martial Law era. It seems that educational campaigns on social media proved to be ineffective. Do they immediately forget about the
video they’ve glimpsed upon after scrolling down on their newsfeed?
Is it again, the fault of the (bias, “dilawan” and presstitute-filled) media?
It may not be. Mainstream news outlets are quick to bring up the issue whenever something related to the Marcoses and Martial Law comes up. At times, it even becomes the banner story (But that itself can have its own negative attributes, the full discussion of which will merit yet another editorial).
While it cannot be denied that social media is full of fake news and facts, but there is no excuse not to do fact-checking when it’s just one Google search away. It’s harder to trust what you read these days when even the Official Gazette had been accused of
historical revisionism – an act that can be credited to letting one’s bias win over objectivity.
If someone with a poor sense of Philippine history were to read a false report published online by a dubious source, it would be hard to convince them that it is not true, especially where there is a growing distaste towards journalists and that media outlets they work for. How much more when these false reports are published by an authoritative entity?
Finally, the cliché “Ayan, kaka-computer mo kasi” remark may finally be proven true: social media has a hand in misinformation by giving trolls a venue to propagate propaganda. Algorithms on social networking sites, particularly on Facebook, automatically curate content suited for a user, creating echo chambers which often drown out contradictory opinions. People with biases remain blind to the other side of the coin most of the time and are only affirmed of their ideology. Simply put, social media doesn’t connect everyone. It only connects like-minded people.
Truly, information consumed through the media influences one’s opinions and values which become the root of one’s actions. These actions in turn affect the people and the environment around them, which will either make or break the future of our nation.
The reactions – or lack of for some – we see from our fellow youth is disheartening. It may not matter how much effort schools, the government, and the media do to educate the youth on these socio-political issues if they would not have the drive to understand and care about these things themselves.
If you think that a burial of a dictator is something that doesn’t concern you, think again. You are part of the group that let the crooks get away and kept the Martial Law victims mourning for the justice they will never receive.
We mourn because justice is dead and we have killed it.
Art by Ian Kenneth Belza
