‘…democracy is in danger not so much because of one person or one family but because of our apparently innate and clearly dangerous human tendency to take partisanship to the extreme and totally disrespect the right of others to think different from us.’
WITH 21 days to go to Election Day, expect the already highly polarized online community to be even more polarized. That should not be a surprise — elections, in almost every country except the totalitarian ones, polarize; and for political junkies like me, part of the appeal of regular political exercises is to observe the polarization and see how it affects the outcome.
Unsurprisingly, because of his pedigree, one candidate in particular — Ferdinand Marcos Jr. — is the target for much opprobrium. If you’re part of any social media chat group that happens to be anti-Marcos your feed would be filled every day with memes and attacks and rumors about the candidate or about members of his family.
Then again, if you so happen to be one of the Marcos followers and are part of their own social media chat groups, you see the exact opposite: posts extolling the son as well as the father, and clips of videos mocking the rivals, particularly Vice President Leni Robredo.
Of course, one charge or attack leveled against Marcos that is not leveled against Robredo is that his victory will endanger (if not in fact mean the end of) democracy as we know it.
Sometimes, it is unclear to those making these attacks that democracy may in fact be endangered by the very person whose face they would see in a mirror!
A few days back I espied this Twitter post, the politics of the profile owner being obvious in the post itself:
“Damnit. My parents are deeply into watching pro BBM bloggers and propagandists on Facebook and YouTube.
“I’ll have to unsubscribe and clear their history.
“Any suggestions on which videos and pages to subscribe to after?”
Political color aside, I was first amused then aghast. What type of thinking was this? Immediately, my thoughts raced to how my dad and I had this big debate in February of 1986 and how he forbade me to go to EDSA (saying it was dangerous) but I went anyway.
Despite our differences I know that my father, a university professor, would have never thought of “unsubscribing” or “clearing the history” of my laptop or smartphone (assuming I had one in 1986) just because we disagreed on politics.
And I would have never even thought of doing the same to him.
But here was a “woke” kid saying just that — and not realizing the serious implications of it all. Big Brother apparently is alive in each and every one of us, no matter how “woke” you claim to be – which means that democracy is in danger not so much because of one person or one family but because of our apparently innate and clearly dangerous human tendency to take partisanship to the extreme and totally disrespect the right of others to think different from us.
Democracy is in danger, even from the so-called “wokes.”
