September 19, 2021

lies

Hey friend, thanks for opening! It’s that time of the year again–this year, we’re marking 49 years since the imposition of Martial Law. Some resources for the historical revisionists and Marcos apologists in your feed, etc. Hope they’re useful in the next few days. -K

One of the first things I learned about martial law when I was a young researcher working at the paper was that the first very first thing we know about it–that it was declared on Sept 21, 1972–is a lie.

The actual date is Sept. 23rd. Marcos, being a fan of numerology, backdated the document to Sept 21st. That Sept 21st is the enduring date is because Marcos proclaimed it as National Thanksgiving Day and wanted it to be some sort of “Foundation Day” for his so-called “New Society”.

Throughout the Martial Law period, Marcos built up the cult of September 21, proclaiming it as National Thanksgiving Day by virtue of Proclamation No. 1180 s. 1973 to memorialize the date as the foundation day of his New Society. The propaganda effort was so successful that up to the present, many Filipinos—particularly those who did not live through the events of September 23, 1972—labor under the misapprehension that martial law was proclaimed on September 21, 1972. It was not. (Source).

Well, it began in lies, so it’s not surprising that, nearly half a century later, we’re still dealing with lies being propagated by this family. The Marcoses are still trying to gaslight this country–the latest attempt being his YouTube interview with a popular vlogger, whom we all probably know anyhow so I’m no longer naming her here.

I’m not interested in watching it, but I have noted the backlash against it. This disinformation is not new, but I suppose social media has simply made it all the more visible and dangerous. It’s just frustrating that the Marcoses are still in power AFTER ALL THAT THEY HAVE DONE. One of the most powerful clapbacks I’ve read to the question, “Bakit, pinanganak ka na ba nung Martial Law?” is, “Bakit, kasama naman na ako sa mga nagbabayad ng utang nila hanggang ngayon.”

With lies and disinformation and pro-Marcos propaganda flooding our timelines, I offer some resources old and new that we could clapback with, our energies permitting. As always, I recommend managing our energies around this issue; it must not be ignored, true, but we can’t expend ourselves carelessly, either. Mahaba-haba pa ang laban na ito.

Resources

• Via Rappler: LIST: Bongbong Marcos’ false claims about Martial Law on ‘Toni Talks’

• Via The Official Gazette: The Fall of the Dictatorship

• Via Inquirer.net: San Juanico bridge, other tortures detailed – from 2014, still the one write-up about martial law that I lost sleep over. Read the Amnesty International report here.

• Via Rappler: Debunking propaganda that the Marcos years were the ‘golden age’ of PH economy

• Via Inquirer.net Never too young to be heroes: First of a series - the last one we wrote for LJM. This CMFR post rounds up the rest of the installments.

From the internet

Other interesting non-Martial Law things we also saw on the internet this week:

• From The Atlantic: Say Goodbye to your Manager - though caveat, I think the hybrid workplace needs a new breed of managers for new expectations and realities. I’ve seen really good managers and really bad ones navigate this pandemic, and I tell you we terribly, terribly need more of the good ones (of course). An interesting quote from this:

Unfortunately, the traditional worker-to-manager pipeline often sets people up for inefficiency and failure. It’s the equivalent of taking a pitcher in their prime and making them a coach—being good at one thing doesn’t mean you can make other people good at the same thing. This is known as the Peter principle…[which] posits that a person who’s good at their job in a hierarchical organization will invariably be promoted to a position that requires different skills, until they’re eventually promoted to something they can’t do, at which point they’ve reached their “maximum incompetence.”

• From The New Yorker: The frustration with productivity culture - “We should strive to be good at our jobs—to work deeply, to be reliable, to lead with vision. But, if our employers need more output for each unit of input they employ, we should be more comfortable in replying that, although we understand their predicament, solving it is not really our problem.” - True.

Ending this with the most relatable meme I saw this week: A woman on a jeep carrying their house’s remote control instead of her phone.

Some days, amirite? :D

Hope the rest of your weekend has been restful!

XO,

K