Before you hate on politicians’ children...

It should have been you in that plane crash. It should have been you instead of your husband,” said an angry voter on Twitter, directly addressing one Leni Robredo. It was a sentiment echoed by a few others, believing that their Vice Presidential bet, Bongbong Marcos, had been cheated. There was never an actual reply from the Robredo camp, but in an interview with Jessica Soho, Robredo stated that she was tempted to respond, “Hindi mo lang alam na nung bumagsak yung eroplano ng asawa ko, every day, every night, wini-wish ko na sana ako na lang yung nasa eroplanong yun. [You have no idea. When my husband’s airplane crashed, I wished every day and every night that I was the one on that plane instead.]” And the real victims of such cruel statements are people like Robredo’s daughters, who not only had to bury their father but now have to put up with casual references to his death, wishing ill upon their mother.

On the opposite side of the fence, Sandro Marcos, son of Bongbong, has been under fire for some rather careless tweeting. He famously made a claim about electoral fraud with the hashtag #DayaangMatuwid, and yet whose only proof was that “the Presidential and Vice Presidential votes don’t even tally.” The power to abstain was thrown in his face, and so followed thousands of trolls, replying to his every tweet with something along the lines of “Give us back our money” if not worse. He has also since starred in the #RP69 fanfic, the Twitter-fueled fan fiction that puts all the “hot political sons” in several imagined and compromising positions. (Pun most definitely intended.)

Regardless of who we may be supporting, it’s clear that we have hit a most definite low. But first, let’s hit pause and take into account a little bit of history. And no, not one of the martial law variety, but a more personal sort.

First-hand experience

When I was 14, my father was the Senate Majority Leader, and then President Estrada was being impeached. The neighborhood we lived in, and had lived in all my life, was growing increasingly hostile. The neighbors made signs: “HypoKit,” a clever pun on my father’s nickname. “Opus Dei or Opus Demonyo,” questioning his religious affiliations. “Our children are ashamed of you; how about yours,” going for a low blow that I will never really forget. They prayed the rosary in front of our house, and then they cursed and threw paper money at our gates, asking how much my father had been paid.

The night immediately following my father’s decision not to open one of the envelopes, our neighbors drove up to our house, blocked off the gate to our home with their cars and leaned on their horns to express their anger. More paper money was thrown. My sister had to circle the block until they got tired and left, because we were afraid of what they might do if they saw her trying to come in. My father couldn’t come home either, and for our own safety, we had no idea where he was. I remember him calling and saying to me, “I did what I thought was right, but if I had known that this is what they would do to all of you, I might have reconsidered.”

Then the others picked up the scent and they came for us. I was lucky not to be treated differently by my teachers and peers, but my sister who was studying in Ateneo was not so lucky. She couldn’t get through a day without someone starting off a sentence with “Sabihin mo sa tatay mo…” Someone then collated the phone numbers of my siblings and I, and this being a pre-Twitter era, made a text pass to see who could make our lives the most hell-like as possible. I received not only hateful messages about my father and my family, but I personally received death threats for weeks.

When the second EDSA began, our home was no longer safe. We were whisked off to an undisclosed location, huddled together in the middle of a small room in front of a television set. I still didn’t know where my father was, whether someone had finally taken their anger seriously and done something irreversible. I prayed he was alive. My friends called my house and asked for me, and the only response they got was, “We don’t know if she’ll be back.”

I was 14 years old

Again, and in case we have forgotten, I was 14 years old. I still had braces, my hair was frizzy and unmanageable, and I was entering the most awkward of stages. I had just started thinking about boys and how cute they could be. I was still mad at Geri for effectively dissolving the Spice Girls, and really, that’s all I should’ve been concerned with.

Now, I’m not sharing this so that anyone can feel sorry for me or for what I’ve been through. I am sharing this because while I understand the righteous indignation and the anger of beicheated or feeling like your voice as a citizen is being trampled upon, I also understand having to live with the weight of your parents’ political decisions. These are the consequences of having parents who are controversial or politically headstrong, and what I’d asked myself then and still ask myself now is whether or not this has to be the case at all.

Social media has blurred the lines, because once distant characters are now just a tweet away. And the broken down barriers make us rabid, make us feel a sense of entitlement to see how these people live their lives, to correct their mistakes, to act like our input is the most valuable thing they’ll be receiving that day. We act like they owe us their general decency and time, and when it is a matter of public service and maintaining the integrity of the office, they do. But there are off hours, and there are mistakes, and when all we can do is lash out without making any contribution, we’ve already lost.

Does it accomplish anything?

For instance, with careless tweeting in the case of Sandro Marcos, flipping him the bird or drowning him in expletives or telling him that he will grow up to look like Jamby Madrigal accomplishes what, exactly? Hold him accountable for hasty claims, but maintain a sense of reason. If his peers don’t understand the atrocities that came with martial law, what more a boy who was raised under a familial flag that insists they did everything right? What we may see as arrogance is the fruit of ignorance more than anything else, and what he deserves is to be educated. He deserves to understand exactly what it is he is defending, which is not just the loyalty to family but a name that comes with blood and destruction.

If we come to the table demanding change, we ourselves have to be the instigators and we have to draw the line when it comes to families of public figures. These families themselves should maintain a certain standard of integrity, sure, but our attention needs to be focused on the person who asked for the privilege to serve the public. That is the first place we should go when we demand accountability; that is the first place where our anger can and should be righteous. Attacking and giving credence to everything else is only a pointless outlet, and refusing to understand how so much of the disagreement comes from sheer ignorance helps no one.

As children, we were taught to abide by one moral code: “Do unto others what you would have them do unto you.” Social media makes us strong because the repercussions are so rare when we’re hiding behind a screen and a keyboard, but the things we say not only hurt people, they hasten the decline of our intelligence and our manner of relating to the rest of humanity. Educate before you spew hate. Understand before you accuse. Reprimand but do so with decency and kindness, even if the person you’re talking to seems like they’d be a great target for a boxing glove. Before we can ask others to do more, we ourselves have to be better. And then, just maybe, we can really say that change is coming.

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Tweet the author @gabbietatad.