I don’t think I’ve ever talked about politics on the internet. Not on my mostly inactive Instagram, not on my anonymous Reddit account, not in any group chat that wasn’t with people I already trust. This is a first for me, and honestly, a first for me online in general. I’m a quiet person by default. I have opinions, strong ones, I just rarely bring them up. The internet is loud enough without me adding to it, and I figured the people who know me already know where I stand.
Today is different. I read the news and felt devastated and angry and hopeless, and for once I think staying quiet costs more than saying something.
Game over, again
Some context, in case you don’t follow news from the Philippines: our politics is a long-running shitshow. Today, the Senate leadership got swapped out, the same week an impeachment trial against the Vice President is supposed to start. The timing isn’t an accident. Nobody is even pretending it’s an accident. The choreography is just sitting there in the open, and we’re all supposed to nod and accept that this is how things work now.
And this isn’t new. It’s been bad, then worse, then really bad, then worst, on a loop. The drug war was supposed to be the worst of it. Then it wasn’t. The Vice President’s first impeachment getting thrown out by the Supreme Court on a technicality was supposed to be the worst of it. Then it wasn’t. Every time you think you’ve hit the floor, somebody finds a way to dig under it.
And it’s not just the big stuff. Every week another headline lands in my feed. Some good, most bad. You’re just scrolling, minding your own business, and then one of them shows up and lands square in your gut. It compounds. You start the week with one weight on your chest and by Friday there are five more. It’s been feeling like playing Bayonetta on the hardest difficulty. The headlines keep hitting, the Game Over screen keeps showing up, and you keep restarting just to die again.
People are so polarized that even agreeing on what you’re looking at feels impossible. You can’t have a conversation. You can’t trust a comment section. Sometimes you can’t even trust the framing of the headline. Half the country is gaslighting the other half about what’s happening in front of everyone.
I don’t think I’m alone in this. A lot of us are walking around with the same low-grade dread, trying to do our jobs and answer emails and pretend the floor isn’t moving. It’s exhausting. And the exhaustion is, I think, kind of the point. If you’re tired, you’re easier to ignore.
Continue?
I know there are people doing something about it. Right now. Today. People who can actually move the needle on the things I’m scared of. They’re working on it.
That sounds almost too simple to be useful, but it’s been kind of a lifeline. When you’re scrolling and the bad headlines keep stacking up, the brain quietly assumes that nobody is doing anything, that everyone has given up, that you’re alone with the headline. None of that is true. It just feels true with a phone in your hand.
Good people are still fighting, and they’re everywhere. Not just in courtrooms or newsrooms or on the streets, but ordinary people doing what they can, where they are. People like us, saying something instead of nothing. We’ve come a long way to get to where we are, and that didn’t happen because everyone was hopeful all the time. It happened because people kept going when it was hard.
And here’s the part I keep coming back to. That Game Over screen asks you a question: continue? Yes or No. As long as you keep pressing Yes, the game isn’t actually over. It’s only truly over the moment you press No.
Hope is pressing Yes. That’s it. Hope isn’t optimism. Hope isn’t pretending things are fine. Hope is the decision to keep showing up, to load the save and try again, even after the hundredth Game Over.
Press Yes
I don’t know if I’ll write about politics again. Not any time soon, definitely. But for today I needed to say something instead of nothing. This is me pressing Yes.
If you’re feeling what I’m feeling, the gut-punch, the hopelessness, the urge to just close the tab and never open it again, I see you. I’m there too.
I know the elections isn’t for a couple more years. But when it comes around, that’s where the actual change happens. Vote in the right people. Vote out the wrong ones. That’s the lever. Everything we do between now and then is staying in the game long enough to pull it.
So in the meantime: pressing Yes doesn’t have to mean writing a blog post. It doesn’t have to mean marching in the streets, donating to a campaign, posting hot takes on Facebook or Twitter, or arguing politics with your boomer relatives at the dinner table. You can do those things, and honestly, if you can, I think you should. But pressing Yes can also just mean refusing to give up. Keeping a small corner of hope alive somewhere inside you, even when everything around you tells you not to. That counts too.
So press Yes, however you can.