Vice President Sara Duterte is a lightning rod whenever she speaks. There’s no middle ground with her. We either cheer her unfiltered bravado or cringe at her audacious outbursts. Bloodbath is her latest meme word, that has sent a linguistic grenade that has sent tongues wagging and keyboards clacking. What’s in a word? Why does a single expression from her ignite such a firestorm, and what does it say about our collective obsession and our psyche as a people?
Sara Duterte doesn’t just speak. She detonates. Whether she’s actually threatening to kill three people or just tossing out quips that skirt the edge of propriety, her rhetoric sure reminds us of her father and how toxic the air was at that time not too long ago.
Note, however, that her impulsiveness, endearing to her base as authenticity, largely overshadows her policy positions. She is more interested in the shock than the substance. Her supporters see her as a no-nonsense leader who calls a spade a spade, or a bloodbath a bloodbath. Harry Roque even jumped her bandwagon – makiki bloodbath din daw siya. Her critics dismiss her, and Roque, as a loose cannon.
The bloodbath episode was either a calculated jab to rally her base, or a slip that betrayed her troubled character. For someone quick to the draw with terse verbal arrows, she was deliberately vague. She dropped the remark with a deliberate lack of explanation or a post utterance clarification. When her father acted the same way during his time, his base rose to a collective applause over a perceived mastery of communications strategy.
We need to reflect on the question posed by Kuh Ledesma – sino ang dakila, sino ang baliw? Sara’s utterances have a way of lodging themselves in our collective psyche. We dissect her words, meme them, argue over them in the comment sections. Why? Because her flaws mirror ours. Her reckless rhetoric reflects a society hooked on spectacle, where outrage is currency and nuance a non sequitur. We love her or hate her because she holds up a mirror to our own struggle to discern right from wrong, truth from noise.
Didn’t Sara Duterte’s remarks reveal our tendency to cheer or jeer without much thought? Are we admiring her boldness or excusing the disruption it causes? Are we calling out recklessness or ignoring how our culture reinforces it? Sino ang dakila at sino ang baliw?
In the end, Sara Duterte’s character flaws – her impulsivity, her evasiveness, her penchant for drama – these are not just personal issues. They’re also a test for us as a people. It is our inability to look away that suggests we’re as troubled as she is as polarizing.
