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Two events in recent American history remain seared in my memory. The September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center claimed the lives of a distant uncle, Ramon Grijalvo, and an aunt, Marilyn Bautista—one of my grandfather’s relatives. The second unfolded just a month ago: the fifth anniversary commemoration of the January 6 Capitol insurrection.
What qualifies me to reflect on that day? I’m not American. Yet I count friends and relatives across the United States—many of whom have debated me fiercely about those events, urging me to accept populist distortions as fact. That’s what troubles me most.
I nearly shelved this piece entirely. It sat on the content board since late December, flagged for my editors with a “do not publish” note. Ahead of the 40th anniversary of the Philippines’ EDSA People’s Power Revolution on February 25, I spiked it altogether, worried about my U.S. travel. My son, sister, cousins, aunts, and uncles live on the mainland; I visit twice yearly for work and family. One wrong label—”undesirable alien” under Department of Homeland Security scrutiny—could bar me at the border.
I was Maga-raumatized
But I was traumatized and woke up (arrrggghh, that word again) to publish my thoughts. Clean energy demands clean politics.
Here’s what happened.
A Filipina MAGA made a comment about the peaceful Philippine “People’s Power” revolution after seeing a reel that I was in a podcast talking about my humble contribution to the People Power’s cause. And what I am doing to keep the revolution going is stopping leaking faucets and saving water to save the environment.
She said that the February 1986 revolution in the Philippines is what America did it in the January 6 assault on the Capitol. This person, who lives in California, was only recently sworn in as a citizen. She has spent many years as a green card holder. I know her personally, as she was a college friend.
She spewed line after line of lies, describing the attack on Washington as “even more peaceful than the February People’s Power revolution.” What triggered me with a response was her saying “the real insurrectionists were the people who attacked Malacañang Palace and forced Marcos (Ferdinand Sr.) to flee the Philippines and land in Hawaii.”
And when I commented politely against what I said was a “personal revision of history,” she retorted that I was, since our college days, a left-leaning communist, who is has now transformed into “a climate change advocate to serve the big companies who control the weather.” She said that if I had not wised up, “I would have been an armed partisan in the New People’s Army (NPA) and should be dead by now in a guerrilla war.”
She also said that I, a journalist from the Philippines writing about clean technologies, can know nothing of the “Make America Great Again” movement when the country I live in is so backward because of “its own DEI and woke agenda.” She further said that as a “woke person” in the Philippines, I contribute to the detriment of the “Christian faith.” Then she blasted away how her “Christianity will save the US and the Philippines from self-destruction.”
That triggered me. I replied with such fervor that each response could be an article to develop. When I confronted her with the truth (a lot coming from her own Fox News posts) about Epstein, world peace, and her beloved DJT, I reminded her that she remains an Asian, an immigrant, benefiting immensely from a system she once said she “took advantage of because America is so rich anyway.” My final salvo: no amount of MAGA-nism will ever make her white.
She obviously had nothing else to say.
I asked her with a lot of polite humor what she was taking. Maybe it could unleash my creative side too.
She blocked me.
12 kilometers to freedom
I remember the grit, the fear, and the electrifying hope of EDSA in 1986. I wasn’t just there as a citizen; I was there as a student journalist, the Managing Editor of Pintig ng Diwa, the progressive campus newspaper of the Philippine School of Business Administration.
On day one, I biked 12 kilometers to see what was happening. On day two, our entire editorial team marched to EDSA, pens and notebooks in hand, ready to document the fall of a dictator. By day four, I stood my ground alongside my Ninong, Delfy Geraldez—an architect and professor whose life was dedicated to building things of beauty. We stood there to protect a foundation far more important than any building: our democracy.
I saw angry mobs pillaging the Malacañang Palace, seat of government in the Philippines. The violent, rowdy, destructive crowd wasn’t led by social media messaging. They were there in anger—for 20 years they’d been fooled, robbed, and jailed.
Déjà vu: Sycophants and sociopaths
Decades later, watching the January 6, 2021, insurrection on CNN, I felt a sickening sense of déjà vu.
But this didn’t feel like the America my relatives called home. It felt like a nightmare, unimaginable in the US. On this particular January day, people seemed to be protecting a leader like it was a cult, instead of protecting a nation and a constitution. I had already lived through something similar. When former Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte was brought into power, his henchmen and the people who worshipped him twisted the meaning of Philippine democracy into something unrecognizable.
Regarding the people who stormed the American capitol, I believed that this riot was driven by sycophants and sociopaths, narcissist leaders and the power-hungry. Including a Filipino-American, Kene Brian Lazo, who carried a walis, a broom. This man was later arrested, jailed for 45 days, and was again incarcerated
The lead-up to January 6 was a torrent of lies and misinformation. For months, the American public was fed a narrative of a “stolen election” despite zero proof. Combined with the isolation of COVID-19, this massive information fraud created a powder keg. For those of us in the Philippines with family in the U.S., the “battlefield” was the family Viber group. I watched as my relatives—intelligent, hardworking people—shared propaganda that looked identical to the “alternative facts” we fought in 1986.
It was a tragedy of faith, too. Many Fil-Ams were led to believe that supporting a “Big Lie” was a religious duty, weaponizing the same crosses and prayers we used at EDSA to stop tanks, now used to justify an assault on truth.
The “salvaging” of the American dream
What strikes me most is the return of the tactics of state-sponsored fear. In the Philippines, the Marcos years were defined by “salvaging“—the extrajudicial abduction and killing of dissidents. Today, I look at the recent deaths of Renee Good and Alexander Pretti and I see the same dark patterns. These are the “salvagings” of a new era, where those who stand in the way of a populist narrative find themselves silenced or dead under suspicious circumstances.
This state enforcement has a new face in America: the weaponization of ICE. Under the current trajectory, ICE has become the modern equivalent of the Philippine military during Martial Law—a force used not just for border security, but as a tool of domestic intimidation to keep the “undesirables” and the vocal critics in a state of constant terror.
The Communist Scare and the “Radical Left”
To justify the original Martial Law, Ferdinand Marcos Sr. manufactured a Communist scare, claiming the country was on the brink of a red takeover. Today, I hear the exact same echoes in American discourse. The “radical left” and “corrupt Democrats” have become the new “Communist threat.” It is a proven formula: demonize the opposition as an existential threat to the nation’s survival to justify the suspension of democratic norms.
Just as the Philippine Congress became a rubber stamp for the Marcos family, I see the Republican leadership today acting as a rubber stamp for a movement that refuses to protect the truth. They are no longer legislators; they are the enablers of a revisionist history, refusing to hold the architects of the January 6 insurrection accountable.
The Epstein files
Every regime has its cracks, and they often come from the shadows of personal scandal. Former POTUS Bill Clinton had Monica Lewinsky. In the Philippines, it was the Dovie Beams tapes—the recordings of Marcos’s affair that shattered the “moral” image he projected to the world. Today, the Epstein files serve as America’s Dovie Beams. They represent a deep, sordid well of corruption and kompromat that hangs over the political elite, eroding the public’s faith in the very people supposed to lead them.
There has been constant dodging from POTUS, Republicans, and the MAGA movement.
Walis and “Hiya”
The image of Kene Brian Lazo inside the Capitol with a walis tambo (a Filipino broom) was a moment of profound hiya (shame). To see our cultural symbol of “cleaning house” used to desecrate the halls of government was jarring. While younger Fil-Ams saw an insurrection, many in the older generation—blinded by religious and political fervor—saw a “cleansing” that was anything but democratic.
Now, with the (blanket?) pardons for the January 6th insurrectionists in early 2025, the message is clear: the assault on the Capitol has been wiped clean. I am sad, and very afraid. The current president, Ferdinand Marcos Jr., son of the man we ousted, and his estranged sister Imee Marcos have already begun their own “cleaning” by removing the EDSA public holiday, stripping it of its value to the nation.
A final warning
We learned in 1986 that when you stop punishing those who try to tear down democracy, you are simply waiting for them to try again. America is currently throwing away its own accountability. This is a warning to the American people: when the “clean grid” of truth is replaced by the dirty fuel of lies and the “salvaging” of critics, you aren’t moving forward. You are circling back to a darkness we already know all too well.
Addendum — February 28, 2026, 9:00 pm PH time
I was on YouTube when the breaking news alerts began stacking up on my phone, one after another, each more urgent than the last, until it became clear that President Donald Trump had ordered U.S. forces to join Israel in a direct strike on Iran. The shift from ordinary scrolling to the realization that a major war could be unfolding in real time was jarring and deeply unsettling.
Targets reportedly included key military and nuclear facilities and senior Iranian leadership, a move Washington said was meant to destroy Tehran’s strategic capabilities, but one that immediately raised fears of retaliation and a wider regional conflict.
Watching the story develop through live updates and constant notifications made the distance between global geopolitics and everyday life suddenly feel very small, and for a moment the uncertainty of what might come next was genuinely frightening.
For Ramon Grijalvo and Marilyn Bautista, who both arrived in America from the Philippines and gave their lives at the World Trade Center.
Tito Ramon did not die instantly. He suffered severe burns. When he finally succumbed to his injuries, he passed away on September 15 and was buried after 10 days. It wasn’t because of the traditional long Filipino mourning period and wake. It was because he was mistakenly turned over to a Chinese family, according to his nephew Armin. It took some searching to find his body.
I write this in their memory, and for the democracy and the America he believed in.
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