It’s been over a generation since lawmakers had to confront the possibility of being under fire. I remember (being caught by unfolding events in the area) the sight of anxious senators huddled in the Valle Verde Country Club as they discussed what to do in the wake of the ongoing 1989 coup attempt.

Memorably, both the House and Senate mounted vigorous press conferences where they vowed to uphold our constitutional democracy, and some might remember Rep. Lorna Verano-Yap packing an Uzi in the House session hall as the fighting in Camp Aguinaldo took place. But the protagonists of that outstanding moment for the legislature, from then Senate President Jovito Salonga to former Speaker Ramon Mitra Jr. and even the then-Benjamin of the House, Dinggoy Roxas, are all gone, and with them, the memories of those tense days.

Between Sen. Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa’s cannonball run up the Senate fire escape and his disappearing into the early morning darkness in the company of Sen. Robinhood Padilla, instead of solidarity, the Senate has displayed disunity after its premises were shattered by bullets fired by its own security team. On the day of the assault, an all-member caucus had been called off, and, instead, a majority caucus was called, which meant the minority went home since they were no longer needed. Fans of Dela Rosa expressed their feelings by assaulting the vehicle of Sen. Vicente “Tito” Sotto III, who released an angry statement in response.

There have been a lot of bruised feelings in the Senate because of the Cayetano coup and Dela Rosa’s great escape, after the Senate sergeant-at-arms led an armed assault against the walls of the Senate premises. In the immediate aftermath of the Cayetano coup, Sen. Panfilo Lacson bruised the feelings of Sen. Pia Cayetano by suggesting that Dela Rosa, whose vote clinched the change in Senate leadership, was smuggled into the premises in her car. It turned out the smuggling was done by another Cayetano, Alan Peter, and Lacson duly apologized. Then Pia Cayetano’s already brittle emotional state shattered when, as she put it, instead of being asked by absent colleagues in the minority how she was, she got nothing of the sort.

Sober observers pointed out that regardless of what actually happened—whether, as is increasingly assumed, the Senate sergeant-at-arms’ attack on the building was to provide cover for Dela Rosa’s escape, or, as others suggest, it was a case of being trigger-happy in the midst of so much political pressure, including mind games—the trauma of Pia Cayetano was genuine. She and other senators were truly bewildered and frightened by the unprecedented shooting that took place in the Senate. In the same manner that her outrage (over what she felt was an untruthful allegation by Lacson stemmed from genuinely not knowing her own brother had smuggled their colleague into the Senate) was genuine, she truly had no idea if they were going to be assaulted and killed in those moments of potentially lethal confusion.

Members of the minority later clarified that they had reached out to their colleagues to ask how they were, but it apparently wasn’t tender or loving enough for Pia Cayetano, or perhaps the real object of her indignation was outside the Senate: the public did its fair share of hooting—through memes—at both the Cayetanos and the new majority. The hooting is based on a conclusion many have reached: the new majority will stop at nothing to keep its vulnerable members out of jail. Which means they have made common cause with the embattled Vice President Sara Duterte, impeached for behavior similar to their own.

No one knows when that point is reached, where admiration turns into contempt, where a finely honed public image dissolves and is replaced with an unflattering one. For Sen. Loren Legarda and Pia Cayetano, the question is: Has that point been reached? They find it inconceivable that it has, but their raw emotions suggest they might have that sinking feeling that comes from recognizing that the public mood has shifted.

The older generations of politicians were neither saintlier nor necessarily better than their present-day successors, but one thing sets apart the older generation from those in office today: the idea of self-control. An idea shared, to a certain extent, by the public. For all his subsequent ups and downs, when Jun Lozada coined the slogan, “Moderate your greed!” he was expressing a deeply and widely held attitude toward power and those who hold it, one identical to the slogan that marked the end of the conjugal dictatorship: “Tama na, sobra na, palitan na!”

The Duterte Diehard Supporters’ contempt for anyone perceived as “disente” because it is only a fig-leaf for hypocrisy, like all powerful public opinions, contains a core of truth; but it ignores that other basic realization, learned the hard way, through experience: power doesn’t last forever, and so impunity will come back and bite you. That is the reality confronting the coalition of the charged. Worse, they have become what Lenin supposedly called “useful idiots,” those useful to the cause, due to ignorance or naiveness or both, who didn’t know what their coalition-mates are capable of, including scaring them half to death to make an escape possible.