Resisting deceptions
Of late, tuning out from the steaming stream of political news is increasingly difficult to do.
In any particular minute, scrolling through one’s social media feed as the election season simmers pops up scores of political posts from both known and unknown but highly inventive folks regarding the election prospects of so and so presidential contender.
Such early political divinations are partly irksome, partly tiring and partly tempts us to give up on anything political.
But what else can we do? Short of taking a vacation from all social media or having angelic patience reading supposedly “earthshaking” political news, with just a little extra work we can actually take some practical mindful precautions against such early abusive provocations.
Of those self-help precautions, one easy way is to immediately suspect bias against anyone arguing about who among the unofficial presidential contenders has charisma or reliability or electability.
By suspecting bias, one easily discerns that even if those political postings look as if they have objective truth or fact, they do not.
Confident talk about charisma or electability or reliability, you see, is purely subjective. Even if laced with objective facts, a political post is still a matter of subjective personal taste, hence the bias.
Cynically, in fact, what those political posts are actually telling you is that what the poster likes is what really matters in politics. These people want you to assume only they have the power to dictate your political reality. And, in the process, discounts your tastes or choices in the political scheme of things.
At any rate, the ego thing is galling. As one of my favorite political commentators observes, such egotistic posturing is “a form of self-confidence that verges on lunacy, because one of the definitions of that condition is the inability to distinguish between subjective feelings and objective realities.”
As much as possible then see those egotistic opinions for what these
“By suspecting bias, one easily discerns that even if those political postings look as if they have objective truth or fact, they do not.
really are — opinions that aren’t just a commentary about what is possible in the political scene, but also naked attempts to shape what is possible. The keyword there is shape.
Take for instance the “electability” of any presidential contender. “Electability isn’t a static social fact; it’s a social fact we’re (actively) constructing,” says philosopher Kate Manne.
An example of constructing such a social fact is the concealed effort of convincing people to give up this early on “unwinnable” contenders.
By making people believe that someone is unwinnable is to make people prematurely give up on a qualified presidential contender instead of making people go all out for that presidential contender.
Many posters of political opinion, of course, are naïve and are unaware they’re using underhanded tactics against fellow Filipinos.
Worse, their naivety makes them useful, cheaply at that, for professional manipulators behind presidential contenders.
With all its dramatic posturings, our political world is a stage. But if there is a stage, there’s a backstage and a world beyond the theater.
A world where shadowy people outside the limelight pull the strings, out of reach of official and ethical rules when test-driving lines of attack, or “contrasts” in political parlance, against anyone who “seems presidential.”
It is here, in the famous saying of political theorist Hannah Arendt, where “the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
Which brings us to the contemptible concerted efforts of backstage operators to use all active measures currently available — Internet trolls, proxies and other social media tools — to amplify disagreements and conspiracy theories about presumed presidential contenders.
Such dark powers are what makes a presidential contender “viable” nowadays. It needs our resistance.
For our resistance to matter, however, we need to commit to accurate facts, even in our personal conversations. It is only when we stick to accurate facts are the deceptions of naïve or professional liars defeated.
“It is only when we stick to accurate facts are the deceptions of naïve or professional liars defeated.