Political hypocrisy

No doubt the election season is in full swing — what with all the premature campaigning going on all around, courtesy of anonymous mercenary experts of political intoxication who’ve been practically given a free hand.

And, much as we don’t have time yet for scrutinizing the tested and untested manipulative handiwork assaulting our eyes, ears, and messing with our heads, there’s no escaping the premature campaigning.

Our relevant authorities are powerless too. The Commission on Elections (Comelec) is literally raising its hands in surrender, leaving us with the graphic that it is no more than a bullied child whining over the fact that there’s no law against premature campaigning.

Admittedly, premature campaigning is something we can’t tune out. But this doesn’t mean we’re helpless.

It doesn’t mean we don’t attempt to fruitfully understand what those giant billboards, endless cutesy social media posts and manufactured slanders about our politicians mean.

Now, to make sense of it all is to first understand that it isn’t just about deceit and lying. Although premature campaigning does involve deceit and lying, it is actually better to see it as hypocrisy, the vice of all vices.

In truth, hypocrisy is what actually makes our politics rotten to the core. Hypocrisy also makes premature campaigning and the well-paid “political operator” possible.

To begin understanding it, it is best to first know what the best theorist on how politics really operates –- Machiavelli — said about this particular problem.

In resolving the age-old problem of the relationship between the politician’s real being and his appearance, Machiavelli counseled, “appear as you wish to be.”

Machiavelli here, says noted political theorist Hannah Arendt, meant “never mind how you are, this is of no relevance in the world and politics where only appearances, not ‘true’ being, count. If you can manage to appear to others as you would wish to be, that is all that can possibly be required by the judges of the world.”

Appearances indeed have a lot to do with hypocrisy.

This point was eerily elaborated recently by a veteran Filipino political operator who urged politicians campaigning for the midterms that their success at the polls goes beyond highlighting or promising what they can or will be able to do.

“Let’s get to the seat first. Getting your butt into the seat, that’s our job, and we have to play with the music. That’s the TikTok, the kantahan (singing)...,” admonishes the operator.

Cynical as it may sound, but that’s exactly how things are with our voters to the extent that not a few of us — who despite sincere political intentions tend to suspiciously view matters from our ivory tower — catcall most Filipino voters as “bobotantes.”

Appearances, however, also ironically allows the powerless Filipino voter to exact revenge beforehand on power-hungry politicians by first making him a fool before voting him into office.

Anyway, grappling with such electoral realities — that deeds and words aren’t exactly how Filipino voters judge political worthiness — convinces our politicians to become practicing hypocrites.

But if their clearly mad-made phantoms and apparitions smack of deceit and lies, it must be made clear that the hypocrite’s duplicity is different from the liar or cheat, even the murderer.

Instead, our humdrum politician’s hypocrisy — which is from the Greek that means “play-acting” — is merely falsely pretending that he or she has the same virtues as the electorate, though it still somewhat looks like a criminal act.

Nonetheless, the joke eventually is on our political hypocrites. Their duplicity makes them no less a victim of their mendacity than those whom they set out to deceive.

So much so that in the end they lose their identities as serious politicians and become no more than mere entertainers.