Optics

“Optics” was the bright and shiny buzzword generously dusted on significant political events last week.

The frenzied political events referred to here were the Veep officially throwing her hat into the 2028 presidential derby; the cordial meet-up of President Marcos Jr. and opposition stalwart Leni Robredo; and Senator Risa Hontiveros’s pointed visit to the hothouse Kalayaan Islands Group.

All those events made the front pages of news outfits, the first essential ingredient to turn any political concoction into a matter of political “optics.”

Landing on the front pages generally led those addicted to politics to give each other knowing nods and glances about bright and shiny “optics,” as if arrogantly saying that they alone possessed the brainy precision to speak on a word flavored with an aura both technical and colorful.

Which is objectionable. Since it leaves political illiterates — meaning the rest of us — needlessly scratching our heads, even if we had hastily insisted, to keep up appearances, that we weren’t puzzled about the peculiar word “optics.”

But, as it turns out, “appearances” gives us enough of a perspective to see that “appearances” handily replaces “optics” any time the latter comes up.

In fact, intently examining what the political addicts and manipulators were up to or hiding behind their backs yielded the consequential fact that political “optics” has everything to do with us, that the only target of political “optics” is us.

Realizing those intentions, we now have no other choice but to keep our guard up every time “optics” comes up, particularly in light of the stark reality that political “optics” is tactically a political way of either keeping us in the dark or getting us out of the dark.

All that becomes clearer with the Cambridge English Dictionary’s definition of “optics” in its political context: “The public opinion and understanding of a situation after seeing it as the media shows it and the possible effect of this.”

To cut to the chase, therefore, the essential point raised here is that we can’t well enough leave “optics” alone on the say-so of political addicts, or worse, to professional image manipulators.

Admittedly, it may take some doing to pull back the curtain on the techniques used by the manipulators of political optics. I even have difficulty with it. But gaining skills in “visual literacy” and “media literacy” are important aids in furthering our citizenship skills.

Anyway, even if we happen to keep up with the slick schemers of political “optics,” we are also right smack in the age of internet media and the 24-hour news coverage, where public opinion and understanding about politics and political personalities are twisted faster and change at the blink of an eye, needing even more wariness.

Nothing illustrates such rapidity than the fact that the Veep’s blunt-force declaration of her candidacy was in mere days varnished over by the bubbly pink-socked official consultations over flood control projects and assertions in unison of “service before politics” between the incumbent and Robredo.

We’ll likely see more of those in the coming days. The past few days only put politics into a marked overdrive, despite so many of us complaining it’s still too early to tackle 2028’s presidential election with any degree of intelligence that’s devoid of emotional constructs.

Still, presidential politics is all about “optics.” So, as the race heats up, so too will be the intriguing stagecraft and “poli-optics” that will be part of everything we see or hear. Keep abreast and prepare yourself.