Lies, all lies

Taking stock of the recent notable political events playing out on social media conclusively raised the horror that lies are now the drug of choice for many.

Without pointing to specific incidents, the protagonists were, in one form or another, brazenly lying through their teeth, causing disgust and outrage, and bringing on legal cases.

At the same time, the brazen lies and slop provided comfort to so many that they would undoubtedly put the rest of us on the hook for something disastrous, even apocalyptic.

Moreover, the political lies and slop were perversely sold openly and served without remorse on social media, as if lies were everyday discounted commodities hawked on Shopee and Lazada.

How political lies became today’s consequential “triumphant disaster” predictably will soon preoccupy our historians and social scientists.

Nonetheless, the general contours of the malaise were visible enough that we’re basically finding out that our politicians somehow swear privately that dishonesty is the best policy for getting elected or staying in office and, more alarmingly, that many knowingly support lies when these align with their personal politics.

Politicians and citizens professing a cozy relationship with lies can perhaps be initially blamed for social media’s relentless invasion of public spaces and people’s growing distrust of mainstream news.

After all, there now exists an impenetrable and impermeable social media membrane-–the much derided “echo chambers” -– preventing corrections to the lies.

And, the lies spread in those echo chambers are usually red meat for politicians, their mercenary lackeys, and their ravenous, frenzied political bases. All of whom are only too happy to chew on the lies for days on end.

Spreading lies through social media platforms, of course, is on point with the old propagandist’s reliable dictum that if a lie is repeated enough, people will assume it must be true.

Still, unrelentingly money-grubbing social media platforms along with their consumption-dictating algorithms and AI-inflicting reality tools may have only exacerbated deep moral and socio-political maladies. A case of it’s been there all along.

At any rate, why then do politicians believe they can lie when their lies are so easily uncovered? Why do politicians, in calculating the cost/benefit ratio of their lying schemes, conclude that barefaced lying works in their favor?

One common certainty is that politicians instinctively know their followers will believe them, even if they habitually dish out lies.

It may also be perhaps that our budding demagogues live in the same social media echo chambers, are watching or monitoring the same news channels, are reading the same newspapers and websites, are following the same social media influencers, and hang around with like-minded people as his or her frenzied followers.

But whatever the case, it’s really about bringing to life the proverbial dictum of “it takes two to tango.” Which now brings us to the key point that lying politicians can go so far only if people put up with the lies.

Various research show people do support the lies of their favored politicians because those lies support the political goal or agenda they believe in.

A sort of partisan engendered “moral flexibility” where conflicting moral standards are applied when it comes to the political lies their favored demagogues dish out.

“Zealously applying moral flexibility to politicians they oppose but suspending them when they perceive the politician to be engaged in demagogic fact-flouting to proclaim a deeper truth about their political grievances” is a phenomenon we should be consciously aware of.