‘Boredom’ strategy
‘The defense’s strategy is clear: bore people out of their wits using inane technicalities and distractions so the public just won’t care anymore.’
Daily Tribune‘The defense’s strategy is clear: bore people out of their wits using inane technicalities and distractions so the public just won’t care anymore.’
Boredom has peppered most conversations in the court of public opinion the past few days in the Veep’s ongoing impeachment trial, prompted largely by the trial’s legal pomposities.
A news colleague of mine, for instance, colorfully said the trial so far “might as well be called political death by boredom.” A noted historian also derisively characterized the proceedings as the “most lawyerly-infested impeachment yet.”
Former prominent lawmakers and impeachment veterans similarly said so, as they mounted calls for simplicity and urged all parties to focus on substantive evidence rather than legal technicalities so the public can relate.
Senate President Franklin Drilon, for example, said he shared the public’s frustration with the slow pace of the first three days of the trial, dominated as it was by tiresome legal exchanges on the authenticity of the 23 November 2024 press briefing where the Veep said she had contracted an assassin to kill President Marcos Jr., the First Lady, and the former speaker if they succeeded in having her killed first.
Similarly, former Senate president Koko Pimentel bewailed: “An impeachment trial shouldn’t be strictly technical; it shouldn’t feel like we’re just in a regular court of law.”
The pretentious use of legal technicalities and language, in fact, prompted a worried former law dean to charge that “when people allow technicalities to obscure reality already seen by and known to all, that is dishonesty.”
As the dismay poured in, a noted lawyer quickly saw what’s going on: “The defense’s strategy is clear: bore people out of their wits using inane technicalities and distractions so the public just won’t care anymore.”
Teasing out that variety of “boredom,” a cursory Google search yielded this: “In legal practice, ‘boredom’ is rarely a formal tactic, but it is applied informally through two primary strategies: Trial by indifference, where attorneys exhaust opposing parties with endless paperwork, and Jury Desensitization, where a lawyer intentionally minimizes high drama to bore the jury into ignoring damaging claims.”
Other substantive points, of course, show why this so-called “strategy of dullness” isn’t dubious at all. But the main point remains that it’s a defensive move “to tune out the emotional weight of the prosecution’s narrative, focusing purely on the mechanics of the evidence.”
In the Veep’s politically charged hearings and trial, monotony practically “avoids sensationalized soundbites,” forcing the public to lose interest and turn away from the livestream of the proceedings.
The lawyers of the Veep, as well as some of the senator-judges exhibiting their true political sympathies, won’t say out loud if it’s the strategy, however.
But judging from what’s gone on so far, “boredom” is clearly causing the public to start losing sight of the true intent of the trial: determining the Veep’s — an impeachable officer — fitness for office, not criminal guilt. It’s not, in essence, about the Veep’s possessions, liberty, and life but only about her position in government.
Not only the public but also the non-lawyer senator-judges, who must carefully weigh whether the Veep’s actions demonstrate unfit behavior for high office or not, are clearly suffering themselves.
In a telling reaction to the proceedings tackling grave threats and inciting to sedition last Tuesday, former Senate president Tito Sotto complained of being led astray by the serious discussions.
Sotto rightfully said that charges of grave threats and sedition are better handled by regular courts rather than by the political-cum-judicial impeachment court, wherein only charges of betrayal of public trust and other perceived high political crimes should be heard.