With this election season’s campaigns in the home stretch, the quadrennial in the US and in the Philippines, the quadrennial and sexennial, respectively, contest for lying, misdirection, fact bending, half-truths and lies in the challenge to win the hearts and minds of voters is in full swing. The lying seems to be a means of capturing the electorate’s vote; lying is reaching its apogee and the question is why are politicians getting away with lies? No matter what politicians say or claim, eventually someone digs up the truth. Then, because it is the truth, it eventually floats to the surface. If politicians have not been honest up until this point, how have they been lying? When politicians renege on campaign promises, they are not being “economical” with the truth but cheating the public in order to win the election. Everything politicians say about each other is probably true, but everything they say about themselves is most likely not true. Most of time politicians cheat their way to power because, evidently, that is the only to appear on the ballot box. The one who actually speaks the truth usually does not make it that far. Other politicians or media eliminate them beforehand.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump routinely calls Ted Cruz “Lying Ted.” Cruz claimed that falsely accusing someone of lying is itself a lie and something Trump does daily. The politicians generally lie because they always have powerful incentives to do so, and then some politicians are pathological liars. A prevarication, a fabrication, or an equivocation just rolls smoothly out of their mouth into other people’s ears and minds. The problem with us voters is that we do not recognize their past lies to catalog them for use against that liar at the next election. That’s why my graduate professor who studied election polls always said, “Voters are stupid.” That is a bit of a hasty generalization, but sometimes we wonder. In the Philippines each politician is accusing the other of not being honest and stealing money from the people.
The questions is why do we as voters let politicians lie to get elected? We do it for the same reason we have given our health to a doctor, our money to a bank, our soul to the wrong pastor or priest, our children to the liberal school system where they do not teach about God. We buy things we do not need, and we spend more money than we earn, and in so doing we have lost the power to control our own lives. People do not want freedom; they want their lives be controlled. They hand over their power to anyone making promises they cannot deliver.
It seems like in order to be successful politicians these days, a candidate has to gradually compromise many of his or her principles and perhaps integrity as well. Can anyone become the president or run for an office without lying or without misrepresenting opponents? I am amazed by how expert these politicians are when it comes to lying; of course, politicians will never admit that they lied. They always engage in the blame game; they will blame media because the biased media misinterpreted them, twisted their comments, took their statement out of context, or misstated what they meant, which is a possibility. But, of course, politicians never lie. At least that is what they say.
In this age of the Internet the chances of getting way with their lies are slim. Mainly politicians lie because the cost benefits ratio for lying is in their favor. For example, right now, opponents are engaging in a smear campaign against Mayor Rody Dutterte, because he is the front-runner and is likely to become the next president of the Philippines; however, opponents run this calculation when they create a damaging narrative, attack their opponent, or respond with indefensible claims against him. Most politicians do not know when they are lying because many of them are narcissistic, arrogant, and deluded with self-importance, seeing themselves as special, and having a sense of entitlement—all of which causes them to believe that they are right ,and, even if they are not, they are too smart to be caught or suffer the consequences because of egotism that leads them to believe they can do whatever they want. Granted, a culture of impunity cultivates this thinking. That is why politics is not about serving the people but is about business.
The other reason politicians get way with lying is because politicians know their followers will believe them, even in the face of a huge amount of evidence showing that they lied and tried to cover up the truth. Because politicians and their supporters live in the same circle in which everyone listens to the same radio channels, watch the same news outlets, read the same commentators and newspapers, they digest the same political spoon-fed food. If they are liberal, they most likely listen to liberal channels, and if they are conservative, they will listen to conservative channels and even hang out with the like-minded people. So no matter what people of a different ilk say, they will not believe any conflicting information or claims coming from outside their circle. People do not want to hear the truth; they like to hear politicians weaving fairy tales with happy endings. If a politician tells a lie enough times, people will assume it is true because, otherwise, they expect that lies will be disproved and go away. Therefore, if the lie continues to be heard, the electorate will assume that it must be true. As the nineteenth century American author, James Freeman Clarke, wrote, “The difference between a politician and a statesman is that a politician thinks about the next election while a statesman thinks about the next generation.” What we need are statesmen not politicians.
Dr. Aland Mizell is President of the MCI and a regular contributor to Mindanao Times. You may email the author at:aland_mizell2@hotmail.com
