Politics has always been conceded by the ordinary people as being a “dirty game”: the word “game” being as significant as “dirty”. A game, after all, is not “real life” but actions based on made-up rules, specifically for that performance. It is accepted, however, that games can influence persons’ actions in “real life” but generally this is seen a positive as in cricket “building character”. But if politics is a “dirty game” then we should expect that it will also influence us in the wider context also into less salubrious actions.
Part of the tradition of politics is that politicians have to lie. Or at least be willing to lie so as to achieve their aims. According to one definition, “a lie is a statement that the liar knows or believes to be false, stated with the express intention of deceiving or misleading the receiver for some advantageous gain on the part of the liar.” In the case of politicians, they insist that the lie is for the “greater good”.
Take the case of the APNU/PNC and its camp followers who have been telling their supporters that it was the “anomalies” that were “discovered” during the later recount stage which forced Reg 4 RO Clairmont Mingo to intercede in the tabulation of Reg 4 SOPs to “rectify” matters. As to how Mr Mingo knew about these “anomalies” ahead of time, when all and sundry in the APNU/PNC affirmed at the end of the polls on March 2 that the voting had proceeded to its conclusion without a “hitch” has never been explained. But the question as to why these lies by politicians are believed by their followers and they do not feel “wronged” – even though they accept that politicians “must” lie – is as intriguing.
But liars at least acknowledge that there is a “truth” – they are simply misleading others as to what that is. In Guyana, the original lies about the No Confidence Motion and the March 2 elections have been long transmuted into what the Princeton philosopher Harry Frankfurt called “BS”. He made this distinction between lying and BS’ing: You lie when you know the facts, but you misstate them to score “points”. BS’ing, however, is when you do not care about what you are saying; you just speak for effect. As Frankfurt showed, BS’ing is worse than lying, especially with people in authority; because of the possible consequences. As Frankfurt noted, the BSer’s “focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and he is thus not constrained by the truths surrounding that point…’.
As opposed to 1985 when Frankfurt made his famous distinction, in today’s world, social media is particularly accommodative of BS. According to research carried out by the Pew Research Center “social media posts tend to be overly dramatic or exaggerated versions of the truth, and people are likely to make accusations and start arguments about an issue without consideration of the facts.” In Guyana these posts have morphed into Facebook platforms via which select like-minded audiences are regaled with fake news that abounds in BS. There is very little, if any, effort made to check truth claims that are asserted categorically and swallowed wholesale by their audience. This demagoguery serves to deepen the extant polarization in the society but more insidiously, to delegitimize in the minds of the audience, contra opinions. For example, the Facebook BS’ers has been asserting that all the PPP government’s assistance to schoolchildren, pensioners or flood victims etc have been discriminatorily distributed without providing any evidence. It is now a “given” in their echo chambers that this is the reality and the trust that is necessary to hold societies together is further eroded.
The dangers of this demagogic descent into lying, BS, and fake news in politics is caught in Thomas” Theorem: “When men define their perceptions as real, they are real in their consequences”.
