politics

Lies & the liars

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People don’t want to hear the truth because they don’t want their illusions destroyed.

And that’s the problem today. There’s so much lies being peddled around.

They say that senile dementia has set in with the 95 year old politician who lied about the peachy years during the Marcos Martial Law. I beg to disagree. While mental deterioration in the elderly is a normal phenomenon, there is a clear difference between lying and dementia. His pronouncement is not only disgusting but outrageous as well.

The only people who are mad at you for speaking the truth are those who are living a lie.

He benefitted from the ouster of a dictator. He slept with the political foes and friends. He and his family has amassed wealth out of his existence in politics. It is a shame that there are fools who even believe his pronouncements that no one was ever killed during the Martial Law years.

Denying the truth does not change the facts. And history can never be rewritten to benefit a few.

As a people, the actions of politicians who twist the truth is tantamount to betraying a nation.

We will never change what we tolerate.

There is a need to recalibrate our moral compass if we are to survive as a nation.

And this old man is not the only liar in our midst.

The gospel according to Thomas Sowell

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My post on “Credit Where Credit is Due”, drew inspiration from Thomas Sowell.  I know most (if not all) of my readers are unfamiliar with him.  I stumbled upon him at Pinterest and began reading up on many of his publications.  His biography entitled “A Personal Odyssey” published in 2002 is a recommended read.

Who is Thomas Sowell?

It is hard to imagine a more stupid or more dangerous way of making decisions than by putting those decisions in the hands of people who pay no price for being wrong.

Influential American economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell was born in 1930 in Gastonia, North Carolina but grew up in Harlem, New York.  Although Thomas showed signs of academic promise, his father who was a construction worker did not encourage him to pursue higher education. Thomas dropped out of high school, worked odd jobs, but his penchant for pursuing academic achievement saw him obtain a high school degree in an evening program.  After serving the marines, he entered Howard University and later moved to Harvard graduating Magna Cum Laude. He later earned his master’s from Columbia University and PhD from the University of Chicago. His mentor at the University of Chicago was the Nobel Prize winning conservative economist Milton Friedman.

His teaching career would take him to Rutgers, Howard, Cornell, Brandeis, and UCLA. Today, at 88 years old, he is currently a Rose and Milton Friedman Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in California.

A prolific scholar (he has written over 25 books), his earliest work Economics: Issues and Analysis was published in 1971. His latest work was published in 2007, entitled A Conflict of Visions. 

His position with government and the private sector included the US Department of Labor, the Urban Institute, and the Hoover Institution.  In 1990, Sowell won the Francis Boyer Award from the American Enterprise Institute.  In 2002, he was awarded the National Humanities Medal for innovative scholarship and incorporated history, economics and political science.

Sowell tells things the way it is and the way it should be told.  Often times too real and painful for the onion-skinned, his opinions speak volumes of experience.

His political rants are spot on:

No one will really understand politics until they understand that politicians are not trying to solve our problems.  They are trying to solve their own – of which getting elected and re-elected are number one and number two.  Whatever is number three is far behind.

He has this to say when politics takes on a personal agenda:

Politics is the art of making your selfish desires seem like the national interest.

His thoughts on entitlement are point blank:

  • When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.
  • It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.

His views on education:

The problem is not people being uneducated.  The problem is that they are educated just enough to believe what they’ve been taught.  And not educated enough to question what they’ve been taught.

His thoughts on the current social situation:

  • One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonised those who produce, subsidised those who refuse to produce, and canonised those who complain.
  • The real danger to us all is when government not only exercises the powers that we have voted to give it, but exercises additional powers that we have never voted to give it.  That is when “public servants” become public masters.  That is when government itself has stepped over the line.
  • What is ominous is the case with which some people go from saying that they don’t like something, to saying that the government should forbid it.  When you go down that road, don’t expect freedom to survive very long.

On the relation of economy, taxes and the government:

I have never understood why it is “greed” to want to keep the money you’ve earned, but not greed to want to take somebody else’s money.

Or simply placing real life scenarios in perspective:

People who enjoy meetings should not be in charge of anything.

And harping at media bias:

If people in the media cannot decide whether they are in the business of reporting news or manufacturing propaganda, it is all the more important that the public understand that difference, and choose their news sources accordingly.

The storm

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The perfect storm is when everything in the universe conspires to align.

When natural disasters occur, we can only prepare for survival.  It is humanly impossible to challenge nature. This blog is not about the force of nature. The intangible is difficult to foresee.

Let’s talk about the tangible. Man made disasters can be averted when calculated risks are taken before decisions – whether life changing or minor ones – are made.

The Philippine economy has seen a dramatic free fall in the last few months.  As in my previous blog on WHY THE NUMBERS MATTER, the political environment has lately borne the brunt of the initial salvo of a storm.  The short discourse on my previous blog made mathematical sense, with no additional confounding factors needed, to arrive at the conclusion that if policy makers and economists running the country don’t get their shit together, we’re headed for that perfect storm.

I was telling a friend of mine, that in a country like the Philippines, where the poor and marginalised make up 3/4 of the total population – productivity, savings and consumption  – take a big hit during an economic tailspin that is politically driven.  These three factors affects the most vulnerable in society because they now have to spend more for basic necessities, when they have the least to spend. These factors are present regardless of who the sitting president is.  

The peso now teeters at P54.15 for every USD$1.  The domino effect results in increase cost of fuel at almost P60 per litre. Delivery of goods and services are driven by fuel, which indirectly raises the cost of goods, commodities, and services.  Coupled with inflation is the demand for higher wages and compensation. While some economists claim that the region is widely affected, it is without doubt that the greatest free fall currently is in the Philippines.

In a perfect storm, the casualties are high.  At what price will we pay for not heeding the signals early on?

The country and its people are the casualties of any political storm. There is no yellow or red army when the lives and livelihood of people are at stake. As a nation, we’re all in this together. The greater good should be what we all work for. And the president is correct when he says that corruption must be stopped. It is without doubt that the political noise must address this storm. And like the storm that nature brings, it is the periphery that brings most havoc.

When the people around him is the storm, the greatest destruction is only felt when the trail of the typhoon has left. The damage has been done. And the people will have a more difficult time rebuilding their lives.

Mr. Stupid and the Emperor’s New Clothes

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There’s nothing like growing old and remaining an idiot.

Being an idiot is bad enough.  But to grow old and stay an idiot, that tops the list of being the greatest imbecile of the world.

Miriam Defensor-Santiago, God rest her soul, was right – “stupid is forever“. We don’t need to compare our country with other nations.  We’ve got the numbers and the data in ours alone.  Hell, we’re doing a heck of a good job advertising stupidity. And we have media as the main driver for pushing stupid up the pedestal and them to blame come election time when these idiots get voted into office.

That’s because as long as it is news – good or bad – it made the headlines! And people will always remember Mr. Stupid. That’s media mileage for them.

Idiots are not born.

They are man made.

Some say they are mentally retarded.  I beg to disagree.  Mental retardation is not something that people wilfully want to be.  It’s a natural disease.  And it’s an insult to call people who are mentally retarded idiots.

An idiot is a fool. An ass. A dunce. Ignoramus. Cretin. Moron. Dolt. A halfwit.  Imbecile.  The simpleton. In short, an idiot is stupid. To be called an idiot is never a compliment. It illustrates how menial your mental processing capacity is. But the idiot is also a scheming whore.  He sells his soul to the highest bidder – never mind his moral compass or his allegiance to the constitution.  He has no capacity to think on matters of justice and being upright.  Most, if not all, lack a conscience.  For lack of it, they have no remorse.  It’s because stupid is as stupid gets.

Name calling does not hurt them.  They are the epitome of what I would call the persons-with-disability (PWD) of entitled people.  Worse than the entitled, they are the first in line.  They demand that everyone else be a quarter wit. What can be lower than a moron? Whatever it is, they demand everyone to be that.

But stupid is seen in every nook and cranny.  From government to the private sector, there will always be Mr. Stupid blabbering away and trying to run the show. Mr. Stupid thinks he is intelligent or people adore him.  On the contrary, he is like the King in the story “The Emperor’s New Clothes“. In that short story by Hans Christian Anderson, the emperor who was fond of new clothes was duped by two strangers who came to town.

The swindlers said they could weave the most magnificent fabrics imaginable. Not only were their colours and patterns uncommonly fine, but clothes made of this cloth had a wonderful way of becoming invisible to anyone who was unfit for his office, or who was unusually stupid.

The story goes on with the gullible emperor being deceived, paying the swindlers a large sum of money.  But the swindlers were just weaving at air.  They stole all the silk and fine thread and placed them in their bags.  The emperor asked his honest minister to go to the room where these two men were working at empty looms. The minister saw nothing being weaved, but became afraid to tell the truth because he thought that if he said he saw nothing and would tell the king that there was nothing there (which was the truth), he would be called unfit and stupid.  So he lied.  The old minister just went on with the stupidity by saying it was beautiful!

The swindlers knew that they now had the emperor and the old minister’s trust.  They asked for more money and more silk and thread.  The emperor went on sending more trustworthy officials to look at the dress that was being made for him.  And the same officials landed in the same predicament as the honest old minister.  And this went on and on until the whole retinue looked at the same empty loom.  Because no one wanted to be called a fool, they all praised the empty loom as some beautiful craftsmanship from the two swindlers.  Even the emperor who saw NOTHING, did not want to look stupid.  He believed the swindlers.

On the day of the procession, the swindlers as the Emperor to strip and pretended to put on the invisible clothes.  During the procession, while riding the splendid canopy (naked), and through the crowd, he heard a voice of a child shout, “look Ma, the emperor has no clothes”!

That was when everyone started agreeing that indeed, the Emperor had no clothes and was naked in public.

The truth hurts when the gullible realise their stupidity.  They will never accept it and will fight tooth and nail to rationalise their stupidity as a sign of loyalty.  I beg to disagree.

Some people will only love you as much as they can use you.

Their loyalty ends where their benefits stop.

The rise of the incompetent

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We have a lot of these.

But they’re usually swept under the rug.  No one minds them.  No one actually cares about them.

They rise above their hubris when an incompetent person is made to lead them.  I say this from experience – whether it is in the academic, political or business stratosphere – when incompetence is appointed or voted into the highest position of that office, the institution decays and eventually dies.

What leads to the rise of incompetence?

Friedrich Nietzsche once said that

They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.

Strategists build on other means to rise to power and fame.  Hire someone who can make you look good, beautiful, insightful, purpose driven or look and feel like the masses and people will adore you.  No one wants Mr. Right or Ms. Morality.  They are a threat to exposing Mr. Incompetent and Ms. Ineptitude.

We live in a society where creating an appealing story for the less educated masses is the rule, rather than the exception.  And this has nothing to do with digital technology.  Time immemorial, we have manipulators and strategists who have forged alliances with their kind of people in order to achieve their agenda.  They have been existence since the creation of man.  Monarchs, Presidents, Prime Ministers, Emperors and other rulers were created by man.  Some, were brought into power because unscrupulous people skilfully and methodically planned it well.

The incompetent leader is chosen form among the substandard lot.  Someone who can easily be manipulated into believing he or she is “great” but at the time subservient to the king maker.  They are unfit and not up to scratch.  Governance from their pulpit is pathetic at best.  And propaganda is their method of choice in leading.  There are no defining moments.  Only building obscure, tangential stories made to deflect the real issues.  When the dust settles after their reign, they would have destroyed an institution, a business, a nation.

Today, the rise of the incompetent is clearer than ever.  Due to the digital age, we are able to document faux pas more rapidly than ever. It’s also the same tool used to create false opinions and stories, fake people or trolls, and fraudulent lives. To lead the gullible, the misguided, the incompetent to the promise land. It begs attention to both the exploiter and the exploitable. And the easiest to captivate with incredulous promises are the naive, the poor, the hungry, the desperate, the dupable, and the incorrigible.

What is unclear is why the reaction to such incompetence is delayed. It’s not that people don’t see the signs on the wall! They do! They actually do.  You see, to the incompetent, when the stories become unreal and by the time they get to realise that they’ve been fooled all along, they’re already confused.  This state of uncertainty is a natural phenomenon.  And it becomes an internal battle – to live with it or go against the flow.  When they realise that they were credulous, they’re unsure of how to react.

First there is denial. Being duped isn’t something easy to live with.  After all, risking a reputation to only realise that you were part of a conspiracy to stupidity isn’t an easy pill to swallow.

Then there is anger.  Unsure of where to thwart the anger at – the disbelief, the disillusion, being manipulated.  The anger is at everyone and everything.  The question lies in how much pride there is to swallow. But that is all the incompetent thinks about.

Bargaining.  The despot will change.  There will be apologies.  There is good in spite of evil.  The boss will finally give that all expense vacation break badly needed because he/she was part of the connivance to the crime.  The incompetent is in shit so deep that he/she will try to wiggle his/her way around in order to justify the end from the means.

And depression sets in.  There is guilt.  An awakening.  And a need to vindicate oneself. Before acceptance. The final act is the liberating one.

But the stages are complicated.  And the incompetent will not be able to differentiate pride from truth. Some would have made and imbibed that world of make believe as being so real that it becomes their way of life till their graves.

Recognising the incompetent leader is easy.  Their knowledge is ludicrously shallow. They don’t bring anything to the table.  Ambitious and proud, they use fear and name-dropping on their road to perdition.  They surround themselves with advisers because they’re afraid that others will expose their inadequacies.  Yet the same advisers they surround themselves with are as incompetent as them.  Because the choice is not based on qualifications.  It is based on alliance.  And fear. They are not fit to lead but they want to. They are easy to manipulate by the puppeteer. Their principles have a price tag. They are, in one word, wannabes.

Once you have an incompetent leader that is endearing to the masses, what evolves can be petrifying.

An alliance of incompetents is alarming.  If we fail to stand up against them, rebuilding an institution is a longer and more painful process.  A lot of truth has been buried in the bag of lies.  Recognising what is true from what was perceived to be true becomes more difficult to discern from the pile of rubble of lies.

History will always be the judge on how we create our lives.

In my travels, I learned about the politics and economy of the various countries and cities I had gone to.  While many of them have reached the pinnacle of being either the most liveable or most industrialised or most envious country to live in, they had their fair share of gaffes in their history.  From corrupt kings to evil queens. From despots to democracies.  Each country had a story to tell.  History was their constant reminder that whatever prosperity they have today, had bad beginnings as well. There are still the incompetents. What place on earth does not have them?

It’s how to contain them and place them in their right places that becomes the challenge.

Back at you

kidatheartLeave a comment

So here’s to those memes who troll the internet.  Defending incompetence has never been arguably this tough.  I guess that’s because incompetence is built by other incompetent people.  Like two peas in a pod, it takes two to tango.

It’s funny (and sad) that in spite of how the political scenario evolved in the last two years, there has never been a time when the word of the year INCOMPETENCE, has really hit the core of leadership.

So here’s some reality check. And here’s saying it right BACK AT YOU…

There are 7,632,819,325 people in the world.

Why are you letting one of them ruin your life?

Yup! It’s weird how one nut job actually affects our lives.  Emotions don’t right what is wrong.  Rational thinking does.

Why, for heaven’s sake, does everything get splattered out of proportion? He says, she says, they say.  Social and mainstream media just seem to center on what are (to me) IRRELEVANT issues.

Never argue with someone who believes their own lies.

You’ll never win that argument.  It will be just one issue piled on top of another. Look at how the troll patrols (keyboard warriors) are so busy when a political issue hits the very core of incompetence. Rabid exchange of opinions and curses.

If you don’t like something, just take away its only power:

YOUR ATTENTION.

But NOOOOOOOOO!!!! We give it so much attention that it’s like flooring the gas pedal! By the time we put on the brakes, the impact would affect all the passengers.  There are bigger issues at hand.

I get it! Whatever is ongoing with the government is reportable.  Then again, there are a lot of events (good and bad) that deserve front page news as well.  But a lot of media don’t focus on what is relevant.  The intricate use of PR that spins an issue to divert other issues or praises irrelevant projects when it’s actually their job to do what they are praised for is paid advertisement.

The bad news is, a lot of people CANNOT differentiate between a paid PR (public relations) columnist who receives payment to “slant” an issue.  The newspaper will always claim that the writings of these columnists are “personal opinions” and have nothing to do with the stand of the newspaper.  That’s why these columns are found in the OP/ED (opinion/editorial) page.  Only the EDITORIAL expresses the newspaper’s or publications view towards an issue and reflects the majority vote of the editorial board.  A COLUMN is a recurring piece or article where the writer (usually part of the stable of the publication, but sometimes they invite a guest writer) expresses his/her own opinion on an issue.  The operative words here: HIS/HER OWN OPINION.

It’s sad, no, AGONIZING, that there are people who think that just because a column provides an opinion, IT IS THE GOSPEL TRUTH, and that all attention and resources should focus on this.  To those who give attention to half truths and half lies are poor in discernment.  And that, is GULLIBILITY.  (Well, alright, it’s called politics. I’m trying to be polite here.)

A good columnist is objective.  Takes no sides.  Is not biased.  Checks all the facts and gets the other side’s story.  Is not PAID for a PR job.  And it’s easy to spot a bad columnist.  They flip-flop.  They change sides easily (depending on who is in power). They have a penchant for lying through their teeth.  Their stories are never consistent.

With so much publications flying around (including this one), being a rational thinking human being in the time of digital technology can be quite challenging.  After all, we all don’t have the luxury of checking and cross validating the vast information that is being fed our way.  Most of us bank on EMOTIONS. No matter how wrong the scenario is, they just “share” away because of political survival.

Excuses are the tools of the incompetent.

We usually forget that there are only two options in decision making:

  • make progress or make excuses

I wrote about the Dunning-Kruger effect a few months ago.  To reiterate, the DK effect addresses people who are ignorant or unskilled in any area and are too inept to notice.  They end up thinking they’re far more competent than they actually are.  Big mouth, bad words, all ego.

A gentle reminder to everyone.

Friedrich Nietzsche once said “They muddy the water, to make it seem deep.”

Politics explained

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Father and son were having a conversation.

Son (S): Dad, I have a special report I have to do for school. Can I ask you a question?

Dad (D): Sure son. What’s that question?

S: What is politics?

D: Well, let’s take our home for example. I’m the wage earner so let’s call me ‘capitalism’. Your mom is the administrator of the money, so let’s call her ‘government’. We take care of you and your older sister and both your needs, so let’s call them ‘people’. The maid represents the ‘working class’. Your baby brother, let’s call him “the future”. Do you understand now son?

S: I’m not really sure dad. Let me think about it.

That night, awakened by the crying of his baby brother, the boy went to see what was wrong. When he entered the room, he could smell that his baby brother had completely soiled his diaper. So he went quietly to his parents room but found his mom sound asleep. He then went to the maid’s room. Peeking through the keyhole, he saw his father having sex with the maid. He knocked on the door and knocked on the door. But his father and the maid didn’t mind the knocking. So he returned to his room and went back to sleep.

The next morning, he saw his father at the breakfast table.

S: Dad! Now I think I understand what politics is!!!

D: Good job son! So now, can you explain it to me in your own words?

S: Well dad, while capitalism is screwing the working class, government is sound asleep, the people are being completely ignored, and the future is full of shit!

The Dunning-Kruger effect

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In the field of Psychology, this is more commonly known as a cognitive bias where “people of low ability suffer from illusory superiority, mistakenly assessing their cognitive ability greater than it is.”

In 1999, two psychologists from Cornell University – David Dunning and Justin Kruger – published a paper entitled “Unskilled and unaware of it: How difficulties in recognising one’s own incompetence lead to inflated self-assessment“. Over several studies, they found that “participants scoring in the bottom quartile grossly overestimated their test performance and ability.” What did this mean?

“People who are incompetent at something are unable to recognize their own incompetence. Not only do they fail to recognize their incompetence, they’re also likely to feel confident that they actually are competent!”

It’s been 19 years since the published paper, and the fact is that the psychological phenomenon is as relevant today as it was before the technological and internet boom.

The study was done in the United States and I have to see some data with regards to the research being conducted among Filipinos, if we would see consistent data or not.

It’s very interesting because the global geopolitical landscape has dramatically shifted and it is without doubt that the Dunning-Kruger Effect is more relevant today than when it was first published. And this applies not only to the political field but encompasses even the medical, economic, academic and religious groups as well.

I write about this not as an expert in the field of psychology but to share interest in a topic that should make us pause and read up further on how to mitigate such cognitive bias.

Illusion of knowledge and propaganda

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I told some friends the other day, that it’s more difficult to write a story with a lie than using the truth. One has to be a prolific fictional writer in order to build one lie after another in order to sell a story.

Steve Hawking once said that “the greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is illusion of knowledge“.

It is sad that in this day and age of social media and technology, there are scumbags who utilise the gullibility of a few (?) in media in order to sell a propaganda.

When someone lacks the knowledge to run a company or an agency, and utilises the illusion of knowledge through fake press releases via paid columnists or paid trolls who feign intelligence in order to keep his job, you know the company is in deep shit. That’s because the “artificial intelligence” was sold to a bunch of idiots who never even checked the facts. To the reader, the lie was enough. The story was believable. And everyone was happy.

And then there are the peddlers. They disseminate the already wrong information and make it more complicated than it already is. These are the pushers of bad news. It’s disproportionate to the level of complexity (or simplicity) and is used to gather a lynch mob scenario in the propaganda. The peddler is the enabler for confusion and hate. They serve no other purpose in life but to collaborate with the propagandist to achieve fame.

Collateral damage is not important to them. After all, they are needy people. Need attention. Need likes on FB or social media. Need the entitlement. They are deceptive and make friends with the most culpable. They disguise themselves as helping or working for a cause, when in actuality they do this to gain a following (a petty pathetic following at that).

They are perfect examples of what illusion of knowledge is. They parade their accomplishments in public because it affirms their illusion.

These are the most dangerous kind of people. Every move made has a hidden agenda. Their deviousness is their skill. And manipulating people is their way of life.

And the gullible follower?

Well, there’s a Chinese proverb that describes them best – no greater fool than the fool that was fooled by a fool.

“Do what is right”

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When President Duterte advised his son Paolo, the vice-mayor of Davao City regarding the latter’s plan to resign from public office, he simply said, “Do what is right”.

Doing what is right can only be achieved if one is conscious between what is right from wrong.  Having worked in the private sector before joining the government has made me aware that it’s more difficult to address the grey areas of decision making in the public compared to private companies.  When I used to be in the academe and the private sector, I scorned at every inept decision made by our public officials.  (I still do, but that’s a different story altogether.) The level of accountability is far heavier and higher in government compared to private corporations.

Today, I am more understanding, a bit more patient, and yes, working for the government for the last 11 1/2 months has provided the insight and enlightenment I needed.  Believe me when I say that describing the bureaucracy as “being complicated” is an understatement.

Government workers and officials work under the public’s microscope.  Everyone is your boss.  If there are skeletons in your closet, this is not the kind of job you’d want to be in, no matter how noble your intentions are.  As a public official, dirty linen when washed in public can be taken out of context, feasted upon by social and mainstream media, and your lives are not the same any more. More often than not, the public official is the bad guy and private Juan is the underdog.

Duterte is correct.  The stress is not commensurate to the pay.

Why then work for the government?

I’d like to believe the reason why many people work for the government is because they see the opportunity at improving each agency they serve.  Let’s face it, even the crocodiles we complain about in government are present in the private sector.  We just don’t complain as much when Globe Telecom fucks up our bills by overcharging us by P200 or when Citibank lets us know that beginning a few months from now, all credit cards will have annual dues or when Philippine Airlines decides to downgrade the plane and your original seat on Premium Economy Class is pushed to the back of the plane.  That’s because it’s easy for these private corporations to internally change the rules of the game, making the same crocodiles look like lizards.  Give the whining idiots additional perks or freebies and shut the mother fuckers up! That, my dear friends is how these companies fix their problems.  Unfortunately, the government cannot offer more than an apology and the promise to fix your problems because they are accountable to other agencies in the government.  Any free offer and it’s considered a bribe. Even good people are swallowed up in the complicated web of bureaucracy. There are no shades of grey in the government.  It’s either black or white. And fuck shit that!

Today marks the last day of 2017.  Reflecting on a year that was, we make resolutions for 2018.  Another year of change.  A chance to “do what is right”, whether we work for the government or for the private sector.  Or simply turning a new leaf with our families, our love life, our responsibilities and obligations.

Martin Luther King, Jr once said, “The time is always right to do what is right.”

Doing what is right.  Not what is easy.