IT IS often said that the hallmark of a truly democratic society is its ability to tolerate dissenting opinion. What is problematic with this statement is the assumption that all voices are equal and informed, and that all opinions are motivated by the speaker’s good will and claim to a higher moral ground.
When a transgendered blogger recently and publicly castigated a BBC program director for giving airtime to a competing opinion-maker, her assumption was that her own opinion was note-worthier since, to use her own words, she is “a major-major blogger,” a bigger duck with a higher rank in the pecking order.
Her illusion is laughable in the same way that a donkey’s delusion is laughable and pathetic if the poor donkey sincerely believes he has the speed and stamina of a cougar.
This is precisely the crux of the matter. Given the benefit of a doubt, the transgendered blogger and the disillusioned donkey seemed both oblivious that they operate within their fish-eyed view of the world. Their own press releases have persuaded them of their infallibility. The fallacy of the Me-and-You-Against-the-World is older than Shakespeare—nay, older than Noah himself when he locked himself and his family in a flat-bottomed wooden ark.
And yet we cannot excuse a hysterical major-major blogger or a delusional donkey, enabling them to dictate the terms in a democratic world. To allow them to call the shots is to allow that same democratic space to degrade itself, diminish its importance and role in a community that aims and works for more humane and principled conditions.
In other words, democracy is an attractive, catch-all label in the same way that the platitudes of love and justice are cushy catch-phrases that are easy to bandy around but harder to realize or imbue with authentic meaning. In fact, lofty ideals, being difficult and elusive targets, demand hard work if not ascetic persistence. Ask the monks who plant their own wheat and bean supply in the mountain-top monasteries of the French Alps.
In the era of Lorraine Badoy, Mocha Uson and other Hallelujah Duterte singers who are cheer-leading the Golden Age of Grandstanding, democracy is a breeding ground for their own brand of mental contamination. By its very nature, democracy provides opportunistic space not only to sublime ideas but also to twisted, degenerate thought. Indeed, truffles thrive side by side with the poisoned fungus.
Freedom of information inadvertently carries with it the dangers of misinformation. Seasoned journalists know this. You need a slant in the news you’re dishing out. It is only at the end of their working day that they ask whether their choices can be justified by the potential consequences their stories trigger. In a democratic world, risk and risqué go hand in hand. Mocha and Kim Kardashian exploit this dynamic, practicing consummate skill in plunging the dagger of invented lies when the moment is ripe. In a way, Mocha possessed better timing than her master who unravels and acts like an unhinged, rusty lawn mower.
Governments and other institutions with infinite clout and resources and who claim for themselves the power of language are traditionally held more accountable when they speak, unlike the corner street barber with his meager, captured audience. That explains our frustration and resentment when Lorraine Badoy spits out malice with careful calculation, and directly empowered by the combined apparatus of political elitism and taxpayer’s money.
So when a balding, barong-clad public factotum sweats himself out justifying the subtle disinformation campaign of state TV or a PCCO press release, that same public servant is acting within the gray areas and darker underbelly of democracy. We can condemn him as the Hannibal Lecter of the political world—calculating and cannibalistic. But we cannot condemn him for the democratic space that we help create with our own ideals and delusions.
Joel Vega lives and works in Arnhem, The Netherlands, as publications editor for an international medical association.