The trust of the innocent

By Jose B. Maroma, Jr.

 

The present muddled political situation brings to mind a quote attributed to Stephen King, “the trust of the innocent is the liar’s favorite tool”. When a friend confronts me about a felony that he heard I committed, and if I can neither explain nor deny, the easiest way out is to tell him, “you know me and you know I cannot do such thing.”

This is the basic principle of populist leaders and demagogues – appeal to emotion, not reason.

This is the underlying propaganda concept of Hitler as enunciated in his book, Mein Kampf (My Struggle) I take the liberty of lifting the following perspective of Hitler’s ideas.

“In the big lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily; and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation.”

That’s idolatry, the father of subservience and blind loyalty.

This is a phenomenon in our society which I’d rather leave to sociologists to confront and help mitigate. The ultimate solution may be beyond my time but I hope those among us who are more enlightened should get involved and interact actively with the less informed in the continuing discourse on public issues.

Vigilant public opinion should keep our leaders on their toes and remind them that responsive governance is not only about littering the countryside with basketball courts and waiting sheds. If we achieve a critical mass of civic responsibility we may yet realize, in today’s parlance, a herd immunity against ignorance – the deadly virus of misgovernance.