Under attack by lies
I remember watching the event unfold live on my TV screen. The announcement that somebody was going to be arrested. The swarm of Marines and police. Tactical gear being worn right in front of the media. The silhouette of long firearms as we watched from a darkened hallway. Then the sound of gunshots. Screams of civilian reporters as they ran for cover. I remember one reporter trying to relay the events through her tears. Soon after, several of the majority senators went live on social media, making various accusations that they were being attacked.
Senate President Alan Peter Cayetano would later reiterate this claim, saying “the Senate was under attack” as he pounded forcefully on the podium.
However, there were conflicting accounts from the Senate’s Office of the Sergeant-at-Arms (OSAA) and the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI), leaving us confused. The most recent press conference by the Department of the Interior and Local Government, the Philippine National Police, and the Department of Justice showed a detailed timeline of events, with accompanying video security footage, that showed the OSAA fired first and continued to fire more than 30 times even though the lone NBI agent they encountered was no longer there.
Bullets were not the only things flying that day. Lies were everywhere, too.
How do we make sense of a lie? What keeps a lie alive despite conflicting evidence?
The first flag is one’s insistence on their interpretation of events rather than simply describing their experience. The media reported on what they saw and heard. They described their emotions of panic and fear. The Senate president, on the contrary, quickly jumped to the conclusion that the Senate was under attack. His first instinct was to blame the NBI. He could’ve stayed within the facts, such as “we heard gunshots” or “we still do not know exactly what happened.” He could even have said that the sergeant-at-arms reported an NBI agent outside an exit door and shots were fired soon after. That would demonstrate transparency about who his source was (and leave the door open for deniability later). Instead, he doubled down on his confidence that the Senate was under attack and reprimanded the media for even questioning his conclusion.
Another sign that we are dealing with a lie is a strong plea to emotion despite conflicting evidence. In a crisis event, the way a leader communicates is important. He should reduce people’s fear, not increase it. He should ask people to remain calm and not rile them up. Emotions should never replace evidence. Strong emotions activate our sense of threat, therefore bypassing critical thinking and reasoning. Panic rushes us to act, not think. His use of the analogy of “kung tututukan kita ng baril, papasukin ko ang bahay mo na may baril ako, nag-warning shot ka, pinutukan kita pabalik, is it not an attack?” was meant to invoke an acute sense of threat, as if what happened was akin to a home invasion. Such imagery would pressure us to agree emotionally and not question the logical holes in their analogy. For example, we would probably respond to law enforcement differently than to an unknown armed person outside our door. Having law enforcement outside our door should no longer be surprising if we were sheltering someone they had a warrant for. These contexts are intentionally removed to present an oversimplified and provocative analogy.
Lies are effective when they contain truth. Half-truths prevent outright dismissal of your claim and lend credibility to the rest of the lie. If one part of your statement is true, then the rest must be true as well. Yes, gunshots were indeed fired. But most of them came from the OSAA. Yes, NBI agents were outside the premises. But they were not storming the Senate building.
Convincing lies also follow the Goldilocks rule: not too vague, not too detailed. This is where the Senate president failed, opening his claims to scrutiny. He demonstrated strong emotions, verbally attacked anybody who questioned his version of events, and made bold accusations against law enforcement, but did not have the details to back them up. The security footage took too long to surface, only being produced when compelled to. He was resistant to outside investigation. He defied the Ombudsman’s order of preventive suspension for his sergeant-at-arms. He went too emotional, too defensive, and too vague.
Lies are rarely generated out of a vacuum. The strong emotion emanating from a lie often comes from something real but misplaced. Sometimes we accuse others of having desires that we ourselves have as a way to avoid guilt or insecurity; this is what we call projection. Perhaps they fear being overthrown because they have recently overthrown the former leadership. Sen. Imee Marcos expressed fear of martial law. Deeply ironic.
It won’t be bullets, but lies, that will attack our democracy.
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The Senate as Shakespearean farce