The other official alternative truths

Some people are undeniably so extremely ugly that one look at their mugs is enough to launch a thousand Spartan ships in the opposite direction. The hapless owners of such faces are, however, in constant denial and their failed attempts to hide the repulsive truth have been spun in various ways so creative that the synonym entry for falsehoods, self-deception and lies in any decent thesaurus covers a whole page-and-a-half.

Let us set aside the dictionary, thesaurus and otherwise textbook definitions and simply note some of the most common and synonymous examples of personal cover-ups and alternative truths.

Did you ever notice that many of those sitting behind the wheel of the slickest Porsche or any other sports coupe actually own faces better suited stuck under the hood?

Do you notice how bald-headed, bug-eyed and aging single men constantly enjoy talking about their romantic interludes, sexual conquests and their imaginary love lives? Who do you think spreads the rumor that baldies make better lovers just to compensate for the painful truth with an alternate version of it?

Where alternative realities are concerned, the world of politics is no different. Just a million times more harmful.

In politics, as we might see in the recent official government pronouncements on burning issues ranging from testy trivialities surrounding traffic management to the brazen wholesale deception behind Benigno Aquino III’s Mamasapano massacre, falsehoods seem to have been ingrained in the bureaucracy to the extent that officials simply spin it either as “alternate realities,” “alternative versions” of the truth or, plainly, the ridiculously deceptive “alternative truth.”

The fact that these are, in effect, attempts to either conceal, or worse, distort the truth turns these acts constitutionally criminal and are, thus, statutorily considered betrayals of the public trust.

Under our 1987 Constitution, the betrayal of the public trust, defined by 1986 Constitutional Commissioner Ricardo J. Romulo as acts covering “the violation of the oath of office,” is of the same severity as a high crime. So grave is it that it constitutes an impeachable offense for the President and other public officials upon whom the only recourse is impeachment.

The criminal aspect of a leader brazenly concealing the truth or boldly lying in his teeth to protect his precious hide underlies the seemingly heroic but futile attempt of Aquino’s official Palace mouthpiece in differentiating between “alternative versions” of the truth and “alternative truths.”

What was actually said and what was understood as having been said, however, is not so important now as the fact that the public justifiably, albeit stubbornly, sticks to one and not the other and by doing so displays a severe and tragic mistrust of Aquino and the verbiage he quite recklessly uses whenever he opens his mouth.

Unfortunately, these alternative truths seem to be spreading like wildfire across the Aquino bureaucracy, just as lies and falsehood spread from mouth to mouth in exponentially increasing velocity.

Let’s cite recent examples of the government’s brazen lying contagion and it’s dysfunctional alternative truths.

Less than 24 hours after appointing a discredited police unit and a serially unproductive Cabinet secretary to fix the metropolis’s traffic, the Palace declared it a resounding success.

After declaring that the pork-barrel system had been relegated to history, Malacañang spawns a larger, more insidious criminal mutation called the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

The administration’s anointed presidential candidate barnstorms the countryside, pressing flesh, hugging the elderly and kissing babies, despite his signature quote, “Bahala kayo sa buhay ninyo!”

The same politician, despite the thousands of homeless, dead and destitute rendered thus by the 2013 Zamboanga siege, finds it appropriate to felicitously commemorate the carnage with an oxymoronic “Happy anniversary!”

This is a short list. There are as many as there are Kaklase, Kaibigan and Kabarilan. Each is comedic. Save for the unfortunate fact that the joke is on us.