Please, lie to us

Days of insidious brainwashing by dangerous ideologues now replaced by mediocre polemicists, as subtle as a blowtorch.

“And wish them not reply, for thou must give the lie” wrote Sir Walter Ralegh in his satirical poem “The Lie”. Probably the only thing worse than being lied to, is not being considered worthy enough for the effort of deception to be made. We live in a time of rampant, extraordinary decadence, and the lying in society, particularly by the influential, has been a major casualty, especially qualitatively. I concede this sounds vaguely demented, nonetheless I believe that we deserve more frequent, better, intricate lies. Being attempted to be deceived by an apparently sophisticated facade makes one feel significant, almost formidable. Deceit at some level is incredibly intimate.

In Pakistan, we have an inglorious but uninterrupted tradition of being lied to. Starting from the two nation theory, the fall of Dhaka and Kargil and extending up to Blackwater conducting suicide attacks. Admittedly, not all of them are avant-garde, yet we have managed to produce some masterpieces. An example of a magnificent lie is the meticulous formulation of the ‘doctrine of necessity’. The doctrine allowed every military adventurer an opportunity to take over the reins of the country. Another, especially pervasive, example is that the founding fathers of the country were saints almost divinely inspired and envisaged a brutally theocratic state. None of these lies are completely convincing, and are exposed as being evidently false on the slightest bit of critical consideration, yet one has to admire the effort and the modicum of creativity gone into coming up with them.

The beauty of these lies is not that they are irrefutable, rather it is the significance accorded to the subject of the subterfuge i.e. the people. We are deemed to be important enough to be fed these lies, especially formulated for our consumption. And the fact that they are by no means insurmountable allows us to decipher them, which makes us feel smart and consequentially makes our otherwise miserable, unexciting subsistence bearable. It allows for a symbolic victory over the empire while giving us the sinful pleasure of seeing the infallibles squirm.

One would have assumed that the recent disclosures in WikiLeaks of the army chief asking for drone attacks in 2008, and hence making him a hypocrite, would have been earth shatteringly catastrophic, with vicious allegations and vehement denials. Yet, there is an unnerving tranquility not befitting of such an occasion. One line denials are insulting. At the very least, extend us the courtesy of fervently lying to us, make a decent effort.

In similar vein, the ‘conciliation’ between PML-Q and the government should have provided impetuous to a refined lie. Parties with a particularly acrimonious past and with totally different ideologies and manifestos coming together to form government is as good a setting as any for a polite, apparently well thought out scheme of political deception. However, no explanation was given, at least none worthy of being passionately assailed. Hence, we were denied an opportunity to deconstruct the lie, proving our powers of analysis and, most significantly, to gloat that we were relevant enough to compel them to lie, and that to so unconvincingly. Similarly, the ‘Unification Bloc’ members float between PML-N and PML-Q without any narrative explanation. The DG ISI, instead of giving an Ian Fleming-style plot, simply defiantly apologises and walks away. One would have expected more inventiveness from him. No explanation has been given regarding why the military budget is being increased after the stellar performance in Abbottabad. Imran Khan makes the self-evidently spurious claim that he will eliminate terrorism in 90 days after assumption of power. It is not the unmistakable falsehood of the claim that is annoying but rather the laziness. The MQM nonchalantly walks in and out of the treasury benches at its pleasure. Nawaz Sharif can go months without making a statement on any issue. The religious political leaders struggle to string together a coherent sentence without grossly overusing the word ‘ghairat’. Gone are the days of insidious brainwashing by dangerous ideologues who have now been replaced by mediocre polemicists with the subtlety of a blowtorch who believe that earthquakes are engineered by the heathens to wreak havoc upon us. The Supreme Court removes ‘PCO’ judges making the Supreme Judicial Council irrelevant without addressing legal precedents. The Shariffudin Pirzadas and the nuanced sinister legal doctrines are out of vogue, and have been replaced by moralistic discourse buttressed by absolutist principles, with the utter disregard of law remaining the only constant between the two.

The traditional subliminal, duplicitous misinformation has now degenerated into plain simpleton bombast delivered in prophetic tones. The only commonality between the two is of being factually incorrect, the romance and mystique is no longer present in our contemporary lies. Instead of being invigorated and attempting an expose, a new lie now is just met with a collective shrug of the shoulders. Ignorance has become a uniquely elitist clique. The public is denied the opportunity to experience the sudden mushrooming of the lie, the flashy twists, the awkward climax and the delight of the final exposition. It seems nobody feels compelled to give an explanation at all, not even a hopelessly fabricated one; all we are left with now is dull, terse, arrogant sophistry.

This is not all in jest. The apathy is not only restricted to the political sphere but also extends to bigotry. The militants no longer feel the need to give us nonsensical justification for their violence; it is just the acceptance of responsibility now. Mumtaz Qadri had practically no explanation, not even a ludicrously feeble one for governor Taseer’s assassination. The misguided violence in our society has become irrational. Due to the sheer frequency of the suicide attacks, the condemnations are becoming infrequent and gradually fatigued.

We are becoming ‘dead’ as a people, neither giving nor asking for explanations. We are fading away and this is fantastically dangerous. I will not be unreasonable and ask you to start telling the truth, but please start lying to us again, it makes us feel included, and it makes us feel alive.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 27^th, 2011.