Bullshit is a greater enemy of Truth than actual lies are.
Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point.
In order to invent a lie at all, (the teller of a lie) must think he knows what is true."
Someone engaging in BS is not on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all. The B.S. ers focus is panoramic rather than the particular---with more spacious opportunities for improvisation, color and imaginative play. This is less a matter of craft than of art.
Hence the familiar notion of the bullshit artist.
He is like the wild guy at the bar when confronted with the truth says, "I knew that!"
Almost all the above was quoted from Fahreed Zacharia GPS on CNN TV on Sunday August 8th 2016.
This is the guy that parents worry about their daughter meeting by the way who can wow them with amazing stories which may or may not be true but impress the daughter into giving more than a kiss to this man. But, like all Bullshit artists he is never there when the baby is born, is he? And the young woman, (in this case the whole U.S.) would be left pregnant and alone by Trump.
Because who among you can actually say now with a straight face that Trump hasn't fucked us all out of a year of our lives?
Yes. It was incredibly entertaining like a so called reality show but now the nation will be left pregnant and alone by Trump while he makes billions on the writing of his story fucking is all pregnant.
You think I'm kidding?
Just watch!
Trump will likely go down as the most entertaining Bullshit Artist of the 21st Century!
You can never tell whether ANYTHING he says is true or not. That's the mark of a real successful Bullshit artist. You don't get to be a self made Billionaire like Trump is without also being anything less than the biggest bullshit artist of all time.
And if enough people understand what a complete bullshit artist he is we might even be successful in not being huckstered into making him our president which is something the world might not survive to even have time to regret.
Because a Bullshit Artist does not a President Make!
- Mar 27, 2016 ... Donald Trump's reign of bullsh*t: He's not lying to us, he's just completely full of it....
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Sunday, Mar 27, 2016 03:00 AM PDT
Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking)
A liar, according to Frankfurt, must know what the truth is, and must deliberately aim to lead his listeners away from it. But, consider some of Trump’s recent false statements. A careful analysis of them will show that he did not need to know (and was most likely unaware of) what the real facts were. For example, when he said that American Muslims celebrated 9/11 by the thousands, he was not merely lying about this. He could not have known if there really were thousands of them cheering the fall of the Twin Towers. He probably conjured this statement from his supposition that since Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center there must have been Muslim believers in America who have celebrated it.
Thus, there is no truth that Trump is aware of and that he tries to hide away from us. His political discourse is mainly based on constant reproduction of statements that attract media attention and keep him in the news cycle. Of course, he is not the first one to draw media attention through outrageous statements. Many have done that before him, and many will do it in the future. The role of media in contemporary politics lends itself easily to this kind of use.
But, the novelty of Trump is not only in the nonchalant disregard for the truth instead of its deliberate distortion, but also in the widespread acceptance of bullshit as the legitimate political discourse. By “legitimate” I do not mean that bullshit suddenly becomes the way politicians speak and justify their actions. What I mean is far more serious: bullshit is legitimate in politics when everyone starts accepting that words uttered in political discourse do not matter anymore.
Trump has successfully made language irrelevant, at least among his supporters (potentially half of the country). He indicated this himself when he said that his supporters are so passionate about him that even if we walked down Fifth Avenue and shot a person they would still love him. Although it did not sound like that, this was a statement about language, and not about Trump’s potential murderous actions. What he meant by this is that his supporters would love him no matter what he said. Hence, the bullshit.
Frankfurt concludes his essay by asking why there is so much bullshit nowadays. He gives two possible answers. First, he says that bullshit is “unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what is he talking about.” Second, bullshit springs from various forms of contemporary skepticism “which deny that we have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are.”
The first answer could plausibly explain Trump. He has put himself into circumstances that oblige him to speak about things that are beyond his personal expertise. As we can witness from his media appearances, his knowledge about public policy, foreign affairs or broader culture is meager, to say the least, and he compensates by producing bullshit. The second answer is perhaps too “academic” for Trump and his supporters. It is not very likely that he or anybody close to him at this point engages in such epistemic or metaphysical exercises.
Donald Trump’s reign of bullsh*t: He’s not lying to us, he’s just completely full of it
There's a difference between a liar and a bullshitter -- and it helps explain the essence of Donald Trump
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Donald Trump (Credit: Reuters/Rick Wilking)
In his seminal essay “On Bullshit,”
philosopher Harry Frankfurt defines bullshit as a form of communication
aimed to obscure the matter of facts being discussed by using the words
that are neither necessarily true nor false. This definition hinges on a
crucial distinction between a liar and a bullshitter. Unlike the liar,
who hides things about himself in an attempt to lead us away from a
correct apprehension of reality, the bullshitter hides that “the
truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him.” In
other words, bullshitter doesn’t care about what the truth is. He just
talks as it suits his purposes.
It
is hard not to notice the similarity between what Frankfurt describes
in his essay and the current discourse of Donald Trump. As PolitiFact reports,
most of Trump’s campaign statements have been blatantly false, mostly
false or partially true. Only 2 percent of his statements are described
as true. Although one is tempted to call him a liar, which many have done, he is not a liar but a bullshitter.A liar, according to Frankfurt, must know what the truth is, and must deliberately aim to lead his listeners away from it. But, consider some of Trump’s recent false statements. A careful analysis of them will show that he did not need to know (and was most likely unaware of) what the real facts were. For example, when he said that American Muslims celebrated 9/11 by the thousands, he was not merely lying about this. He could not have known if there really were thousands of them cheering the fall of the Twin Towers. He probably conjured this statement from his supposition that since Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center there must have been Muslim believers in America who have celebrated it.
Thus, there is no truth that Trump is aware of and that he tries to hide away from us. His political discourse is mainly based on constant reproduction of statements that attract media attention and keep him in the news cycle. Of course, he is not the first one to draw media attention through outrageous statements. Many have done that before him, and many will do it in the future. The role of media in contemporary politics lends itself easily to this kind of use.
But, the novelty of Trump is not only in the nonchalant disregard for the truth instead of its deliberate distortion, but also in the widespread acceptance of bullshit as the legitimate political discourse. By “legitimate” I do not mean that bullshit suddenly becomes the way politicians speak and justify their actions. What I mean is far more serious: bullshit is legitimate in politics when everyone starts accepting that words uttered in political discourse do not matter anymore.
Trump has successfully made language irrelevant, at least among his supporters (potentially half of the country). He indicated this himself when he said that his supporters are so passionate about him that even if we walked down Fifth Avenue and shot a person they would still love him. Although it did not sound like that, this was a statement about language, and not about Trump’s potential murderous actions. What he meant by this is that his supporters would love him no matter what he said. Hence, the bullshit.
Frankfurt concludes his essay by asking why there is so much bullshit nowadays. He gives two possible answers. First, he says that bullshit is “unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what is he talking about.” Second, bullshit springs from various forms of contemporary skepticism “which deny that we have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are.”
The first answer could plausibly explain Trump. He has put himself into circumstances that oblige him to speak about things that are beyond his personal expertise. As we can witness from his media appearances, his knowledge about public policy, foreign affairs or broader culture is meager, to say the least, and he compensates by producing bullshit. The second answer is perhaps too “academic” for Trump and his supporters. It is not very likely that he or anybody close to him at this point engages in such epistemic or metaphysical exercises.
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