"Can't we all just get along?"
Olympia Snowe is cast by the Right as the archetypal RINO - Republican in name only. Yet, it's people like Snowe, and DINOs like Evan Bayh, the supposedly "sensible center", that are really cementing the gains made by the Right since the days of Ronald Reagan.
At issue is not Snowe's various political stances, and she should be commended for at least appearing to buck the party lines when she thinks it's necessary. No, the real issue is the idea - found anywhere from Sam Waterston's Unity08 movement to the petty excuses blubbering from Bayh's lips to even The Daily Show - that somehow the polarization in American politics can be blamed on the Left as well as the Right . . . or, as Senator Snowe puts it, "the red states are getting redder and the blue states are getting bluer".
That is simply not the case. America is a right wing nation.
I'm not going to get into the machinations of Mitch McConnell here: politics is politics, and Mitch is a master manipulator. The swing to the right is about more than politics, it's about culture. McConnell represents a specific set of political skills, Rand Paul represents a world view. And that world view is right wing.
If there really were the Right/Left equivalence in American politics suggested by the "sensible center", then where are the left-wing analogues of Paul, Palin, Angle, O'Donnell, Bachman, et. al.? Don't talk to me about Barney Frank, Dennis Kucinich, Al Franken, Bernie Sanders, Russ Feingold, or any of the Congressional Left. If we want true counterparts to the Tea Party patriots, then we need to be running people who not only think that "big government" has a purpose, who may even go so far as to support national health care (Kucinich; anyone else?), we need candidates who question the very value of private property and the individual versus the collective, among other things. We need candidates who aren't afraid to quote Marx and Lenin. We need people we can point to and say "you think Obama is a commie? Obama's not even really a liberal; now there's a communist!"
And it's not the polarization that's killing the American dialogue. It's not even the vitriol. It's the stupidity.
I have theoretical problems with Libertarians, but I have very concrete problems with those who claim to be Libertarians but still want the government all up in someone else's business, just not theirs . . . for example, you can be a Libertarian and a social conservative, but you must know that any laws codifying social conservatism are anti-libertarian (Ron Paul revealed his own Libertarianism as a lie when he caved on the gay marriage issue*). And hey, if you are hating on the bailout and stimulus package from the laissez-faire capitalist angle, then shut the hell up about the unemployment rate. That's just the system cleaning itself out.
I could (and often do) go on. But, even if I am arguing the point from an obvious political position, the argument I'm making is not a directly political one.
The point is that our very speech has been bent into uselessness. Our words and phrases mean nothing because they have no fidelity to a real idea: they are masks designed to slot into public conversations in a specific way to affect a specific reaction. Our words and phrases do not reveal, they obfuscate. If we are getting dumber (and I believe we are), it is because language is at the core of thought, and our language has been beaten into a dull, rusty blade.
Here, again, is that anathema to thought we call "common sense": Snowe's contention that the polarization of the right and left is to blame for the devolution of discourse in this country is common, but not true. Any phrase or masked idea becomes common simply from repetition. At some point, depending on who's driving the train, it moves from simply being common to common sense . . . Große Lüge, Hitler's "Big Lie", or, per Goebbels, "one should lie big and stick with it", which we can modify to read "say anything often enough and loud enough, sooner or later it becomes commonly accepted as fact." Common sense is like that.
Again, no specific beef with Olympia Snowe, given that even John Stewart makes concessions to the "polarization" conceit**, but it is exactly at this point where the Right has had its biggest cultural success since 1980. In that sense, Olympia Snowe is a much more effective champion of the right than Rand Paul ever will be.
___________
* He could have dodged the whole issue by saying that the government has no business endorsing any kind of marriage, hetero or homo, but he didn't. He came out squarely against gay marriage. I think at some point he tossed out some "states rights" bullshit, but decentralized government is not the same as small government (just look at California). Libertarianism betrays itself if it cannot protect its citizens against the tyranny of the majority. Of course, at the core of the issue is what Libertarianism can do . . . and the most convincing argument is that a Libertarian government can't do anything, and that's the way its supposed to be. Do you think all the American Right, with all of its current angry demands, wants a government that does nothing? Of course not. They want a government that keeps out illegal aliens, restricts abortion, is tough on crime, keeps us safe from terrorists, cleans up our (whoops! the petrochemical companies') spills, keeps Muslims from building, etc. These people aren't Libertarians, they don't want small government, they want government to do what they want it to do and nothing else.
** When trying to set a polarized equivalence, Stewart always seems to resort to 9/11 conspiracy theory for his example of left-wing extremism. I think if he were called on it, he would probably say that 9/11 conspiracy is not a right or a left issue in the same way that Illuminati/Trilateral conspiracy is not a left or a right issue, and he would be right. It's just a bit frustrating that he concedes to this fake parallelism when I don't think he really buys into it.
Showing posts with label bullshit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label bullshit. Show all posts
October 9, 2010
October 30, 2008
The Death of Meaning Pt. 1
I feel sorry for John McCain. I'm not just saying that; I really do. In the past, he has lived up to the way he bills himself for this campaign: for instance, he was the only person to have the balls to go into Michigan during the primary and tell the voters that those auto jobs are gone and never coming back. He came out against the Bush tax cuts. He has demonstrated more compassion for economic refugees (a.k.a. illegal immigrants - see, I can play this word game too!) than most anybody on either side of the aisle. He has fought for real campaign finance reform, though the bills that bear his name are always watered down beyond all recognition. Before he decided to run for President as the Republican lowest common denominator (John the Senator?), he was a stand up guy. Not a shining beacon of intellect, and not someone whom I would have ever voted for, but a stand up guy.
Now, he is completely surrounded by idiots. This is easily the worst campaign I have ever seen, and even if he finds a way to win this thing, I won't change my mind about that. He makes John Kerry's people seem like Nobel laureates. One is left to wonder: what would this election have been like if John McCain ran as John McCain? And maybe chosen someone like Condi Rice or Christine Todd Whitman for his running mate instead of that silly Alaskan woman? Not that I'm a big fan of either of those folks, but at least they have demonstrated a capacity for the job.
But anyway, this isn't a commentary on the campaign. Well, actually it is, but it's so much more . . . This is
the death of meaning, part one.
In our culture's slaughterhouse of meaning, politics is the killing floor (sing with me now, in your best Howlin' Wolf: "I should have quit you, a long time ago"). It is not coincidence that Harry Frankfurt cites primarily examples of political speech in On Bullshit. Traditionally, politicians resorted to mantra-esque sloganeering ("I like Ike!") and simple corruption to bulldoze rational thought and win elections. These days, the game keeps getting more convoluted and ridiculous, starting with Lee Atwater's truth-optional campaigning for Bush Sr., through the Clinton campaign's . . . uh, let's say rhetorical flexibility, to Bush Jr.'s acceleration of the Clinton method to a fine art. Obama practiced the art of rhetorical impenetrability during the primaries, waiting until he was in the driver's seat before choosing a direction (by the way, if McCain is running the worst campaign in recent memory, Obama has the best - and once again, I won't change my mind if he loses). McCain's operatives are trying to work in the best Karl Rove tradition, but they are all silly hacks who, if Sarah Palin's recent rhetoric about "the REAL AMERICA" is any evidence, have the wannabe Timothy McVeighs of the country as their target audience.
But mostly, they're just silly. Yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered, Michele Norris interviewed senior McCain advisor Nicolle Wallace (listen to the whole interview here). In it, she was trying to pin Wallace down on the McCain campaign's claim that Obama is a socialist, a claim that McCain himself backed off of in an interview with Larry King. In a three-and-a-half minute interview, she actually gave the correct answer, which is "John McCain believes that 'spreading the wealth' is something that Barack Obama's tax policies have in common with socialism." A reasonable person in a longer interview might add that there are several functions of the US Government that reflect the influence of socialism, but that Obama wants to move closer to socialism, while McCain wants to retreat from it. Neither McCain nor Obama advocates a move all the way to either end of the spectrum. A reasonable person might also add that the McCain campaign's assertion that Obama is a socialist is common election year hyperbole, and most Americans are sophisticated enough to understand that.
But, unfortunately for McCain, this senior advisor is not a reasonable person. She starts out reasonably enough, talking about how the polls are narrowing in key battleground states, and hitting her talking points about Obama "spreading the wealth". Norris then plays the clip from Larry King and asks Wallace a direct question: "So tell me something: if John McCain does not think Barack Obama is a socialist, why is that message a centerpiece of his recent campaign?" Now, let me reiterate - I don't think this is a "gotcha" question. There is a perfectly reasonable answer to the question that doesn't entail any sort of backpedaling . . . but Wallace proceeded to head toward the stratosphere with her answer. She started by vomiting up her talking points quickly, stumbling over them, and then saying "Joe the Plumber was the first one to use the word 'socialism' to describe Barack Obama's plan and vision in his own words, which was to 'spread the wealth".
Oh please, dear God, not Joe the Plumber . . .
Norris tried to steer the interview back on track by pointing out that Joe the Plumber is not running for president, but John McCain is, and that it seems that the campaign is repeating a charge that the candidate himself does not believe. Wallace starts to get back to the question, but is distracted: "Well, John McCain is saying that the idea of 'spreading the wealth' . . . Oh, Joe the Plumber just got on the Straight Talk Express, speaking of his words and his wisdom and his economic ideas . . . you know, he is someone who shares John McCain's belief that, as a small business owner, and this election is about . . . "
?????!!!!!
What the hell???!!! The economic ideas of Joe the fucking Plumber???!!!
This is ridiculous on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start. First of all, I would bet you one month's pre-market crash income that Joe the Plumber DID NOT WALK ON THE BUS AT THAT VERY MOMENT . . . which means that, as ridiculous as it is to be distracted in the middle of a presumably rather important national radio interview, this was a planned rhetorical dodge, which is even more . . . hell, I can't even find the words. It is indescribably, amazingly, mind-bogglingly ridiculous and strange.
Secondly, this whole Joe the Plumber thing is completely surreal. I mean, this guy stumps for McCain! This guy is so off base that even Shepard Smith (Fox News) called a foul on him for saying (in his role as McCain spokesman) that if Obama is elected, Israel would "cease to exist". Now, if you've got Fox News anchors calling you out on behalf of Obama, you're way off the reservation. It's not unusual for a candidate to have various mascots for a campaign, but you don't let the idiots talk, and especially not with your explicit backing. I mean, we get it, he's a normal guy, a REAL AMERICAN (in Palin parlance), and he's voting for McCain. If I need my toilet fixed, I'll call him. I mean, he must be a damn good plumber, since he makes more than $250,000 a year, which would put him right in line with Obama's tax hike. On second thought, never mind, I can't afford him. Oh, wait, when Obama redistributes the wealth, I'll get my lazy welfare-Cadillac-driving hands on some extra lucre, & then I'll be able to afford him! Oh, Joe the Plumber, is there anything you can't do?
Okay, a bit of a tangent there. Difference is, I'm writing a blog. Nicolle Wallace is a senior campaign advisor (senior!) for a guy who theoretically knows how to surround himself with people capable of running the most powerful country in the world, and she's doing an important radio interview less than a week before the election that will determine the fate of her boss. Is it any wonder that conservatives are depressed that this goat rodeo of a campaign represents their interests? Is McCain losing this election on purpose?
Norris finally managed to get Wallace back on track, and she gave the reasonable answer: "John McCain believes that 'spreading the wealth' is something that Barack Obama's tax policies have in common with socialism." But, she couldn't stay on track for long: "Listen, you go into a restaurant, and instead of leaving a tip, you stiff the waitress and give it to the homeless person outside. It is a noble thing to do, it is spreading money earned by that waitress and giving it to someone outside . . . "
?????!!!!!
Stiffing a waitress to give money to a homeless person is socialism? That's not redistribution of wealth, that's assholery. Anybody who would do that to a waitress (who, without that tip, would be earning sub-minimum wage) isn't a Marxist, they're a douche bag. I understand exactly why this tower of intellect that is John McCain's senior advisor spent so much time to come up with this off-the-cuff analogy: they want all us broke-assed people to think that it's our income that's going to get cut by all this wealth redistribution that Obama plans to do. Wallace's ridiculous little allegory doesn't map, though. It's just stupid. Obama-as-socialist would make sure the diner tips the waitress and tosses some coin to the homeless guy outside. McCain-as-capitalist would argue that, as noble as this may be, the added expense to a night out would actually cause the diner to stay home, thereby putting the restaurant out of business, and in turn putting both the waitress and the homeless person out in the street. See, I can do this, why can't a senior campaign advisor for John McCain?
It's not unfair to call Obama a socialist - certainly hyperbolic, but not unfair. He is talking about making taxation more progressive, which is an idea that has its roots in socialism. Of course, America already has a progressive income tax, thanks to that bastard Bill Clinton*, and in spite of the best efforts of George W. Bush. And, if Obama were really a socialist, he wouldn't have such a lame health care plan. It's just that, post-Clinton, post-Rove/Cheney/Bush, you expect a little more elegance in the manipulation of language. These McCain people are rank amateurs. I never thought an administration could be worse than Bush's, but I'm beginning to see a road map to that particular hell.
Obama made it through the primaries with smoke and mirrors. He relied on nebulous concepts to make himself everything to everybody, leaving the real work (hacking away at the Republicans) to left-wing kamikazes like Dennis Kucinich. I don't like it, but I understand why he did it, and it obviously paid off: I never thought I would see the day someone would out-campaign a Clinton. McCain made his deal with the devil, but this particular devil was out of tricks (and really, he'd been pushing that pacemaker to the red line for over eight years now . . . it's time he rested). Their butchering of truth is visible to most anyone who wants to see. One can disagree with his fellow citizens on philosophy, economics, morals, etc., and still be civil . . . but anyone who falls for this crap is worthy of our derision.
Meaning is dead & buried in an unmarked grave. Pity the fools who still believe it alive.
This has been a bulletin from a Real America that thinks Sarah Palin is a joke. I'm Bill the Appliance Salesman/Bill the hopelessly obscure experimental musician/Bill the grouchy middle-aged white guy who actually thinks people read his silly shit, and I approve this message.
* Before you all write me, I know it wasn't Bill Clinton who instituted the progressive income tax. That was a joke . . . 'cause, you see, the right-wing media machine blames everything on Clinton . . . get it? Pretty funny, huh? Actually, progressive income tax was instituted by notorious left wing wackjob Teddy Roosevelt. Or at least that's what it says on the internet, so it must be true.
Now, he is completely surrounded by idiots. This is easily the worst campaign I have ever seen, and even if he finds a way to win this thing, I won't change my mind about that. He makes John Kerry's people seem like Nobel laureates. One is left to wonder: what would this election have been like if John McCain ran as John McCain? And maybe chosen someone like Condi Rice or Christine Todd Whitman for his running mate instead of that silly Alaskan woman? Not that I'm a big fan of either of those folks, but at least they have demonstrated a capacity for the job.
But anyway, this isn't a commentary on the campaign. Well, actually it is, but it's so much more . . . This is
the death of meaning, part one.
In our culture's slaughterhouse of meaning, politics is the killing floor (sing with me now, in your best Howlin' Wolf: "I should have quit you, a long time ago"). It is not coincidence that Harry Frankfurt cites primarily examples of political speech in On Bullshit. Traditionally, politicians resorted to mantra-esque sloganeering ("I like Ike!") and simple corruption to bulldoze rational thought and win elections. These days, the game keeps getting more convoluted and ridiculous, starting with Lee Atwater's truth-optional campaigning for Bush Sr., through the Clinton campaign's . . . uh, let's say rhetorical flexibility, to Bush Jr.'s acceleration of the Clinton method to a fine art. Obama practiced the art of rhetorical impenetrability during the primaries, waiting until he was in the driver's seat before choosing a direction (by the way, if McCain is running the worst campaign in recent memory, Obama has the best - and once again, I won't change my mind if he loses). McCain's operatives are trying to work in the best Karl Rove tradition, but they are all silly hacks who, if Sarah Palin's recent rhetoric about "the REAL AMERICA" is any evidence, have the wannabe Timothy McVeighs of the country as their target audience.
But mostly, they're just silly. Yesterday on NPR's All Things Considered, Michele Norris interviewed senior McCain advisor Nicolle Wallace (listen to the whole interview here). In it, she was trying to pin Wallace down on the McCain campaign's claim that Obama is a socialist, a claim that McCain himself backed off of in an interview with Larry King. In a three-and-a-half minute interview, she actually gave the correct answer, which is "John McCain believes that 'spreading the wealth' is something that Barack Obama's tax policies have in common with socialism." A reasonable person in a longer interview might add that there are several functions of the US Government that reflect the influence of socialism, but that Obama wants to move closer to socialism, while McCain wants to retreat from it. Neither McCain nor Obama advocates a move all the way to either end of the spectrum. A reasonable person might also add that the McCain campaign's assertion that Obama is a socialist is common election year hyperbole, and most Americans are sophisticated enough to understand that.
But, unfortunately for McCain, this senior advisor is not a reasonable person. She starts out reasonably enough, talking about how the polls are narrowing in key battleground states, and hitting her talking points about Obama "spreading the wealth". Norris then plays the clip from Larry King and asks Wallace a direct question: "So tell me something: if John McCain does not think Barack Obama is a socialist, why is that message a centerpiece of his recent campaign?" Now, let me reiterate - I don't think this is a "gotcha" question. There is a perfectly reasonable answer to the question that doesn't entail any sort of backpedaling . . . but Wallace proceeded to head toward the stratosphere with her answer. She started by vomiting up her talking points quickly, stumbling over them, and then saying "Joe the Plumber was the first one to use the word 'socialism' to describe Barack Obama's plan and vision in his own words, which was to 'spread the wealth".
Oh please, dear God, not Joe the Plumber . . .
Norris tried to steer the interview back on track by pointing out that Joe the Plumber is not running for president, but John McCain is, and that it seems that the campaign is repeating a charge that the candidate himself does not believe. Wallace starts to get back to the question, but is distracted: "Well, John McCain is saying that the idea of 'spreading the wealth' . . . Oh, Joe the Plumber just got on the Straight Talk Express, speaking of his words and his wisdom and his economic ideas . . . you know, he is someone who shares John McCain's belief that, as a small business owner, and this election is about . . . "
?????!!!!!
What the hell???!!! The economic ideas of Joe the fucking Plumber???!!!
This is ridiculous on so many levels it's difficult to know where to start. First of all, I would bet you one month's pre-market crash income that Joe the Plumber DID NOT WALK ON THE BUS AT THAT VERY MOMENT . . . which means that, as ridiculous as it is to be distracted in the middle of a presumably rather important national radio interview, this was a planned rhetorical dodge, which is even more . . . hell, I can't even find the words. It is indescribably, amazingly, mind-bogglingly ridiculous and strange.
Secondly, this whole Joe the Plumber thing is completely surreal. I mean, this guy stumps for McCain! This guy is so off base that even Shepard Smith (Fox News) called a foul on him for saying (in his role as McCain spokesman) that if Obama is elected, Israel would "cease to exist". Now, if you've got Fox News anchors calling you out on behalf of Obama, you're way off the reservation. It's not unusual for a candidate to have various mascots for a campaign, but you don't let the idiots talk, and especially not with your explicit backing. I mean, we get it, he's a normal guy, a REAL AMERICAN (in Palin parlance), and he's voting for McCain. If I need my toilet fixed, I'll call him. I mean, he must be a damn good plumber, since he makes more than $250,000 a year, which would put him right in line with Obama's tax hike. On second thought, never mind, I can't afford him. Oh, wait, when Obama redistributes the wealth, I'll get my lazy welfare-Cadillac-driving hands on some extra lucre, & then I'll be able to afford him! Oh, Joe the Plumber, is there anything you can't do?
Okay, a bit of a tangent there. Difference is, I'm writing a blog. Nicolle Wallace is a senior campaign advisor (senior!) for a guy who theoretically knows how to surround himself with people capable of running the most powerful country in the world, and she's doing an important radio interview less than a week before the election that will determine the fate of her boss. Is it any wonder that conservatives are depressed that this goat rodeo of a campaign represents their interests? Is McCain losing this election on purpose?
Norris finally managed to get Wallace back on track, and she gave the reasonable answer: "John McCain believes that 'spreading the wealth' is something that Barack Obama's tax policies have in common with socialism." But, she couldn't stay on track for long: "Listen, you go into a restaurant, and instead of leaving a tip, you stiff the waitress and give it to the homeless person outside. It is a noble thing to do, it is spreading money earned by that waitress and giving it to someone outside . . . "
?????!!!!!
Stiffing a waitress to give money to a homeless person is socialism? That's not redistribution of wealth, that's assholery. Anybody who would do that to a waitress (who, without that tip, would be earning sub-minimum wage) isn't a Marxist, they're a douche bag. I understand exactly why this tower of intellect that is John McCain's senior advisor spent so much time to come up with this off-the-cuff analogy: they want all us broke-assed people to think that it's our income that's going to get cut by all this wealth redistribution that Obama plans to do. Wallace's ridiculous little allegory doesn't map, though. It's just stupid. Obama-as-socialist would make sure the diner tips the waitress and tosses some coin to the homeless guy outside. McCain-as-capitalist would argue that, as noble as this may be, the added expense to a night out would actually cause the diner to stay home, thereby putting the restaurant out of business, and in turn putting both the waitress and the homeless person out in the street. See, I can do this, why can't a senior campaign advisor for John McCain?
It's not unfair to call Obama a socialist - certainly hyperbolic, but not unfair. He is talking about making taxation more progressive, which is an idea that has its roots in socialism. Of course, America already has a progressive income tax, thanks to that bastard Bill Clinton*, and in spite of the best efforts of George W. Bush. And, if Obama were really a socialist, he wouldn't have such a lame health care plan. It's just that, post-Clinton, post-Rove/Cheney/Bush, you expect a little more elegance in the manipulation of language. These McCain people are rank amateurs. I never thought an administration could be worse than Bush's, but I'm beginning to see a road map to that particular hell.
Obama made it through the primaries with smoke and mirrors. He relied on nebulous concepts to make himself everything to everybody, leaving the real work (hacking away at the Republicans) to left-wing kamikazes like Dennis Kucinich. I don't like it, but I understand why he did it, and it obviously paid off: I never thought I would see the day someone would out-campaign a Clinton. McCain made his deal with the devil, but this particular devil was out of tricks (and really, he'd been pushing that pacemaker to the red line for over eight years now . . . it's time he rested). Their butchering of truth is visible to most anyone who wants to see. One can disagree with his fellow citizens on philosophy, economics, morals, etc., and still be civil . . . but anyone who falls for this crap is worthy of our derision.
Meaning is dead & buried in an unmarked grave. Pity the fools who still believe it alive.
This has been a bulletin from a Real America that thinks Sarah Palin is a joke. I'm Bill the Appliance Salesman/Bill the hopelessly obscure experimental musician/Bill the grouchy middle-aged white guy who actually thinks people read his silly shit, and I approve this message.
* Before you all write me, I know it wasn't Bill Clinton who instituted the progressive income tax. That was a joke . . . 'cause, you see, the right-wing media machine blames everything on Clinton . . . get it? Pretty funny, huh? Actually, progressive income tax was instituted by notorious left wing wackjob Teddy Roosevelt. Or at least that's what it says on the internet, so it must be true.
September 28, 2008
Bullshit as Metaphor: Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit
Hello friends. I'm going to start this thing with an old essay originally published in the online version of Bears On Text. Consider this the print equivalent of shouting "testing, testing" into a microphone.
The shit on Bullshit
Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit has become a small phenomenon in America: a philosophical work that has captured the public imagination. On Bullshit has shown up on best-seller lists, been championed by John Stewart on The Daily Show, been the subject of a 60 Minutes segment, and been reviewed in a column in the Lifestyles section of USA Today. Unlike France, where philosophers such as Baudrillard, Foucault, and Delueze are treated like rock stars, America has little patience for philosophy. If for no other reason, On Bullshit merits comment simply because it broke through the barrier of the banal, the manufactured facade of American culture.
Indeed, it is the manufactured aspect of American culture that gives On Bullshit its resonance: every utterance is assumed to have its validity and intent. To the consumers of these utterances, the validity and intent of utterance has become part and parcel of the utterance itself. Americans live in a culture of spin, where every utterance has a source, every source has a purpose, and the search for truth becomes a two step process: judging the utterance, and recognizing its source.
Put another way, whenever we are told something, we have decide whether or not the statement is true. Part of judging the truth of a statement inevitably involves recognizing the source of the statement 1 . This requisite recognition of a statement’s source is the logical outgrowth of a culture where the function of a statement has attained equal status to the validity of the statement 2 . Yet we do not have, at any popular theoretical level, a way to understand how validity and intent interact. At the base level of our culture, we are functioning binarily: a statement is true or false. Given the troublesome nature of truth, Frankfurt proposes that statements can be true, false, or unconcerned with the truth that they claim to speak. This third type of statement Frankfurt calls bullshit, and his project is to begin to codify bullshit. More explicitly, Frankfurt proposes “to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit”, to “give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not”, to “articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept” (On Bullshit, pp. 1-2).
Frankfurt’s first hurdle is separating validity from intent. We tend to use the term “bullshit” interchangeably with “falsehood”: if you tell me something, and I reply “that’s bullshit”, we generally understand that to be the same as if I had replied “that’s a lie”. For Frankfurt, bullshit is not the same as a lie, and the difference is crucial. There are three types of statements: true, false, and bullshit. While the first two types of statements are directly concerned with validity, the third is concerned primarily with intent. Frankfurt’s formulation of the concept of bullshit is simple and elegant: bullshit
The rigor of truth
In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with the greatest care
Each minute and unseen part
For the Gods were everywhere
(Longfellow by way of Wittgenstein, quoted by Frankfurt, p. 20)
Central to Frankfurt’s concept of truth is rigor: that is, those who purport to tell the truth must be completely devoted to the truth they speak. The framing anecdote of On Bullshit is a (possibly apocryphal) story told by a friend of Wittgenstein’s, Fanai Pascal. In it, Pascal relates a call that Wittgenstein made to her in the hospital, in which she reported that she felt “like a dog that has just been run over”. Wittgenstein replied with disgust: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like” (p. 24). Frankfurt freely admits that he is perhaps misinterpreting what might have been a bit of joking hyperbole 3 , but still lets it stand as the prime illustration of the rigor of truth.
Bullshit can be thought of as “shoddy goods” “invariably produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner” (p. 21). While the idea of “shoddy goods” is not central to the concept of bullshit (we all know of carefully wrought bullshit), the idea of self-indulgence absolutely is central to bullshit. Rigor defies bullshit only when it serves the truth, not when it serves anything else, and craftsmanship not in the service of truth (the “Gods” of the Longfellow verse above) is nothing more than bullshit. Frankfurt further identifies as a marker of bullshit a
Later, Frankfurt describes the laxity of the bullshitter as providing
The battle of intent; or, as Bob Dylan says, “You gotta serve somebody”
In mining the literature for a starting point to his conceptualization of bullshit, Frankfurt runs across Max Black’s essay “The Prevalence of Humbug”. Humbug, it turns out, is a precursor to bullshit; and while Frankfurt spends a fair amount of time differentiating the two, it is clear that he has found a valuable source. Frankfurt could be describing bullshit when he says that
This definition of humbug is tied to an illustration by Frankfurt:
The elephant in the room; or, as Johnny Cash said, “what is truth?”
As mentioned before, Frankfurt’s conceptualization of bullshit is simple and elegant, and useful as well. It is not, however, without its problems. Indeed, there seems to be an elephant in the room that Frankfurt barely touches (one assumes, “for the purposes of this discussion”): just what is truth? Clearly it would be ridiculous to frontally engage the central question of all philosophy in this small volume, but Frankfurt seems to be making some assumptions about the nature of truth that are a bit too easy.
First and foremost, Frankfurt’s analysis is based on the traditional role between subject and object: “One who is concerned to report or conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable” (p. 61). Truth here is ultimately object, and the closer to the object an utterance approaches, the closer to truth it is. Conversely, the closer an utterance is to its subject, the more bullshit it is (remember, we have already pegged self-indulgence as an aspect of bullshit).
Frankfurt notes the philosophical angst created by the struggle against objectivity in the last century, and, with a flick of the wrist, brushes it aside:
For Frankfurt, truth resides in the object, and an utterance’s validity depends on its distance from intent. The object, or Frankfurt’s “truth”, is/are the “Gods” referred to in the Longfellow verse above, the truths that artifice (utterance) serves. Utterance embraces the object, or, to follow the objectivist logic to its extreme, utterance becomes the object . . . for it is only in the object which truth resides.
The problem is, of course, that there is always distance between truth and the utterance of truth. The artifacts of the builders are not the gods, only the representations of the gods. Here Frankfurt’s cavalier dismissal of “antirealist” doctrines defies the rigor of truth, and serves to question his entire discussion. Again, given the scope of Frankfurt’s project, it’s not necessary to run the whole history of “truth”, but such glaring assumptions threaten his project on its own terms.
Bullshit as metaphor
Language is our interface with the object, with “reality”. It is with language that we build our temples to the gods of truth. But, to repeat, our temples are not gods, they are representations of the gods. Truth is something that is ultimately not attainable in its objective form: we always move toward speaking truth, for we cannot ever actually speak it. The object is never contained in our speech, it is only described: our statements stand as metaphors for truth, not truth itself. Bullshit, too, is metaphor, so it seems that our project, by way of Frankfurt, is to determine how bullshit functions as metaphor.
First of all, when creating statements of truth, intent can never be fully escaped. Since utterance can only approach truth (not be truth), the metaphors that we create have their source, and that source is tempered by our worldview. Even as we approach the object, the subject cannot be escaped. So, any statement is by necessity a negotiation between the subject and the object 7 .
The subject provides intent, both in an unconscious and conscious manner . . . unconscious to the degree that the cultural scrap heap on which we live defines our view of reality, conscious to the degree that we want our statements to function in a certain way. Frankfurt takes our cultural scrap heap as a given: it’s the conscious functionality that he isolates as a marker of bullshit. If we understand statements to be negotiations between subject and object, and we understand these negotiations to take the form of metaphor, then we can move back toward Frankfurt’s original project: what kind of metaphor qualifies as bullshit?
Just as all utterance has an element of the subject, all utterance has an element of bullshit. We have seen that self-indulgence (subjectivity) is a marker of bullshit (p. 21, cited above): so, with Frankfurt as our guide, how can we differentiate utterance that has elements of bullshit from outright bullshit?
It becomes clear at this point that bullshit is a matter of degree 8 . Each utterance is a negotiation between subjective and objective forces, so the question (once again) becomes this: what master does an utterance serve? What is it that dominates (wills) in an utterance, and what is it that submits?
The rigor of truth revisited
In spite of the objectivity problems in Frankfurt’s discussion, we now find ourselves squarely back in line with his analysis. Bullshit is simply utterance concerned with something other than that which it claims to describe.
We can, in any statement, isolate the subjective texts and subtexts that inform that statement. We are also aware of the object, or that which the statement claims as truth. Every statement has its (subjective) intent to guide it, as well as its (objective) validity to reveal it. While bullshit may be a matter of degree, we can go back to Frankfurt’s “rigor of truth” to begin to place a statement into the bullshit continuum: we can judge a statement by how thoroughly it is committed to that which it claims 9 . The subjective forces that drive utterance are always going to be problematic. There will always be a certain amount of indeterminacy in any statement of truth. If we can never finally wind up at any objective judgement of truth, even if we cannot definitively say what is bullshit and what is not, we can still move toward a more accurate understanding of a given utterance if only we are willing to subject it to Frankfurt’s rigor of truth. As long as we are willing to analyze all the forces that drive utterance, we will come closer to understanding what a statement means, whether or not the statement claims that meaning. Ultimately, the most interesting analysis of utterance (bullshit or not) begins here, with the analysis of facts and motives that define utterance.
. . . and finally, friends, bullshit itself is bullshit
Fanai Pascal was being sincere when she described herself as feeling “like a dog that has just been run over” (p. 24, cited above). What was lacking in her description was a commitment to that which she described. Overwrought though this example may be, one point to be taken away from On Bullshit is that “truth” requires a commitment to the reality an utterance describes.
The other, perhaps most important, point is one that Frankfurt doesn’t really make himself: utterance is a complex thing. It is never only what it says it is. It is rather a conglomeration of different aspects, different forces . . . and, if one is to understand an utterance, one must take all the different forces into account.
One of the reasons this little book was so popular is that it bandied the term “bullshit” around so freely. Using the term “bullshit” gives the air of simple talk, of cutting through clouds of rhetoric 10 . However, the term itself becomes problematic because of its pejorative nature: after all, talk of religion and spirituality almost always satisfies many of the requirements of bullshit, and I don’t get the feeling that Frankfurt would necessarily paint spiritual talk with a negative brush. Nietzsche too ranks high on the bullshit scale, yet he is one of the true giants of modern thought 11 . Bullshit is so tightly connected to the creation of metaphor, to the very basis of describing our world, that to think of it only in a pejorative sense is not completely accurate, or perhaps not completely rigorous.
Frankfurt does cover some ground that has not been brought up in this essay, but frankly, it all seems a bit nebulous and beside the point 12 . Ultimately, On Bullshit asks to be judged simply: it is a small, incisive critical analysis of the popular conception of truth. Its contribution in this sense is important, and it deserves to be widely read. Though it is undercut by overly bold assumptions about key philosophical concepts, it nonetheless frames its central concept nicely and projects itself into a culture that is decidedly more prosaic than that which spawned the work 13 . Judging by the overwhelmingly positive reception this book has received, that is enough. For the rest of us, we can console ourselves with the idea that the path to enlightenment is taken in small steps.
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1. Or vetting its authority, which is the same as locating an author . . . how often are we confronted with a dubious fact (say, a bit of gossip), and we undermine it with a statement such as “well, consider the source”.
2. Karl Rove to NPR’s Juan Williams, not long after George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004: “George W. Bush is the most popular president in the history of the United States.” He then supported his assertion by noting that more people had voted for Bush than for any president in history, which is a documented fact. Rove conveniently skipped over the fact that more people voted against Bush than any other president as well. Rove’s statement is prime bullshit: it is unconcerned with truth. The purpose of the statement (positioning Bush in a positive light) is primary; its relation to truth is secondary.
3. Ironically, treating what was perhaps just a joke as a serious example of Wittgenstein’s “rigor of truth” moves this anecdote dangerously close to the realm of bullshit. Frankfurt says that “for the purposes of this discussion, I shall accept Pascal’s report at face value, supposing that when it came to the use of allusive or figurative language, Wittgenstein was indeed as preposterous as she makes him out to be” (p. 27), while spending the previous two pages musing upon the possible meaning of Pascal’s story. It is clear that Frankfurt has prioritized intent over validity in this case (“For the purposes of this discussion . . .”). Certainly this is not egregious bullshit, but it’s a little light on the “rigor of truth” scale. Then again, I’m sure that Frankfurt has much more access to parlor talk about philosophers than I do.
4. Keep in mind here that lies do serve the truth, if only adversely. Once again, the idea that a lie is connected to the truth, while bullshit is not, is a salient point.
5. Bullshit does not require that the impression created be a false impression. Since I am not familiar with the source material, I don’t know if Black imposed this requirement on humbug. Bullshit only requires that the purpose of the utterance be a portrayal of a state of mind rather than a portrayal of truth.
6. You would have to think that Frankfurt is being a bit disingenuous . . . or, to couch it in terms of our discussion, intent has again trumped validity, and this concept is bullshit. This discussion does, however, set him up to end his book with the sentence “And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.”
7. We’re venturing here into the realm of perhaps the greatest bullshitter of all time, Friedrich Nietzsche. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, maybe you did. There is a master being served here.
8. I feel certain that the good Dr. Frankfurt would object to this statement, perhaps even strenuously.
9. With all the “subjects” and “objects” being thrown around, a small bit of clarification is in order. Any statement is about something, and that something is its object, even if that object happens to be the subject speaking. So, if we revisit Frankfurt’s Fourth of July orator, and have him preface his comments with “I believe” (“I believe in a great and blessed country, I believe that our founding fathers, through divine guidance, created a new beginning for mankind, etc.”), then his statement doesn’t ring the bullshit bell as hard as it did before. The final judgement, of course, would rest on his philosophical commitment to the truths he speaks, and why he is speaking these truths at this given moment.
10. Which, frankly, is bullshit rhetorical trick.
11. He is one of the guiding lights of this discussion as well. If there is positive bullshit, I think Nietzsche is a prime example. As scattershot as he was (he said he philosophizes with a hammer, I prefer to think of him as philosophizing with a shotgun), there was never any question about the rigor of his thought . . . plenty of questions about his sanity, but none about his rigor.
12. If I really want to know what bullshit is, the Oxford English Dictionary and Ezra Pound are both a bit low on the search list.
13. Judged as a popular book instead of an academic book, the assumptions that Frankfurt makes are to its benefit rather than its detriment.
The shit on Bullshit
Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit has become a small phenomenon in America: a philosophical work that has captured the public imagination. On Bullshit has shown up on best-seller lists, been championed by John Stewart on The Daily Show, been the subject of a 60 Minutes segment, and been reviewed in a column in the Lifestyles section of USA Today. Unlike France, where philosophers such as Baudrillard, Foucault, and Delueze are treated like rock stars, America has little patience for philosophy. If for no other reason, On Bullshit merits comment simply because it broke through the barrier of the banal, the manufactured facade of American culture.
Indeed, it is the manufactured aspect of American culture that gives On Bullshit its resonance: every utterance is assumed to have its validity and intent. To the consumers of these utterances, the validity and intent of utterance has become part and parcel of the utterance itself. Americans live in a culture of spin, where every utterance has a source, every source has a purpose, and the search for truth becomes a two step process: judging the utterance, and recognizing its source.
Put another way, whenever we are told something, we have decide whether or not the statement is true. Part of judging the truth of a statement inevitably involves recognizing the source of the statement 1 . This requisite recognition of a statement’s source is the logical outgrowth of a culture where the function of a statement has attained equal status to the validity of the statement 2 . Yet we do not have, at any popular theoretical level, a way to understand how validity and intent interact. At the base level of our culture, we are functioning binarily: a statement is true or false. Given the troublesome nature of truth, Frankfurt proposes that statements can be true, false, or unconcerned with the truth that they claim to speak. This third type of statement Frankfurt calls bullshit, and his project is to begin to codify bullshit. More explicitly, Frankfurt proposes “to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of bullshit”, to “give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not”, to “articulate, more or less sketchily, the structure of its concept” (On Bullshit, pp. 1-2).
Frankfurt’s first hurdle is separating validity from intent. We tend to use the term “bullshit” interchangeably with “falsehood”: if you tell me something, and I reply “that’s bullshit”, we generally understand that to be the same as if I had replied “that’s a lie”. For Frankfurt, bullshit is not the same as a lie, and the difference is crucial. There are three types of statements: true, false, and bullshit. While the first two types of statements are directly concerned with validity, the third is concerned primarily with intent. Frankfurt’s formulation of the concept of bullshit is simple and elegant: bullshit
is grounded neither in the belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern with the truth – this indifference to how things really are – that I regard as the essence of bullshit.Frankfurt’s already slim volume is essentially boiled down in this statement. Ultimately there need be nothing more added to his introduction to the analysis of bullshit. But continue he does, if only for a mere sixty-seven 4-inch by 6-inch pages: On Bullshit draws a circle around this statement, and all the remaining prose orbits around it like satellites around the sun.
(pp. 33-34)
The rigor of truth
In the elder days of art
Builders wrought with the greatest care
Each minute and unseen part
For the Gods were everywhere
(Longfellow by way of Wittgenstein, quoted by Frankfurt, p. 20)
Central to Frankfurt’s concept of truth is rigor: that is, those who purport to tell the truth must be completely devoted to the truth they speak. The framing anecdote of On Bullshit is a (possibly apocryphal) story told by a friend of Wittgenstein’s, Fanai Pascal. In it, Pascal relates a call that Wittgenstein made to her in the hospital, in which she reported that she felt “like a dog that has just been run over”. Wittgenstein replied with disgust: “You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels like” (p. 24). Frankfurt freely admits that he is perhaps misinterpreting what might have been a bit of joking hyperbole 3 , but still lets it stand as the prime illustration of the rigor of truth.
Bullshit can be thought of as “shoddy goods” “invariably produced in a careless or self-indulgent manner” (p. 21). While the idea of “shoddy goods” is not central to the concept of bullshit (we all know of carefully wrought bullshit), the idea of self-indulgence absolutely is central to bullshit. Rigor defies bullshit only when it serves the truth, not when it serves anything else, and craftsmanship not in the service of truth (the “Gods” of the Longfellow verse above) is nothing more than bullshit. Frankfurt further identifies as a marker of bullshit a
kind of laxity that resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested and austere discipline. The pertinent mode of laxity cannot be equated, evidently, with simple carelessness or inattention to detail. (pp. 23-24)
Later, Frankfurt describes the laxity of the bullshitter as providing
a description of a certain state of affairs without genuinely submitting to the constraints which the endeavor to provide an accurate representation of reality imposes. (p. 32)The utterance of truth can have but one master: truth. Any utterance that does not serve the truth, any utterance that does not commit itself completely to the truth, is bullshit 4 .
The battle of intent; or, as Bob Dylan says, “You gotta serve somebody”
In mining the literature for a starting point to his conceptualization of bullshit, Frankfurt runs across Max Black’s essay “The Prevalence of Humbug”. Humbug, it turns out, is a precursor to bullshit; and while Frankfurt spends a fair amount of time differentiating the two, it is clear that he has found a valuable source. Frankfurt could be describing bullshit when he says that
humbug is not designed primarily to give its audience a false belief about whatever state of affairs may be the topic, but that its primary intention is rather to give its audience a false impression of what is going on in the mind of the speaker 5 . Insofar as it is humbug, the creation of this impression is its main purpose and intent. (p. 14)
This definition of humbug is tied to an illustration by Frankfurt:
Consider a Fourth of July orator, who goes on bombastically about “our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind”. This is surely humbug. As Black’s account suggests, the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs that he himself regards as false, concerning such matters as whether our country is great, whether it is blessed, whether the founders had divine guidance, and whether what they did was in fact create a new beginning for mankind. But the orator does not really care what the audience thinks about the Founding Fathers, or about the role of the deity in our country’s history, or the like. At least, it is not an interest in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his speech. It is clear that what makes the Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false . . . He is not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is what people think of him. (pp. 16-18)We live in an age of manufactured utterance. Statements of “reality” are designed to serve a purpose, and if they are true at all, then their validity serves their intent. Every utterance is controlled, every statement is spun . . . from the retail worker who is required to answer “thank you” with “my pleasure”, all the way up to police actions, death taxes, and pro-lifers versus pro-choicers. What language has come to communicate is less about “truth” than about the mind of the speaker. Here, intent is never specifically the urge to deceive. It is, rather, the urge to describe the world in a way that fits criteria that are placed above “truth”. Intent is impossible to escape, but validity too often takes a back seat. Furthermore, utterances are always portrayed to be concerned with truth (validity) first and foremost, when in reality they are often primarily concerned with intent. The question becomes this: what master does an utterance serve? For Frankfurt, at least, the answer is clear: any utterance that does not serve the truth is bullshit.
The elephant in the room; or, as Johnny Cash said, “what is truth?”
As mentioned before, Frankfurt’s conceptualization of bullshit is simple and elegant, and useful as well. It is not, however, without its problems. Indeed, there seems to be an elephant in the room that Frankfurt barely touches (one assumes, “for the purposes of this discussion”): just what is truth? Clearly it would be ridiculous to frontally engage the central question of all philosophy in this small volume, but Frankfurt seems to be making some assumptions about the nature of truth that are a bit too easy.
First and foremost, Frankfurt’s analysis is based on the traditional role between subject and object: “One who is concerned to report or conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable” (p. 61). Truth here is ultimately object, and the closer to the object an utterance approaches, the closer to truth it is. Conversely, the closer an utterance is to its subject, the more bullshit it is (remember, we have already pegged self-indulgence as an aspect of bullshit).
Frankfurt notes the philosophical angst created by the struggle against objectivity in the last century, and, with a flick of the wrist, brushes it aside:
The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can have any reliable access to an objective reality, and which therefore reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These “antirealist” doctrines undermine confidence in the value of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false, and even in the intelligibility of the notionHe then goes on to reframe the subject-object relationship in terms of “sincerity” and “correctness”: moving toward the subject is sincere, while moving toward the object is correct. “Antirealists” deny the possibility of actually knowing anything external, the possibility of being correct, so they focus inward, on their own internal nature, and strive to be sincere. Of course, Frankfurt is only baiting a trap here, since most of the “antirealists” he sites would reject the possibility of knowing anything, internal or external 6 . His assertion that one’s self is defined by the external world is accurate, as is the idea that it is perhaps even more difficult to know one’s self than the external world. Still, it misses the point, since the very idea of knowing implies an object to be known, be it the self or the external world.
of objective inquiry. (pp. 64-65)
For Frankfurt, truth resides in the object, and an utterance’s validity depends on its distance from intent. The object, or Frankfurt’s “truth”, is/are the “Gods” referred to in the Longfellow verse above, the truths that artifice (utterance) serves. Utterance embraces the object, or, to follow the objectivist logic to its extreme, utterance becomes the object . . . for it is only in the object which truth resides.
The problem is, of course, that there is always distance between truth and the utterance of truth. The artifacts of the builders are not the gods, only the representations of the gods. Here Frankfurt’s cavalier dismissal of “antirealist” doctrines defies the rigor of truth, and serves to question his entire discussion. Again, given the scope of Frankfurt’s project, it’s not necessary to run the whole history of “truth”, but such glaring assumptions threaten his project on its own terms.
Bullshit as metaphor
Language is our interface with the object, with “reality”. It is with language that we build our temples to the gods of truth. But, to repeat, our temples are not gods, they are representations of the gods. Truth is something that is ultimately not attainable in its objective form: we always move toward speaking truth, for we cannot ever actually speak it. The object is never contained in our speech, it is only described: our statements stand as metaphors for truth, not truth itself. Bullshit, too, is metaphor, so it seems that our project, by way of Frankfurt, is to determine how bullshit functions as metaphor.
First of all, when creating statements of truth, intent can never be fully escaped. Since utterance can only approach truth (not be truth), the metaphors that we create have their source, and that source is tempered by our worldview. Even as we approach the object, the subject cannot be escaped. So, any statement is by necessity a negotiation between the subject and the object 7 .
The subject provides intent, both in an unconscious and conscious manner . . . unconscious to the degree that the cultural scrap heap on which we live defines our view of reality, conscious to the degree that we want our statements to function in a certain way. Frankfurt takes our cultural scrap heap as a given: it’s the conscious functionality that he isolates as a marker of bullshit. If we understand statements to be negotiations between subject and object, and we understand these negotiations to take the form of metaphor, then we can move back toward Frankfurt’s original project: what kind of metaphor qualifies as bullshit?
Just as all utterance has an element of the subject, all utterance has an element of bullshit. We have seen that self-indulgence (subjectivity) is a marker of bullshit (p. 21, cited above): so, with Frankfurt as our guide, how can we differentiate utterance that has elements of bullshit from outright bullshit?
It becomes clear at this point that bullshit is a matter of degree 8 . Each utterance is a negotiation between subjective and objective forces, so the question (once again) becomes this: what master does an utterance serve? What is it that dominates (wills) in an utterance, and what is it that submits?
The rigor of truth revisited
In spite of the objectivity problems in Frankfurt’s discussion, we now find ourselves squarely back in line with his analysis. Bullshit is simply utterance concerned with something other than that which it claims to describe.
We can, in any statement, isolate the subjective texts and subtexts that inform that statement. We are also aware of the object, or that which the statement claims as truth. Every statement has its (subjective) intent to guide it, as well as its (objective) validity to reveal it. While bullshit may be a matter of degree, we can go back to Frankfurt’s “rigor of truth” to begin to place a statement into the bullshit continuum: we can judge a statement by how thoroughly it is committed to that which it claims 9 . The subjective forces that drive utterance are always going to be problematic. There will always be a certain amount of indeterminacy in any statement of truth. If we can never finally wind up at any objective judgement of truth, even if we cannot definitively say what is bullshit and what is not, we can still move toward a more accurate understanding of a given utterance if only we are willing to subject it to Frankfurt’s rigor of truth. As long as we are willing to analyze all the forces that drive utterance, we will come closer to understanding what a statement means, whether or not the statement claims that meaning. Ultimately, the most interesting analysis of utterance (bullshit or not) begins here, with the analysis of facts and motives that define utterance.
. . . and finally, friends, bullshit itself is bullshit
Fanai Pascal was being sincere when she described herself as feeling “like a dog that has just been run over” (p. 24, cited above). What was lacking in her description was a commitment to that which she described. Overwrought though this example may be, one point to be taken away from On Bullshit is that “truth” requires a commitment to the reality an utterance describes.
The other, perhaps most important, point is one that Frankfurt doesn’t really make himself: utterance is a complex thing. It is never only what it says it is. It is rather a conglomeration of different aspects, different forces . . . and, if one is to understand an utterance, one must take all the different forces into account.
One of the reasons this little book was so popular is that it bandied the term “bullshit” around so freely. Using the term “bullshit” gives the air of simple talk, of cutting through clouds of rhetoric 10 . However, the term itself becomes problematic because of its pejorative nature: after all, talk of religion and spirituality almost always satisfies many of the requirements of bullshit, and I don’t get the feeling that Frankfurt would necessarily paint spiritual talk with a negative brush. Nietzsche too ranks high on the bullshit scale, yet he is one of the true giants of modern thought 11 . Bullshit is so tightly connected to the creation of metaphor, to the very basis of describing our world, that to think of it only in a pejorative sense is not completely accurate, or perhaps not completely rigorous.
Frankfurt does cover some ground that has not been brought up in this essay, but frankly, it all seems a bit nebulous and beside the point 12 . Ultimately, On Bullshit asks to be judged simply: it is a small, incisive critical analysis of the popular conception of truth. Its contribution in this sense is important, and it deserves to be widely read. Though it is undercut by overly bold assumptions about key philosophical concepts, it nonetheless frames its central concept nicely and projects itself into a culture that is decidedly more prosaic than that which spawned the work 13 . Judging by the overwhelmingly positive reception this book has received, that is enough. For the rest of us, we can console ourselves with the idea that the path to enlightenment is taken in small steps.
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1. Or vetting its authority, which is the same as locating an author . . . how often are we confronted with a dubious fact (say, a bit of gossip), and we undermine it with a statement such as “well, consider the source”.
2. Karl Rove to NPR’s Juan Williams, not long after George W. Bush’s re-election in 2004: “George W. Bush is the most popular president in the history of the United States.” He then supported his assertion by noting that more people had voted for Bush than for any president in history, which is a documented fact. Rove conveniently skipped over the fact that more people voted against Bush than any other president as well. Rove’s statement is prime bullshit: it is unconcerned with truth. The purpose of the statement (positioning Bush in a positive light) is primary; its relation to truth is secondary.
3. Ironically, treating what was perhaps just a joke as a serious example of Wittgenstein’s “rigor of truth” moves this anecdote dangerously close to the realm of bullshit. Frankfurt says that “for the purposes of this discussion, I shall accept Pascal’s report at face value, supposing that when it came to the use of allusive or figurative language, Wittgenstein was indeed as preposterous as she makes him out to be” (p. 27), while spending the previous two pages musing upon the possible meaning of Pascal’s story. It is clear that Frankfurt has prioritized intent over validity in this case (“For the purposes of this discussion . . .”). Certainly this is not egregious bullshit, but it’s a little light on the “rigor of truth” scale. Then again, I’m sure that Frankfurt has much more access to parlor talk about philosophers than I do.
4. Keep in mind here that lies do serve the truth, if only adversely. Once again, the idea that a lie is connected to the truth, while bullshit is not, is a salient point.
5. Bullshit does not require that the impression created be a false impression. Since I am not familiar with the source material, I don’t know if Black imposed this requirement on humbug. Bullshit only requires that the purpose of the utterance be a portrayal of a state of mind rather than a portrayal of truth.
6. You would have to think that Frankfurt is being a bit disingenuous . . . or, to couch it in terms of our discussion, intent has again trumped validity, and this concept is bullshit. This discussion does, however, set him up to end his book with the sentence “And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is bullshit.”
7. We’re venturing here into the realm of perhaps the greatest bullshitter of all time, Friedrich Nietzsche. Didn’t see that coming, did you? Well, maybe you did. There is a master being served here.
8. I feel certain that the good Dr. Frankfurt would object to this statement, perhaps even strenuously.
9. With all the “subjects” and “objects” being thrown around, a small bit of clarification is in order. Any statement is about something, and that something is its object, even if that object happens to be the subject speaking. So, if we revisit Frankfurt’s Fourth of July orator, and have him preface his comments with “I believe” (“I believe in a great and blessed country, I believe that our founding fathers, through divine guidance, created a new beginning for mankind, etc.”), then his statement doesn’t ring the bullshit bell as hard as it did before. The final judgement, of course, would rest on his philosophical commitment to the truths he speaks, and why he is speaking these truths at this given moment.
10. Which, frankly, is bullshit rhetorical trick.
11. He is one of the guiding lights of this discussion as well. If there is positive bullshit, I think Nietzsche is a prime example. As scattershot as he was (he said he philosophizes with a hammer, I prefer to think of him as philosophizing with a shotgun), there was never any question about the rigor of his thought . . . plenty of questions about his sanity, but none about his rigor.
12. If I really want to know what bullshit is, the Oxford English Dictionary and Ezra Pound are both a bit low on the search list.
13. Judged as a popular book instead of an academic book, the assumptions that Frankfurt makes are to its benefit rather than its detriment.
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