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Saturday, February 8, 2025

Shucking Oysters: Mind Your Bullshit

Today, more than ever, we folks need to be very discerning when it comes to character and words, especially words. Whether online or off, fake news, misinformation, and bullshit are everywhere. Even more so, now that Mark Zuckerberg announced that he will replace fact-checking with user-based bullshit meters. Let’s open the flood gates for more controversial posts and even more bullshit to wade through. 

But what does bullshit exactly mean? We often associate bullshit with words like “nonsense,” “meaningless,” and “stupid.” Are we expressing our feelings, or are we calling something meaningless or a lie whenever we call something bullshit?

In his 1986 essay “On Bullshit,” philosopher Harry Frankfurt distinguishes between bullshitting and lying. Bullshitters don’t care whether what they are saying is factually correct or not. A bullshitter “just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.” The bullshitter has no regard for the truth. “By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are,” Frankfurt wrote. Which begs the question, if bullshitters are more dangerous than liars, why are we more tolerant of them? 

He has been described as a bully, a clown, a temperamental child, a know-nothing, a national embarrassment and even an asshole. But ultimately, Donald Trump is a quintessential peddler of bullshit. The Donald only speaks in superlatives like “the biggest” and “the best.” He even added phantom floors to increase the size of his skyscrapers and we all know his myopic view on crowd size. It’s all about inflating his HUGE persona. In fairness, Trump may very well believe the things that he’s saying, as he was quoted as saying “I don’t like to lie.” 

Like the GREAT showman PT Barnum, Trump has an affinity for speaking hyperbole with little consideration for their factual accuracy. “They’re eating the cats.” “They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists.” Trump’s propensity for bullshit is not a political liability – far from it, it’s a superpower. Like all politicians, he twists the truth, probably more than most, but Trump’s genius lies in his stage performance. Andrew Packer described it best in The Medium: “It’s the netherworld of flimflam, hyperbole, sales pitches, and ad copy delivered with the quiet dignity of a wet T-shirt competition.” 

Donald Trump is not some anomaly. He is a mirror. “He reflects an America that runs on bullshit, that has become inured to bullshit, that has come to expect bullshit from its leaders,” wrote Packer. Most Trump supporters know it’s all fake, but they don’t care. It’s a world that pays more attention to bullshit than facts, evidence, and science. Trump’s gang of misfits, like their almighty leader, hold contempt for any hint of expertise or knowledge while continually being blinded by his brilliance. 

It was the 1987 book Trump: The Art of the Deal, that introduced the phrase “truthful hyperbole” describing “an innocent form of exaggeration.” The phrase was noted for its similarity to “alternative facts” coined by the photogenic, Kellyanne Conway when she defended White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer’s statements about how many people attended Trump’s first inauguration. Interestingly, Tony Schwartz (who “co-authored” the book) said writing it was his “greatest regret in life, without question,” and said if it were written today it would be titled The Sociopath.

In the academic article, “The Bullshit Doctrine: Fabrications, Lies, and Nonsense in the Age of Trump,” professors Kristiansen and Kaussler argue that, unconstrained by reality, Trump is driven more by celebrity and showmanship than a genuine desire to govern. 

Kristiansen and Kaussler note that Trump’s approach to bullshit sets him apart from the average politician, for he “moves so fluidly between fabrication, fantasy, and deception that standard mechanisms for dealing with falsehoods no longer apply.” As George Will explains, Trump’s rhetorical style is “not merely the result of intellectual sloth but of an untrained mind bereft of information and married to stratospheric self-confidence.”

Trump’s endgame is celebrity. He places no particular value on the meaning of words, for they are merely tools for a different purpose altogether. What is said one day can be discarded the next. Lies, deception, and bullshit are integral parts of Trump’s gold-embossed toolbox and he is not hesitant about using them brazenly. 

Days into his new term, Trump moved rapidly and methodically to advance his agenda. He signed hundreds of orders, from increasing border security to limiting birthright citizenship. He also cancelled 78 directives issued by Biden, including those relating to climate change and diversity and inclusion. 

But then Trump said he’d bring grocery prices down. Now, he says it’s too hard. He said he’d cut energy bills in half within one year, but he wasn’t aware that oil prices are set globally, not by a narcissistic president. He said he’d end the Russian invasion of Ukraine within 24 hours of being in office. Now, he’s saying the war is, “much more complicated.” 

And will Trump raise the tariff, a word which he redundantly calls “the most beautiful word in the entire dictionary of words”? Whether he’s bullshitting or posturing, the only constant for the next four years will be one of “certain uncertainty.”

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