STAR ESSAY: The Unbearable Stench of Trump's B.S. - by Fareed Zakaria {Re: STAR QUESTION: ‘Is Donald Trump plain crazy?’ Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee’s sanity
Mobolaji Aluko
THE UNBEARABLE STENCH OF TRUMP’S B.S.
Posted by Fareed Zakaria on August 4, 2016
By Fareed Zakaria
Thursday, August 4, 2016
A few days ago, I was asked on CNN to make sense of one more case in which Donald Trump had said something demonstrably false and then explained it away with a caustic tweet and an indignant interview. I replied that there was a pattern here and a term for a person who did this kind of thing: a “bullshit artist.” I got cheers and boos for the comment from partisans on both sides, but I was not using that label casually. Trump is many things, some of them dark and dangerous, but at his core, he is a B.S. artist.
Harry Frankfurt, an eminent moral philosopher and former professor at Princeton, wrote a brilliant essay in 1986 called “On Bullshit.” (Frankfurt himself wrote about Trump in this vein, as have Jeet Heer and Eldar Sarajlic.) In the essay, Frankfurt distinguishes crucially between lies and B.S.: “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.”
But someone engaging in B.S., Frankfurt says, “is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all . . . except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says.” Frankfurt writes that the B.S.-er’s “focus is panoramic rather than particular” and that he has “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.’ ”
This has been Trump’s mode all his life. He boasts — and boasts and boasts — about his business, his buildings, his books, his wives. Much of it is a concoction of hyperbole and falsehoods. And when he’s found out, he’s like that guy we have all met at a bar who makes wild claims but when confronted with the truth, quickly responds, “I knew that!”
Take, for instance, the most extraordinary example, his non-relationship with Vladimir Putin. In May 2014, addressing the National Press Club, Trump said, “I was in Russia, I was in Moscow recently and I spoke, indirectly and directly, with President Putin, who could not have been nicer.” In November 2015, at a Fox Business debate, he said of Putin, “I got to know him very well because we were both on ‘60 Minutes.’ ”
Did Trump really believe that you could say something like that on live TV and no one would check? Did he think that no one would notice that the “60 Minutes” show consisted of two separate prerecorded interviews, with Putin in Moscow and Trump in New York? (By that logic, I have gotten to know Franklin Roosevelt very well because I have run some clips of him on my television show.)
In fact, Trump was bullshitting. He sees himself as important, a global celebrity, the kind of man who should or could have met Putin. Why does it matter that they did not actually meet?
Or look at the issue that fueled his political rise, birtherism. Trump said in 2011 that he had sent investigators to Hawaii and that “they cannot believe what they’re finding.” For weeks, he continued to imply that there were huge findings to be released. He hinted to George Stephanopoulos, “We’re going to see what happens.” That was five years ago, in April 2011. Nothing happened.
In fact, it appears highly unlikely that Trump ever sent any investigators to Hawaii. In 2011, Salon asked Trump attorney Michael Cohen for details about the investigators. Cohen said that it was all very secret, naturally. Trump has said the same about his plan to defeat the Islamic State, which he can’t reveal. He has boasted that he has a strategy to win solidly Democratic states this fall, but he won’t reveal which ones. (Even by Trump’s standards, this one is a head-scratcher. Won’t we notice when he campaigns in these places? Or will it be so secret that even the voters won’t know?) Of course, these are not secret strategies. It’s just B.S.
Harry Frankfurt concludes that liars and truth-tellers are both acutely aware of facts and truths. They are just choosing to play on opposite sides of the same game to serve their own ends. The B.S. artist, however, has lost all connection with reality. He pays no attention to the truth. “By virtue of this,” Frankfurt writes, “bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are.”
We see the consequences. As the crazy talk continues, standard rules of fact, truth and reality have disappeared in this campaign. Donald Trump has piled such vast quantities of his trademark product into the political arena that the stench is now overwhelming and unbearable.
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http://press.princeton.edu/titles/7929.html
 | On Bullshit |
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A BOOK REVIEW
https://philosophynow.org/issues/53/On_Bullshit_by_Harry_Frankfurt
On Bullshit by Harry Frankfurt
Petter Naessan examines Harry Frankfurt’s famous little book On Bullshit.
Harry Frankfurt, a moral philosopher, starts this little book with the following observation: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit.” He then proceeds to develop a theoretical understanding of bullshit – what it is, and what it is not.
Aspects of the bullshit problem are discussed partly with reference to the Oxford English Dictionary, Wittgenstein and Saint Augustine. Three points seem especially important – the distinction between lying and bullshitting, the question of why there is so much bullshit in the current day and age, and a critique of sincerity quabullshit.
Frankfurt makes an important distinction between lying and bullshitting. Both the liar and the bullshitter try to get away with something. But ‘lying’ is perceived to be a conscious act of deception, whereas ‘bullshitting’ is unconnected to a concern for truth. Frankfurt regards this ‘indifference to how things really are’, as the essence of bullshit. Furthermore, a lie is necessarily false, but bullshit is not – bullshit may happen to be correct or incorrect. The crux of the matter is that bullshitters hide their lack of commitment to truth. Since bullshitters ignore truth instead of acknowledging and subverting it, bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies.
Having established the grave danger of bullshit, Frankfurt’s next step is to ask why there is so much bullshit around. The main answer to this is that bullshit is unavoidable when people are convinced that they must have opinions about “events and conditions in all parts of the world”, about more or less anything and everything – so they speak quite extensively about things they know virtually nothing about. Frankfurt is non-committal as to whether there is more bullshit around now than before, but he maintains that there is currently a great deal.
There is an interesting problem sketched at the end of the book, wherein sincerity is described as an ideal for those who do not believe that there is any (objective) truth, thus departing from the ideal of correctness. Now, Frankfurt does not mention the word ‘postmodern’ at all in his book (which is a good thing, I think), but to some extent the last pages may be understood to be a critical punch on a postmodern rejection of the ideal of the truth. Be this as it may, when a person rejects the notion of being true to the facts and turns instead to an ideal of being true to their own substantial and determinate nature, then according to Frankfurt this sincerity is bullshit.
Bullshit seems to be defined largely negatively, that is, as not lying. Frankfurt’s discussion – which he admits is not likely to be decisive – reveals that there is nothing really distinctive about bullshit when it comes to either the form or meaning of utterances. It is predominantly about the intention and disregard for truth of the bullshitter. How then do we discern bullshit from other types of speech behaviour? Is it really possible to accurately know the values (or lack thereof) involved when a person speaks?
Probably not. One may have some intuition that certain utterances constitute bullshit. Frankfurt does not provide any answers here, but one could perhaps suggest that the ‘cooperative principle’ of H.P. Grice (1913-1988) might provide some further food for thought within the emerging field of bullshitology (as I would like to call the scientific study of bullshit). Grice, in his 1975 book Logic and Conversation, outlined a number of underlying principles (‘maxims’) that are assumed by people engaged in conversation. Speakers and listeners assume that the others abide by certain, predominantly unstated, speech norms. The cooperative principle can be divided more specifically into the maxims of quantity, quality, relevance, and manner. For bullshitological purposes, the violation of the maxims would appear to be relevant. So if utterances convey not enough or too much information (quantity), are intentionally false or lack evidence (quality), are irrelevant to any current topic or issue (relevance), and are obscure, ambiguous, unnecessarily wordy or disorderly (manner), they would seem to qualify, although not necessarily, as bullshit (minus the intentionally false utterance, of course). These elements may be added to the condition of the bullshitter’s indifference to the ideal of truth. Then again, can we be certain that to identify utterances as bullshit in any given situation necessarily is connected to an understanding of the bullshitter’s indifference to the truth?
Needless to say, there are numerous problems which may be expanded, looked into and analysed concerning bullshit. And I dare say that Frankfurt’s little book is a nice starting point.
© Petter A. Naessan 2005
Petter Naessan is a PhD student in linguistics at the University of Adelaide.
• On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt, Princeton University Press (2005). £6.50/$9.95 pp.67.ISBN: 0691122946.
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-1. ‘Is Donald Trump plain crazy?’ Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee’s sanity - D. Stableford (Yahoo.com)2. Runaway Trump Train Picks Up Speed As Aides Can’t Grab The Controls - Howard Fineman, S.V. Date (HuffingtonPost.com)My People:The answer is "Yep - not like a fox, but simply crazy" - and I don't even have to examine him at close quarters.The more important question: is America crazy even to allow a situation where this kind of question is asked about a presidential candidate of a major political party? What has the USA turned to?Inquiring minds want to know.Bolaji AlukoShaking his headViolentlyhttps://www.yahoo.com/news/donald-trump-sanity-mental-health-000000384.html‘Is Donald Trump plain crazy?’ Big-name writers now questioning GOP nominee’s sanity
Dylan StablefordSenior editorAugust 2, 2016Is Donald Trump insane?That’s the question being asked in recent days by prominent columnists, both liberal and conservative, about the Republican presidential nominee.“During the primary season, as Donald Trump’s bizarre outbursts helped him crush the competition, I thought he was being crazy like a fox,” Eugene Robinson wrote in an op-ed (“Is Donald Trump just plain crazy?”) publishedTuesday in the Washington Post.“Now I am increasingly convinced that he’s just plain crazy,”Robinson continued. “I’m serious about that. Leave aside for the moment Trump’s policies, which in my opinion range from the unconstitutional to the un-American to the potentially catastrophic. At this point, it would be irresponsible to ignore the fact that Trump’s grasp on reality appears to be tenuous at best.”Robinson was not the only newspaper writer to recently ask such a blunt question about Trump’s fitness for office.“One wonders if Republican leaders have begun to realize that they may have hitched their fate and the fate of their party to a man with a disordered personality,” Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, wrote in a separate Washington Post editorial on Monday. “We can leave it to the professionals to determine exactly what to call it. Suffice to say that Donald Trump’s response to the assorted speakers at the Democratic National Convention has not been rational.”Vox founder Ezra Klein made a similar observation following Trump’s press conference the day after last month’s Republican National Convention. Instead of focusing on a unifying message, Trump resurfaced the debunked conspiracy theory that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s father was linked to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.“Have we stopped to appreciate how crazy Donald Trump has gotten recently?” Klein asked.“There was no reason for Trump to say any of this,” Klein wrote. “Trump had just accepted the Republican Party’s nomination for president. Cruz had been vanquished, booed off the stage.Trump’s opponent, now, was Hillary Clinton. But he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stay on message, he couldn’t suppress the crazy, for 24 hours.”“Yes, Donald Trump is crazy,” Steven Hayes added last week in the conservative Weekly Standard. “And, yes, the Republican party owns his insanity.”“I almost don’t blame Trump,” David Brooks wrote in the New York Times on July 29. “He is a morally untethered, spiritually vacuous man who appears haunted by multiple personality disorders. It is the ‘sane’ and ‘reasonable’ Republicans who deserve the shame.”It’s not just op-ed columnists questioning Trump’s sanity.At last week’s Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg endorsed Hillary Clinton while suggesting his fellow billionaire is not of sound mind.“Let’s elect a sane, competent person,” Bloomberg said.Another billionaire, Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, also questioned Trump’s sanity.“Donald initially — I really hoped he would be something different, that as a businessperson, I thought there was an opportunity there,” Cuban told CNN while campaigning with Clinton in his hometown of Pittsburgh on Saturday. “But then he went off the reservation and went bats*** crazy.”“We can gloss over it, laugh about it, analyze it,” Stuart Stevens, chief strategist to Mitt Romney’s 2012 campaign, wrote on Twitter. “But Donald Trump is not a well man.”Trump biographer Michael D’Antonio, though, argues that Trump is not crazy but instead “sees the world as a constant struggle for victory and lacks a moral compass.”“The word ‘crazy’ conjures up a person who is so plagued by delusions, or perhaps hallucinations, that he makes no sense at all,” D’Antonio wrote in an op-ed for CNN.com. “Consider his success, both before and during his pursuit of the presidency, and it’s hard to argue that Trump suffers from such a profoundly distorted view of reality. In fact he has long demonstrated a keen awareness of how our society worships celebrity and rewards those who can attract the limelight and hold its focus.”The Trump campaign did not immediately respond to a request for comment. But when the Toronto Star asked about the recent onslaught of questions surrounding his mental health, Trump spokeswoman Hope Hicks referred him to the candidate’s medical report.“I’m sure you saw Mr. Trump’s medical report released in December of last year, which described him as perhaps the healthiest individual to ever be elected President,” Hicks wrote in an email to the paper. “I refer you to that.”But as the Star’s Daniel Dale noted, that report addressed physical — and not mental — health.________________________________________________Runaway Trump Train Picks Up Speed As Aides Can’t Grab The Controls
Paul Manafort isn’t quitting, but is said to be “frustrated.” The RNC is distancing itself. Even Trump’s kids seem powerless.
08/03/2016 12:29 am ET | Updated 29 minutes agoHoward Fineman Global Editorial Director, The Huffington PostS.V. Date Senior Political Correspondent, The Huffington PostWASHINGTON ― Paul Manafort, Donald Trump’s campaign chairman, has had success dealing with hard-to-manage dictatorial types, from Imelda Marcos of the Philippines, to Jonas Savimbi of Angola, to Victor Yanukovych of Ukraine.
But he is described by close friends as “frustrated” beyond measure by his inability to manage Trump in any sense.
Reince Preibus, the pliable chair of the Republican National Committee, went to extraordinary lengths to legitimize The Donald ― but now the RNC is throwing up its hands and distancing itself.
Even longtime Trump friends ― he does have as few, such as former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani ― shake their heads at what they regard as his self-destructive knack for saying awful things at the worst times.
And insiders say Trump’s children ― said to be a moderating influence at times ― have neither the political knowledge nor the clout with their dad to restrain him, assuming that they indeed wanted to.
In all, the world of Republican operatives, insiders and elected officials has concluded ― rather too late in the game ― that Trump is an unmanageable mess who can only win the presidency if Julian Assange, Vladimir Putin or a prosecutor somewhere destroys Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton.
“This election is going to be decided by outside events,” said a patient but perhaps overly optimistic Trump adviser. “If, that is, we can figure out how to get the candidate to use them.”
In a text to The Huffington Post, Manafort flatly denied the essence of a tweet by respected CNBC and New York Times reporter John Harwood ― that he had given up on the campaign ― and said campaign spokesman Jason Miller would soon release a statement. Miller, a few minutes later, tweeted:
But Manafort’s friends and allies confirmed that he is “frustrated” by Trump’s refusal to seek advice ― or listen to it if offered ― as he sends out cascades of disastrous tweets and Facebook posts.
“The problem is that Trump watches TV every minute that he isn’t actually on his phone, either talking or tweeting,” said one adviser. “And then he gets angry at what he sees on TV and reacts.
“But I don’t think Manafort will quit,” the adviser said. “He’s come too far for too long in this business to stop now, no matter how frustrating. There is nothing Paul can do.”
Another member of Manafort’s circle described Trump in unflattering terms and said that while Manafort was there for the duration, he was counting the days.
In effect, Manafort’s allies are distancing their friend from the mess he is part of.
According to sources close to the campaign, it took longtime buddies Giuliani andTom Barrack to convince Trump to stop his attacks on the Gold Star Khan family.
The same distancing is going on at the RNC.
Priebus’ response to Trump’s feud with the Khan family, for example, was to state on CNN: “I think this family should be off limits.”
And Tuesday, in response to a Huffington Post query about Trump’s statements questioning the legitimacy of the country’s elections, the committee suggested posing the question to Trump’s campaign, instead. “I would ask the campaign to clarify what they mean,” said RNC spokeswoman Lindsay Walters.
Trump’s post-convention bender has put his party leadership in a nearly impossible situation. For weeks before Cleveland, Republican National Committee officials pushed the idea that Trump would unify the party at the convention and come out ready to take on Clinton.
But after a rocky convention that included a prime-time speech from a rival who refused to endorse Trump and his own wife’s plagiarized remarks, party officials were privately explaining the difficulties in dealing with their nominee.
Trump does not take well to criticism, one official said, so any critique has to be prefaced with lavish praise ― as if dealing with a child.
One RNC member told The Huffington Post on condition of anonymity that Priebus routinely tells members that he frequently must “talk Trump down from a ledge,” and that the campaign would be in even worse shape if he didn’t.
Another RNC member could only offer: “What do you want us to say?”
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