I’m tired of hearing Trump called a liar.
He’s not.
To wit:
“Telling a lie is an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship, in which the teller of the lie submits to objective constraints imposed by what he takes to be the truth. The liar is inescapably concerned with truth-values. In order to invent a lie at all, he must think he knows what is true. And in order to invent an effective lie, he must design his falsehood under the guidance of that truth…
“….what bullshit essentially misrepresents is neither the state of affairs to which it refers nor the beliefs of the speaker concerning that state of affairs. Those are what lies misrepresent, by virtue of being false. Since bullshit need not be false, it differs from lies in its misrepresentational intent. The bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so, either about the facts or about what he takes the facts to be. What he does necessarily attempt to deceive us about is his enterprise. His only indispensably distinctive characteristic is that in a certain way he misrepresents what he is up to.” -Harry Frankfurt, “On Bullshit” Raritan Quarterly Review 6, no. 2 (Fall 1986
Trump is, then, the gold-standard of Bullshitting – that is to say that he is profoundly unconcerned with truth in any meaningful way: rather, he seeks to craft a narrative with the sole aim of serving his goal of scratching “U.S. President” off his bucket list, with no regard for consequences and casualties.
He has shown that he is absolutely willing to encourage the worst in people, when it suits his line of bullshit.
He doesn’t believe in anything, and so with utter disregard for the world, he bullshits. via Facebook
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