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“Bull-Fight” (1897), Alexandre Lunois
We are surrounded by jerks. This much is obvious. They behave thoughtlessly at best, rudely in general, and cruelly far too often. They act as if no one and nothing matters but their own priorities. They drive poorly and park worse. Studies show a precipitous decline in conscientiousness, and it’s not just among cranky old farts like me — young people are awful, too. Hell is indeed other people, and those people are jerks.
Please notice: I am calling them jerks, not assholes. Not that there is much of a difference between the two. Assholes are jerks, jerks are assholes. What separates them is the insult. Asshole is, I think we can agree, vulgar — it is designed to offend. To call someone an asshole is to lob your anger at them, and while you may be right, and righteous, that anger, that term, can obscure your message with provocation. The asshole hears only “asshole.” And we all know how an asshole’s gonna react to that.
Which is why I like jerk. While it might once have been an insult, in today’s far less conscientious climate it’s practically neutral — a fair description of bad behavior. And because asshole is also so available, and so widely used, jerk takes on new weight. It’s a deliberate choice. It means more now than it once did. To call someone a jerk is to rein in the opportunity for abuse and instead to deploy what’s practically a clinical term. Will it make any difference to the assholes when you call them jerks? Probably not — they’re still assholes. But maybe, just maybe, not all of them are total assholes. Maybe some of them have just enough self-perspective to recognize that our use of the word jerk is well-considered and accurate, and that they have indeed been behaving like jerks. Maybe they’ll change, if only for a moment. I know I’ve acted like a jerk at times, and when I’ve realized it I’ve tried to be a little better. When I’ve been an asshole, however, I was an asshole all the way. Nothing was going to change that.
But I’m not here to talk about assholes, actually. I want to talk about bullshit.
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“Why is there so much bullshit?” the philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt asks in “On Bullshit,” the 1986 essay (which became a book in 2005) in which he attempted to understand what the term means, and how it differs from, say, lies or humbug. It’s a wonderful piece of writing, and I’m not just saying that because it name-checks Trying! favorites like Wittgenstein and Saint Augustine. Frankfurt is very careful in the way he picks apart what bullshit is, how it’s used, and who uses it — without ever offering his own affirmative definition of the word. But here’s the passage in which he best explains how bullshit works:
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.
This is the crux of the distinction between him and the liar. Both he and the liar represent themselves falsely as endeavoring to communicate the truth. The success of each depends upon deceiving us about that. But the fact about himself that the liar hides is that he is attempting to lead us away from a correct apprehension of reality; we are not to know that he wants us to believe something he supposes to be false. The fact about himself that the bullshitter hides, on the other hand, is that the truth-values of his statements are of no central interest to him; what we are not to understand is that his intention is neither to report the truth nor co conceal it. This does not mean that his speech is anarchically impulsive, but that the motive guiding and controlling it is unconcerned with how the things about which he speaks truly are.
It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.
To this I want to add: The bullshitter does not even care whether you believe him or not. Because it’s not about belief — it’s about acceptance. You can choose to accept the bullshit, and side with the bullshitter, for your own bullshit purposes, or you can reject it. But rejecting it does nothing to the bullshitter. Your rejection doesn’t hurt or offend him, because he has nothing at stake in the veracity, consistency, or persistence of his bullshit. The only thing that matters to the bullshitter is that enough people accept the bullshit for him to accomplish his goals, and for that reason the bullshit itself doesn’t matter in its particulars. It can change, it will change to suit the mood and the moment, until enough people buy it that the bullshitter has what he wants.
This is why bullshit is so effective. It ties itself to nothing — nothing real, nothing tangible, nothing reasonable, nothing that would even require honest faith. It is whatever the bullshitter needs it to be. The bullshitter, Frankfurt writes, “does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
So how do we fight bullshit? We can call it out:
Bullshit!
Not B.S. Not “bull.”
Bullshit!
We don’t call out “lies” or “liars.” Lies are disputable. Lies are a matter of analysis. Lies blend reality with intention. These are not lies.
Bullshit!
By calling it out, by naming it, we can sap its power. No one wants to be seen as buying bullshit. “Do you believe that bullshit?” “Fuck no!” Bullshitters are weak and sloppy, without even the courage of a single conviction. They’re not conmen — conmen need you to fool yourself into believing their lies. They’re not Machiavellian — there’s no discipline, no strategy, no brilliance. They are the lowest, the most contemptible, because their contempt for the truth is their contempt for us as well. Never bullshit a bullshitter — call them by their name.
Bullshit!
Democrat-run cities are festering hellholes of crime and violence.
Bullshit!
Immigrants drive crime, and we’re only deporting the criminals.
Bullshit!
Anti-racism is racism itself.
Bullshit!
Climate change is a hoax.
Bullshit!
But because bullshit is vulgar, we’re not supposed to say it in public or in “polite company” (whatever that means these days). Few news outlets will print it — here’s what may be its first appearance in the New York Times — and fewer TV and radio news programs will air it. And so instead they talk about lies, errors, misrepresentations, and “untruths,” all of which fail to describe accurately the bullshit and therefore do no damage.
I’m not arguing that bullshit isn’t vulgar. Because it is! It’s vulgar not just because bullshit is, in its plainest sense, a reference to a steaming pile of cow feces, but because its prevalence, its wild and wanton use by assholes with unlimited power, is itself a vulgar act upon the people of this world. To meet this vulgarity with another vulgarity is not just appropriate — it’s the only way to fight it.
Are there any politicians or public figures willing to call out the bullshit? Will anyone risk offending the easily offended? Find me the candidate who yells Bullshit! at the bullshitter, and I will vote for that candidate. I’m afraid you will be looking for a long, long time.
Until then, it will be up to us civilians to call bullshit until the rest of the mainstream world catches on and catches up. So say it with me now:
Crypto: Bullshit!
AI: Bullshit!
Capitalism: Bullshit!
Say it loud. Scream it with a smile. Say it when you see it, when you hear it, when you smell it. Bullshit! Bullshit! Bullshit!
Just one thing: Please, don’t be a jerk about it. 🪨🪨🪨
