On Bullshit; and Propaganda

You're fake news

Today's fake news and hoaxes have their roots in our propensity for bullshit.  Princeton philosophy professor Harry G. Frankfurt, in his critically acclaimed 2005 book, "On Bullshit", explains the distinction between bullshit vs lies.  Both liars and BSers want to convince you they're telling the truth, presumably because they want to get away with something.

The similarities end there, however.  Liars consciously engage in deception; they understand the truth but they try to hide it.  Whereas BSers do not consciously deceive, they just say things without regard for whether it's true or false; they don't know, and don't care, about the truth; in fact they see no substantive distinction between them.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without comfortable understanding of the substance.  Frankfurt believes Bullshit is more dangerous that lies, because it erodes the possibility of the truth being discovered.  People who lie, they lose credibility when the lies are exposed in the open.  Bullshitters rarely face such consequences; they sidestep the truth, because they see power and emotions as more real.  This is deeply problematic: without hard data and evidences (which are hardly ever 100% conclusive), when all problems are dealt with by hand-waving, society just cannot have constructive discussions and make sufficiently well-informed public policy decisions.

"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 bets are off … He 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 truth than lies are."

Which leads us to Donald Trump.

It's a culture war

POTUS45 bullshits endlessly, because as president in charge of a massive government apparatus, he is required to speak on topics much too complex for him, or even any one person, to fully grasp.  His favorite mannerism is the hyperbole: he characterizes everything as either "terrific" or "a disaster".  But when challenged with the truth, he never backs down; he either doubles down or waves it off.  On the offensive, his strategy is to set the framing ("failing New York Times", "Obama wiretapped Trump Tower", "Hillary is founder of ISIS"), repeat often, and lead others (his press team, members of congress, media) to further spread his accusations without consequence.

TRUMP: Edward Snowden has caused us tremendous problems. Edward Snowden has been, you know, you have the two views on Snowden, obviously: You have, he’s wonderful, and you have he’s horrible. I’m in the horrible category. He’s caused us tremendous problems with trust, with everything about, you know, when they’re showing, Merkel’s cellphone has been spied on, and are – Now, they’re doing it to us, and other countries certainly are doing it to us, and but what I think what he did, I think it was a tremendous, a tremendous disservice to the United States. I think and I think it’s amazing that we can’t get him back.  [March 26, 2016]

But why does he need to lie so much?  

The reason he lies is more sinister.  He's honed his salesmanship skills from his years as a real estate developer, public figure, and reality show entertainer.  In the past, he has had to portray an illusion of (obscene) wealth -- to creditors, to employees and suppliers, to TV producers and audience, and magazine tabloids.  Today as president, many say he is just gaslighting the public, distracting them from any questions on his legitimacy. This is credible but perhaps too specific; I am convinced that his ultimate goal is simply: (i) to stay (and get more) riches, and (ii) to stay (and get more) power.

Roger Money-Kyrle, the 20th century British psychoanalyst, wrote his seminal paper "The Psychology of Proganda" about the most charismatic and manipulative public speaker of his time: Adolf Hitler in the run-up to the 1933 election.

"After hearing Adolf Hitler speak, Money-Kyrle concluded that charismatic authoritarian leaders first elicit depression and despair in their audience, then paranoid terror of a deadly enemy, before finally offering salvation though a redemptive order that abjures reasoned discourse. Money-Kyrle thought that our anxieties make us vulnerable to this sort of rhetoric — anxieties that charismatic leaders exploit."

Facts don't matter

Fear is an important tool.  That's why bad leaders always seem to be in crises, even if they're crises of their own making.  It doesn't matter what is feared, or if it's even real.  Last year the lies conjured the terror of Muslim immigrants from war-torn Middle Eastern and African countries -- as if the United States' role in destabilizing that region has been forgotten.  Today, with ISIS defeated (has it really?), it's Latin American asylum seekers that are equated to MS-13 "animals", despite the fact that it was American deportation policy that allowed these violent gangs to proliferate in the first place.   Fear leads the people to a culture war, where the ballot box becomes a referendum on national security -- in spite of all evidence showing the actual positive benefits of immigration and diminishing magnitude of the situation itself.

In fact, there are multitudes of other real crises that, unfortunately, are much too complex to deliver in catchy one-liners:  trade war with China, actual wars in Syria and Yemen, insurgencies in Libya and Mali, and human rights violations in the Gaza strip, Xinjiang, Venezuela, and (of course) the Texas-Mexican border.

But facts don't matter anymore, because really, who has time for them in 2018?