This is an essay I wrote about the Harry G. Frankfurt essay “On Bullshit.” Read that first if you want context, or don’t if you just want to hear me go off slay queen.
In his essay, “On Bullshit,” Frankfurt calls attention to the nebulous yet pervasive practice of bullshit, attempting to pin down its form and function. The essay employs unintelligibly academic structure and diction to both explain and exemplify the feigned intelligence that defines bullshit. He also gives commonplace examples of bullshitting and contrasts it to similar concepts such as lying. For instance, where lying is an intentional discrepancy from the truth, bullshit completely disregards it. Furthermore, and perhaps as a result, the bullshitter becomes an advocate of the false reality that they construct.
One of the key characteristics of bullshit is an unfounded and mindless assertion of expertise. Frankfurt first exemplifies this in the story of Fania Pascal, in which she is chided for stating she feels “just like a dog that has been run over,” without understanding this feeling fully. Although she can assume what it would feel like, “bad,” it would be impossible for her to know the exact nature of such an experience; yet she speaks with authority. This is not an intentional deception. It is too obviously impossible to be considered a genuine attempt at such, but it is an exaggeration made “without any regard for how things really are.” This disregard for the truth is the mindlessness quintessential to bullshit. She pretends to know the experience of a run-over dog so that she may illustrate the “undesirable and enjoyable feeling” she has, one that she believes to be similar to getting run-over, if only in the vaguest sense. The actual breadth of her knowledge does not matter as long as she can convey her pain. Her lack of knowledge is quite apparent, though its triviality renders it inconsequential. In some cases, the bullshitter may try to distract their audience from this lack, gilding their bullshit to mask its inadequacies.
To illustrate the obfuscation characteristic of bullshit, Frankfurt pads his writing with an academic structure and obtuse language, making the essay itself bullshit. The title, “On Bullshit,” parodies the most abstract form of philosophic essays such as St. Augustine’s “On Free Choice of the Will.” He places such an academic form on a vulgar topic to create a disconnect, signaling the irony of his essay. On the first page, he has the nearly unreadable sentence “The phenomenon itself is so vast and amorphous that no crisp and perspicuous analysis of its concept can avoid being procrustean,” a statement that can only reasonably be interpreted with the use of a dictionary. Such overtly pretentious diction caricatures academic bullshit and the bullshitter’s tendency to substitute intelligence with a thesaurus. In the same sentence, he shows himself to be the same type of bullshitter, arguing that any definition placed on the word would be overly-rigid, rendering his task of finding a complete definition impossible. As such, he could not possibly have a complete knowledge of bullshit, so by his own definition, the stated purpose of his essay is bullshit.
Frankfurt argues that a liar works around the truth, whereas a bullshitter constructs a world in which their bullshit is the truth. Frankfurt defines a liar as “someone who deliberately promulgates a falsehood,” seeking to convince the audience of what the liar knows to be false. Conversely “[t]he bullshitter may not deceive us, or even intend to do so.” They only care if the statement, when taken in isolation, is believed. To aid in this, the bullshit artist is “prepared to fake the context,” crafting a stage from which they may perform their bullshit, pulling props and scenery out of thin air. These pieces are not planned or set, as Frankfurt says they are “certainly not wrought,” but they are placed and fitted as they come about. The artist may design the pieces based on the world they have seen before, the world they believe they have seen before, or even the world they wish they had seen before. Any overlap with reality is a mere coincidence, and so are any discrepancies. The liar has the power to distort someone’s perception of reality, but the bullshitter can place them in a separate reality of their own construction. In this constructed world, the bullshitter becomes a righteous proponent of their false dogma in the eyes of their audience. The bullshitter does not purposefully misrepresent the world, for any damage done to the audience’s perception of reality is just collateral. The bullshitter primarily seeks to “misrepresent themsel[f] in a certain way,” to depict themself as an intellectual authority. When they write the story, they are learned, an expert, if not a prophet. In Frankfurt’s example of a Fourth of July speech, the orator pulls on an established line of bullshit: the American Mythos. Ingrained in us from the earliest stages of our public education, the American Mythos is one of the most elaborate and pervasive pieces of bullshit in our country, boasting numerous legends and its own pantheon including Ben Franklin, Paul Revere, Davy Crocket, etc. This long-established groundwork simplifies the orator’s job, so that they may call upon “our great and blessed country, whose Founding-Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind,” and so establish themself as truly American. The familiar diction and phrases recall something deeply rooted in the minds of the audience, telling them that this person cares for the country in the way every citizen must, the way I was taught long ago. In this case, the orator can hardly lay claim to the title of “bullshit artist,” painting themself as a patriot using a paint-by-number outline. In the fantasy world of the American Mythos, the orator portrays themself as one of the faithful, preaching what the audience believes to be true.
The example of the bullshit artist demonstrates the direct line from disregard for the truth to attempting to replace truth with one’s own creative BS. Arguably, Frankfurt’s concept of BS illuminates a facet of what some have called a post-truth era. In this era, the most powerful people in the nation gain their power by wholly replacing the truth with their constructed world, and so becoming the sole champion of a new “truth” for those they convince. This was evident in the Trump administration, as Kellyanne Conway said that Sean Spicer presented “alternative facts” about the size of the inauguration crowd. Her comment gives insight into one of the pivotal tactics of the administration: the construction of alternative truths, a grand performance. In this world, where Trump had the largest inauguration in history, where a pandemic was completely overblown, where the 2020 election was stolen by fraudulent votes, Trump and those who ride on his coattails are the only ones you can trust, your saviors. From this delusion spawns people like Q. Originating from the bowels of 4chan, Q has built their theory, QAnon, into an empire of conspiracy with the power to sway people to dangerous action. In the world of QAnon (which primarily exists in Facebook groups and other online circles) the most powerful people in the world, from Joe Biden to Oprah to the Pope, are all part of a satan-worshiping cabal. Q singled out Trump as the one to end this cabal and take righteous power. This belief was held by many of those at the January 6 coup. This action exemplifies the most dangerous and extreme consequences of bullshit.