Oppositional-Deffiance

 

THE BULLSHITTER

Trump often talks shit, which is to say, he makes unflattering comments about a person. He's a prolific and colourful insulter (e.g., "loser," "low energy" [said of poor Jeb Bush, incessantly], "little Marco" [who now may bear the epithet for life])." No less important, and perhaps equally insulting, he also often talks shit, which is to say, his speech product is messy and unrefined. It isn't carefully crafted, with attentive (or any) concern for detail. It's the very opposite of speechcraft, as part of statecraft. In his words, Trump experiences a certain laxity.?

Trump is a particular sort of ass-clown showman. He's a major bullshitter, in the philosopher Harry Frankfurt's definition : someone who speaks without regard for the truth.

*$ What he says is sometimes true. When it isn't, he often cares not, since that wasn't the point of his speaking in the first place. He's not deliberately asserting what he knows to be false, hoping to get others to believe what he knows is not true.

He often just doesn't care, per se, about what is true and what is not. For the showman, all is pretence for entertainment rather than for deception, and, in the case of Trump, for elevating himself as the entertainer — and eventual Entertainer in Chief.

Being a bullshitter, or one who produces much bullshit, is essentially tied, in a speaker, with a certain state of mind. As philosopher G. A. Cohen explains, "The bull, conceptually speaking, wears the trousers : bullshit is bullshit because it was produced by a bullshitter, or, at any rate, by someone who was bullshitting at the time."

" So Frankfurt gives the example of a Fourth of July orator who goes on bombastically about "our great and blessed country, whose Founding Fathers under divine guidance created a new beginning for mankind." This is "humbug" and/or bullshit.

But the orator isn't lying about what he thinks is true. As Frankfurt explains, "What makes the Fourth of July oration humbug is not fundamentally that the speaker regards his statement as false. Rather..the orator intends these statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He's not trying to deceive anyone concerning American history."" 10

Men in the white working class tend to practice the "bull session," a gathering at which one or more of them hold forth about politics, the old days, or the failings of the president. As Frankfurt explains, "The participants try out various thoughts and attitudes in order to see how it feels to hear themselves saying such things and in order to discover how others respond, without it being assumed that they are committed to what they say." Here there's no pretense of truth telling. "The main point is to make possible a high level of candour and an experimental or adventuresome approach to the subjects under discussion."'' So each participant could walk away nodding, so as to compliment the performance, but needn't have agreed with all or any of it. Maybe they really did agree, or maybe not. The point was just to reassure everyone that the proper authority still has its voice.

This authority performance isn't completely different from the professor's impromptu mini-lecture. A professor (such as myself) holds forth on a topic for longer than the ordinary flow of conversation permits, which others (e.g., my loved ones) must then sit through ("Oh man, here he goes again"). The goal of speaking is some sort of authoritative pronouncement on whether Wittgenstein's so-called "pri-vate language argument" is, or is not, really an argument, or some such. This is irritating to those who did not sign up for a lecture. Yet the goal is truth telling and not bullshit. The professorial speaker is sincerely hoping to represent both the truth and what he or she really believes. "

Which is not to say there aren't real standards for a good or bad bull session performance. Merely spouting "hot air" won't cut it; you've got to say something good and authoritative sounding about the president or the legislature or the old days.

Trump is especially admirable in this respect (his fans proclaim, "I was just saying that same shit yesterday!"). He has an uncanny instinct for giving voice to the vox populi, or at least that of a sizable segment of the populus (at least leaving aside younger people). Indeed, the master bullshitter can be so good at bullshitting that, like the banker who invests in his own Ponzi scheme, he may well believe the shit he's saying, at least for the moment. He's so good that he eats it, with gusto and con-viction, for the sake of dramatic performance. Trump is a master ass-clown entertainer because he seems oblivious to the difference between talking shit and talking carefully, with steady regard for the truth.

As in the Jackass series, this is a courageous kind of performance, and, for many, it shows the kind of bravado we need in government. Those politicians, as some put it, they think their shit don't stink. But not Trump—he's right there in it, neck deep, but still rich, golden brown, and pink faced and therefore not too good for us. He's not a total bullshitter, because he really does think doing better "deals" would cure many of our problems. And if zero-sum bargaining mostly isn't the solution, because policy for the general good isn't much like real estate, he's at least sincerely mistaken.

Sure, he also bullshits like crazy, but it is his bullshit, and we all know this and so don't feel we're being had. Ultimately, he's both courageous and relatable, and in his own way glamorous, at center stage of his own carnival. And so he gets richer (it's his brand) while distinguishing himself as one of our great showmen.

*13 Even Kanye

West, another enormous ass-clown/asshole entertainer, isn't quite as good at it. 14

This can look like lying, as though Trump is the con man who shades the truth and then "gaslights" when called out. As journalist Nicole Hemmer explains,

Trump is a toxic blend of Barnum and bully. If you're a good mark, he's your best friend. But if you catch on to the con, then he starts to gaslight. Ask him a question and he'll lie without batting an eye. Call him a liar and he'll declare himself "truthful to a fault." Confront him with contradictory evidence and he'll shrug and repeat the fib. Maybe he'll change the subject. But he'll never change the lie."15

She nails the asshole tactics, which work by inducing self-doubt. Call him out, and he'll double down on a false assertion or switch and deny he ever said differently, all with supreme confidence that weakens the cooperative person's sense of credibility.

Did I perhaps not hear correctly? Could he have meant something different? Maybe he'll snap back quickly, upping the intensity, in order to intimidate with bluster. Yet the liar or con man knows what he's saying isn't true. Trump often isn't that careful.

The bullshitter doesn't necessarily care about truth, about tracking it carefully. "16 Trump isn't necessarily good with facts (see: conspiracy theories, Obama's place of birth, "celebrating" Muslims in Jersey City). To Bill O'Reilly, when asked about plainly false figures concerning blacks and homicides, he replied, "Bill, am I going to check every statistic?" And he plainly stated to Chuck Todd on Meet the Press, "All I know is what's on the Internet." Yet even there he latches on to the bad information.

For his driving concern is not responding to reality but winning, in a winning perfor-mance.

THE WINNER

Vladimir Putin, another master of multiple self-presentation,"' reportedly said, "T'm sure corruption in Chechnya is minimal." When he announced this, I'm sure those in the room nodded and said, "Da, I guess the corruption in Chechnya is minimal." Everyone in the room would thereafter avow this as true, with confident nodding, knowing that everyone else in the room would avow it as true, even if no one in fact believed it. There's thus such a thing as collective bullshitting (a.k.a. ideology). 18

At a bad comedy show, a heckler will sometimes feel the need to yell "You suck!" so as to disrupt the pretense that the jokes are of acceptable quality. Let it be known that we are NOT going to act as if we all think this might be funny when it just isn't.

The heckler might do this for love of comedy.

In the GOP collective bull session, Trump disrupted the party by being a truth tell-er. It was refreshing to hear truths stated plainly-about Iraq, progressive taxation, the problems of money corruption- despite "conservative" political correctness and groupthink, which won't allow you to say things such as: "George W. Bush was president during 9/11." For, if that were true, it would also be true that he did not "keep us safe" from terrorism. And, as they might say, "That's not what we should be saying," for reasons of power, quite aside from the truth of the matter.

Such a flagrant disregard for truth displays contempt for the citizenry of a republican democracy. But, as Putin suggests, it works nicely for power's purposes. The impulse to destroy what displays contempt, to throw caution to the wind, explains why so many wish to take their chances on breaking up the Republican political establishment. To his supporters, Trump offers hope of either taking over the GOP or blowing it up for something better.

Not that Trump appears to care deeply about truth or love democracy. He merely took over the bull session and won the contest. Now he runs it, having proven his dominance.

This is the tough guy who skipped the war in Vietnam because of an alleged bone spur in his foot-the same ailment that didn't stop Joe DiMaggio from playing a pretty good game of baseball. For a time, the GOP establishment really was scared of him, and it came late to challenge him for fear of his usual scathing Twitter retalia-tion, splashed through the media the next morning, probably with some colorful insult, which millions would be repeating with a chuckle. For Trump is an insult ace, no doubt about it. The quick, disproportional comeback, vague enough not to be easily answered ("low energy") but nevertheless funny ("low energy"). But why do insults that stick count as a win with the GOP audience? How are he and his audi ence simpatico in their scorekeeping? According to linguist George Lakoff, the contest primes the "strict father model" of morality.""' In a world governed by personal responsibility and discipline, those who win deserve to win. But electoral competition is a contest. So "insults that stick are seen as victories-deserved victories." "In strict conservative eyes, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who deserves to be a winning candidate." Winners win—and so Donald Trump is a political winner.

SPOILING THE PARTY

An ass-clown at a mellow party would not be seen as an asshole for changing the tone by staging an amusing performance, e.g., by dancing on a table with his pants on his head. This could be a perfectly good contribution to a party (unlike the asshole who picks a loud fight or urinates on the sofa).

The asshole/ass-clown uses his ass-clown powers for asshole purposes. He soils or sours or degrades the party for reasons of his own entitlement (e.g., being entitled to the absolute center of attention, on account of being rich, or beautiful-in case there's a difference). He stages an entertaining spectacle, dancing on a table with his pants on his head, and then urinates on the carpet when people aren't paying enough attention to him.

Although Trump's party behavior is surely more decorous, he can be just as oblivi-ous, a quality shared by both the mere ass-clown and the asshole. So he's not a cyni-cal, scheming manipulator (as Cruz is, albeit with religious rationalization). But Trump is still trying to win in politics for reasons of self-aggrandizement. Apparently Trump's bid for the presidency began with his ribbing at the White House Correspondents' Association's dinner in April 2011, at which President Obama lampooned his taste in gaudy décor, his obsession with false rumors, and his reality TV show. He quipped that Trump was flirting with his own presidential bid (the joke being that we all know he couldn't swing it). Trump, badly stung, began a furious quest to gain stature in the political world and, amazingly, finally did. "A lot of people have laughed at me over the years," he later explained in a speech. "Now, they're not laughing so much." 20

Never has a man had a more raging case of what Rousseau called "inflamed amour-propre," which is to say, a concern for how one appears in the eyes of others and, in particular, a relentless need to be seen as superior. (He's a flaming asshole, an asshole on fire, if you will.)2' If this sounds simplistic, one shouldn't underestimate its power to motivate a person. For Rousseau, and for Freud, it is nothing less than the ultimate source of human unhappiness, the ills of civilization, and the ruin of politics. And if civilization was supposed to contain and mitigate these sorts of feel-ings, no one, no matter how sophisticated, no matter how sane and judicious, knows quite how to manage Trump effectively. (Historically, where civilization fails, war is the management strategy.)