Line of Bullshit DOT COM

Martial Law Quietly Being Implemented in United States

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2008-09-28T16:29:32Z

The Mass Arrests in St. Paul, Minnesota were a warning sign for what is to come. If you didn't get to see this piece of spectacular footage you can view it HERE. You are not going to believe what you see between this article and the prior on the mass arrests.

The US Government isn't able to keep the American public in the dark much longer regarding the the looming credit bust, China refusing our debt, and the mass loss of homes across the nation that is displacing Americans everywhere. People will soon have nothing left to lose and that means the government will have a harder time keeping people under their thumb. Society is falling apart from both the bottom up and the top down. Parents are losing their children. Wealth is being stolen. People are being disarmed from within and the US Government knows there is a recipe for a storm brewing here in the United States as a result of a series of broken systems.

Neither political candidate, Obama or McCain, has solutions to return us back to Constitutional Law controlling our Government. The people... have all but forgotten that the Constitution is a restriction on the government and not themselves.

Enter the Age of US Occupation. Beginning in October the US Army will have an active unit inside our own borders, for the first time in history, to control "Civil Unrest, Crowds, and Unruly Individuals." If that isn't scary as hell, I don't know what is. Just last year you might remember the lack of debate of HR. 1955 (Homegrown Terrorism) and now this new US Army Occupation will be used to enforce HR. 1955 and ensure that the government is able to maintain a strangle-hold on the people.

Here is the original information regarding HR 1955. Put two and two together and you are seeing a recipe for suspension of Habeas Corpus and all of your other Constitutionally protected rights and liberties. There is something wrong in America folks, when our US Army is going to be able to operate at all times and at sole discretion of one branch of the government and outside the confines that the people have placed on their government through their Constitution.

Political campaigns might be squashed, peaceful protests and demonstrations like St Paul, Minnesota spawning mass quiet arrests, prove that you are being distracted from the truth. Through your silent consent the guarantees of your freedoms and liberties are being legislated away. Once you have no voice you can't object to anything.

Additional Articles:

Army deploys combat unit in US for possible civil unrest http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2008/09/25/18541231.php
Why is a U.S. Army brigade being assigned to the "Homeland"? http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/09/24/army/
Fascism Rears its Ugly Head http://www.gather.com/viewArticle.jsp?articleId=281474977459933

Bob Barr: Stop the Bill of Rights Black Out

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2008-09-25T04:35:00Z

Recently I was poking around on the Internet looking up some information about Bob Barr and his run for the Presidency. I ran across a YOUTube video for "Bob Barr 08" which had some of his testimony that he presented in a hearing to Congress about the slowly disappearing Bill of Rights. It was compelling. It starts off with "The Fourth Amendment has no application to domestic military operations" which was exposed under a confidential memo earlier this decade.

Help Stop the Bill of Rights Black Out

We need to stop the shredding of our Constitution before the only words that are left as as follows:

The Right of the People to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, shall be delegated to the United States... I don't want to see any more of our inalienable rights and liberties alienated!

YOUTUBE VIDEO: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2v5xFpnv4w

Mass Arrest: Labor Day Footage from Day One of Republican National Convention

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2008-09-22T04:58:55Z

This is incredible footage from the Twin Cities (St. Paul, Minnesota) which was day one of the Republican National Convention. The footage was acquired from an Alternet Blogger.

I couldn't even believe the bullshit of the peaceful people sitting in the park being converged upon by fully armed riot police with complete gear. Tear gas, Shields, Weapons. See for yourself the footage.

My personal favorite moment in the tape is an off-camera exchange. Police in riot gear have surrounded loungers in a waterfront park. They announce, "Ladies and Gentlemen, You're Under Arrest" and you hear one young woman say incredulously "Are you serious.

Here's the press release that came with the video, from the Glass Bead Collective:

BURIED TAPE REVEALS USE OF FORCE AND AN UNWARRANTED MASS ARREST OF BYSTANDERS DURING THE REPUBLICAN NATIONAL CONVENTION

ST. PAUL, Minnesota (September 18, 2008) Video released today shows the indiscriminate arrest of a crowd of two hundred at the waterfront across from a concert on Harriet Island Regional Park during this month's Republican National Convention in St. Paul. The video includes multiple angles of the event as well as an interview with the cameraman who buried his footage and was one of almost two hundred people arrested for rioting without probable cause.

A State That Has Extremely High Unemployment: Bring in the Immigrants

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-02-27T03:33:17Z

"Venga a Michigan" - Not on My Dime!

In response to Jennifer Granholm's plan to bring in more immigrant workers at the expense of State residents: "no en mi moneda de diez centavos" - Not on my dime, Jennifer Granholm.

According to SperoForum.Com, also confirmed by the Columbus Dispatch, Jennifer Granholm wants to bring in more migrant workers to Michigan, marketing this State's social services programs and benefits to encourage them to come to Michigan. Michigan papers were busy covering how our Governor wants to raise our taxes and must have overlooked Granholm's "other plans" to finish converting the residents to welfare programs under her control.

“Venga a Michigan” (which means “Come to Michigan”) is the official program that intends to fill in the migrant labor shortage in 2006 in Michigan. Officials from the state Department of Labor and Economic Growth visited sites in Texas last week where jobs are scarce for members of the Hispanic community.
The officials showed a video in Spanish to prospective laborers that touted the jobs, housing, education and health services available to them in Michigan. Michigan officials met with some 500 families during their visit to Texas.

In a State that certainly has no shortage of available labor and where jobless claims rose to 357,000 last week according to an article entitled Michigan and Virginia lead nation in jobless claims increases (Detroit News 2-15-2007) why is Michigan's Governor recruiting Texas Migrants to come work in our State and join the State's Social Welfare programs? Bear in mind that its not like our agricultural companies can just up and move out like the rest of the State's employers, why not encourage recruitment of our State's unemployed for stable seasonal employment?

This State already has a 1 in 9 Food Assistance Program, where the State is justifying that there are even more people that qualify who haven't applied. Is it the goal of our State to truely become a "Welfare State?"

I guess it is really easy to see how we are getting such a high deficit when our government continually encourages free for all welfare spending on programs for migrant workers and other groups that shouldn't even qualify for services, while offering to raise taxes for the rest that have the few remaining stable jobs in the State. I only have this to say: "Not on my dime Jennifer Granholm."

Lary Holland is a guest editor at MichiganDemocrat.Net and operates a website at http://www.laryholland.com.

U.S. Warns About Canadian Spy Coins

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-02-12T03:47:17Z

Now this definitely tops the bullshit scale. It was probably U.S. technology contractors that sold the coins to the Canadians in the first place.

U.S. Defense Workers Warned About Canadian Spy Coins With Tiny Radio Frequency Transmitters

By TED BRIDIS

The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Money talks, but can it also follow your movements?

In a U.S. government warning high on the creepiness scale, the Defense Department cautioned its American contractors over what it described as a new espionage threat: Canadian coins with tiny radio frequency transmitters hidden inside.

The government said the mysterious coins were found planted on U.S. contractors with classified security clearances on at least three separate occasions between October 2005 and January 2006 as the contractors traveled through Canada.

Intelligence and technology experts said such transmitters, if they exist, could be used to surreptitiously track the movements of people carrying the spy coins.

The U.S. report doesn't suggest who might be tracking American defense contractors or why. It also doesn't describe how the Pentagon discovered the ruse, how the transmitters might function or even which Canadian currency contained them.

Further details were secret, according to the U.S. Defense Security Service, which issued the warning to the Pentagon's classified contractors. The government insists the incidents happened, and the risk was genuine.

"What's in the report is true," said Martha Deutscher, a spokeswoman for the security service. "This is indeed a sanitized version, which leaves a lot of questions."

Top suspects, according to outside experts: China, Russia or even France all said to actively run espionage operations inside Canada with enough sophistication to produce such technology.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service said it knew nothing about the coins.

"This issue has just come to our attention," CSIS spokeswoman Barbara Campion said. "At this point, we don't know of any basis for these claims." She said Canada's intelligence service works closely with its U.S. counterparts and will seek more information if necessary.

Experts were astonished about the disclosure and the novel tracking technique, but they rejected suggestions Canada's government might be spying on American contractors. The intelligence services of the two countries are extraordinarily close and routinely share sensitive secrets.

"It would seem unthinkable," said David Harris, former chief of strategic planning for the Canadian Security Intelligence Service. "I wouldn't expect to see any offensive operation against the Americans."

Harris said likely candidates include foreign spies who targeted Americans abroad or businesses engaged in corporate espionage. "There are certainly a lot of mysterious aspects to this," Harris said.

Experts said such tiny transmitters would almost certainly have limited range to communicate with sensors no more than a few feet away, such as ones hidden inside a doorway. The metal in the coins also could interfere with any signals emitted.

"I'm not aware of any (transmitter) that would fit inside a coin and broadcast for kilometers," said Katherine Albrecht, an activist who believes such technology carries serious privacy risks. "Whoever did this obviously has access to some pretty advanced technology."

Experts said hiding tracking technology inside coins is fraught with risks because the spy's target might inadvertently give away the coin or spend it buying coffee or a newspaper. They agreed, however, that a coin with a hidden tracking device might not arouse suspicion if it were discovered in a pocket or briefcase.

"It wouldn't seem to be the best place to put something like that; you'd want to put it in something that wouldn't be left behind or spent," said Jeff Richelson, a researcher and author of books about the CIA and its gadgets. "It doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense."

Canada's largest coins include its $2 "Toonie," which is more than 1-inch across and thick enough to hide a tiny transmitter. The CIA has acknowledged its own spies have used hollow, U.S. silver-dollar coins to hide messages and film.

The government's 29-page report was filled with other espionage warnings. It described unrelated hacker attacks, eavesdropping with miniature pen recorders and the case of a female foreign spy who seduced her American boyfriend to steal his computer passwords.

In another case, a film processing company called the FBI after it developed pictures for a contractor that contained classified images of U.S. satellites and their blueprints. The photo was taken from an adjoining office window.

On the Web:

CIA hollow coin: https://http://www.cia.gov/cia/information/artifacts/dollar.htm

The Nationwide Identification Card: State's take a stand against bullshit.

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-02-05T13:46:58Z

Now this is one power that I am happy that the State is taking a stand against. I don't want to have to have the equivalent of a domestic passport to get from state to state. Do you?

States Challenge Nat'l Driver's License

By LESLIE MILLER

WASHINGTON (AP) - A revolt against a national driver's license, begun
in Maine last month, is quickly spreading to other states.

The Maine Legislature on Jan. 26 overwhelmingly passed a resolution
objecting to the Real ID Act of 2005. The federal law sets a national
standard for driver's licenses and requires states to link their
record-keeping systems to national databases.

Within a week of Maine's action, lawmakers in Georgia, Wyoming,
Montana, New Mexico, Vermont and Washington state also balked at Real ID. They
are expected soon to pass laws or adopt resolutions declining to
participate in the federal identification network.

"It's the whole privacy thing," said Matt Sundeen, a transportation
analyst for the National Conference of State Legislatures. "A lot of
legislators are concerned about privacy issues and the cost. It's an
estimated $11 billion implementation cost."

The law's supporters say it is needed to prevent terrorists and illegal
immigrants from getting fake identification cards.

States will have to comply by May 2008. If they do not, driver's
licenses that fall short of Real ID's standards cannot be used to board an
airplane or enter a federal building or open some bank accounts.

About a dozen states have active legislation against Real ID, including
Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Massachusetts, Missouri, New Hampshire,
Oklahoma, Utah and Wyoming.

Missouri state Rep. James Guest, a Republican, formed a coalition of
lawmakers from 34 states to file bills that oppose or protest Real ID.

"This is almost a frontal assault on the freedoms of America when they
require us to carry a national ID to monitor where we are," Guest said
in an interview Saturday. "That's going too far."

Guest a resolution last week opposing Real ID and said he expects it
quickly to pass the Legislature. "This does nothing to stop terrorism,"
he said. "Don't burden the American people with this requirement to
carry this ID."

Though most states oppose the law, some such as Indiana and Maryland
are looking to comply with Real ID, Sundeen said.

The issue may be moot for states if Congress takes action.

Republican Sen. John Sununu of New Hampshire, along with Democratic
Sen. Daniel Akaka of Hawaii, filed a bill last year to repeal the law.
Sununu expects similar legislation will be introduced soon.

"The federal government should not be in charge of defining and issuing
drivers' licenses," Sununu said in a statement.

Privacy advocates say a national driver's license will promote identity
theft.

Barry Steinhardt, a lawyer with the American Civil Liberties Union,
said the Real ID ordered by Congress would require a digital photo and
probably a fingerprint on each driver's license or state-issued ID card.
That, he said, will make it more valuable to identity thieves because
the ID card will be accepted as much more than a driving credential.

"It's going to be a honey pot out there that's going to be irresistible
to identity thieves," Steinhardt said.

An identity thief, he said, could buy a Real ID from a rogue motor
vehicle department employee with is own photo and fingerprint on it.

"The victim is never going to be able to undo this," Steinhardt said.

Other criticisms include:

_Some states will have to invest millions in new computer systems that
can communicate with federal databases. That is something they probably
will not accomplish by the deadline.

_It will be difficult to comply with the requirement that license
applicants prove they are in the country legally. There are more than 100
different immigration statutes, Steinhardt said, which will pose problems
for motor vehicle clerks unfamiliar with immigration law.

_It does not solve the problem of terrorism. Oklahoma City bomber
Timothy McVeigh and some of the hijackers from the attacks of Sept. 11,
2001, had legitimate driver's licenses.

_Even the requirement that applicants' full legal names appear on
licenses will pose problems because some states limit the number of
characters on the face of the card.

Mental Health Screening: New Liberal Tool for Child-Control

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-01-31T01:53:05Z

Mental Health Screening: New Liberal Tool for Child-Control
by Phyllis Schlafly
Jan 30, 2007

Mental health screening of all children is the goal of legislation introduced into many state legislatures this year. Typical of these highly controversial bills is the Missouri bill that would require every Missouri school district, in collaboration with "the office of comprehensive child mental health," to develop "a policy of incorporating social and emotional development into the district's educational program."

The Missouri bill requires schools to "address teaching and assessing social and emotional skills and protocols for responding to children with social, emotional or mental health problems." The bill also requires the Missouri state board of education to set "social and emotional development standards."

One marvels at the arrogance of government officials who think they can set children's social and emotional standards. Where on the chart would they place a child crying because he fell and skinned his knee?

Cortland County, New York, has already announced a plan to annually screen every fifth-grader and ninth-grader for mental health problems. The purpose, according to the county director of youth services, is "to raise awareness that mental health issues are in essence no different than other physical issues, such as heart disease." Apparently, you are not "aware" if you think otherwise.

The screening process, which takes 15 minutes, involves getting the kids to answer a series of yes-or-no questions, on either computer or paper. It is claimed that parental permission will be necessary, but all children of any age in foster care will automatically be screened.

Mental health screening is based on the assumption that ten percent of children suffer from a mental disorder severe enough to cause impairment, and that five percent of children have emotional or behavior difficulties that interfere with learning, friendships and family life.

Cortland County plans to refer the ten percent to the county mental health clinic or other providers for further evaluation, and it is well known that referrals often result in orders for drug therapy. The clinic will be rewarded with $50 of taxpayers' money for every child sent to the clinic.

Parents are starting to wake up to this invasion of their authority over the care and upbringing of their own children. A bill that would prohibit school personnel from making mental health recommendations or requirements for children, including the use of psychotropic medications, just passed out of a committee of the Utah legislature.

This bill would also prohibit schools from requiring a student to take psychiatric medication in order to attend school and prohibit the state from removing a child from parental custody based on a parent's refusal to consent to the administration of psychotropic medication.

A bill introduced into the Connecticut legislature is more specific. It would require that all parents who are requested by the school to have their child evaluated be first provided with a statement that the government does not recommend any particular checklist, assessment or evaluation for psychiatric or psychological disorders, plus a copy of the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment (the federal law that requires prior written parental consent before schools can require students to submit to psychological or psychiatric testing or treatment).

Last year, Alaska enacted a law forbidding schools from conducting psychiatric or behavioral health evaluations and from requiring that a child take a psychotropic drug as a condition for attending a public school. Also last year, Arizona passed a law requiring that schools obtain written parental consent before conducting any mental health screening on any pupil and must make the actual survey questions available for inspection by parents.

Someone should notify state legislators and school districts that are contemplating mental health screening requirements that the American Psychological Association recently urged that "in most cases" of childhood mental disorders, non-drug treatment should "be considered first." This should include techniques that focus on parenting skills as well as help from teachers.

Even the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, an organization whose members strongly favor drug treatment, just completed new guidelines recommending that children receive talk therapy before being given drugs for the common complaint of moderate depression.

Parents should take on the responsibility of being parents, and they should beware of the psychotropic drugs that have unfortunate or even tragic side effects. Parents should help to pass pro-parent legislation before those who think the "village" should raise all children use mental health screening to label their child as nuts.

Mrs. Schlafly is the author of the new book The Supremacists: The Tyranny of Judges and How to Stop It (Spence Publishing Co). http://www.petition online.com/ TScreen/petition .html

Petition: Stop TeenScreen's Unscientific and Experimental "Mental Health Screening" of American School Children

Psychiatry Gone Wild: TeenScreen Documents Exposed.

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-01-31T01:43:25Z

The goal of TeenScreen, the very controversial child screening program, is to do a mental suicide screening of every U.S. child before they graduate from high school. According to their website, they utilize screening instruments called the Diagnostic Predictive Scales (DPS) and the Columbia Health Screen (CHS).

Children as young as 9 years old are asked to answer the DPS or CHS questions. Afterwards, summary forms are then filled out by a clinician. TeenScreen's high false positive rate has many schools and parents alarmed that normal children will be labeled with mental disorders. For example the San Francisco Chronicle has just reported that "Local public schools have resisted TeenScreen. San Francisco Unified School District, for example, passed on TeenScreen because it can generate false positives and drain counseling resources. Other critics worry TeenScreen could send kids unnecessarily into treatment and land too many on psychiatric drugs."

Certainly pharmaceutical companies will benefit from mass screening of our children.

Below you can find links to all 4 documents: The DPS, DPS Summary Form, the CHS and the CHS Summary Form

The documents are being made available for educational purposes, to advance understanding of the ramifications of mass mental screening as related to human rights, scientific, moral, ethical, and social justice issues. This material is distributed without profit.

The Washington Post reported in an article entitled Suicide-Risk Tests for Teens Debated on June 16, 2006. "Shaffer said the screening test he developed is now in the public domain".

Shaffer, is the psychiatrist who invented TeenScreen.

Anti TeenScreen petition

Video on TeenScreen Controversy

FILES:

The Future of Food - Exposes the Bullshit About Genetically Altered Food.

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-01-30T02:50:49Z

This movie exposes the bullshit that has occurred over the past decades involving the world's food supply. Genetically altered food supplies have been patented and subsequently cross-bread with regular food sources and used as a means to put natural farmers out of business. This movie exposes a plethora of bullshit and should be watched by everyone to understand just what is being placed into our bodies without our knowledge!

The Future of Food offers an in-depth investigation into the disturbing truth behind the unlabeled, patented, genetically engineered foods that have quietly filled grocery store shelves for the past decade

Former Michigan Friend of the Court Employee Exposes Bullshit

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-01-29T03:51:15Z

A former Michigan Friend of the Court employee has taken the time to expose some of the bullshit that is happening in Michigan's Family Court system. Not only does she expose the conflict of interest of the courts making money from your children, but she discusses her book: Friend of the Court Enemy of the Family. Thanks goes out to Carol Rhodes and Robert Pedersen for exposing a ton of bullshit that is happening in Michigan's Family Court system!

http://www.fightfoc.com/serendipity/archives/301-Former-Friend-of-the-Court-Employee-Spills-the-Beans.html

Title IV-D Programs and Related matters are funded through the Federal Social Security Act and apparently cause alot of bullshit to occur in Michigan and other states by paying the courts for each child support order and non-custodial parent that they create to the demise of one parent. It's a hell of a burden on our taxpayers because it really is a free for all welfare spending program according to various scholars throughout the country.

Write your legislature and elected county, state, and federal officials and let them know you are tired of the bullshit!

Other Resources:

Overview of Title IV-D Services: Click Here
How Federal Funding Drives Judicial Discretion... Click Here
Requesting Change: It's a Matter of Administration and Legislation: Click Here
The Weekly Standard Indicts CSE Title IV-D Welfare Program: Click Here
Will Democrats Actually Reduce Our Deficit? Click Here

The Definition of Bullshit.

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-01-29T01:26:29Z

Dictionary.Com has a great definition of the term bullshit. For all intensive purposes I enjoy demonstrating the several exaggerations, multitude of media lies, and political nonsense that is used to manipulate the public into liberal welfare policies and diminished freedoms.

bull·shit /?b?l???t/ Pronunciation Key - Show Spelled Pronunciation[bool-shit] Pronunciation Key - Show IPA Pronunciation noun, verb, -shit·ted or -shit, -shit·ting, interjection Slang: Vulgar.
–noun 1. nonsense, lies, or exaggeration.
–verb (used with object) 2. to lie or exaggerate to.
–verb (used without object) 3. to speak lies or nonsense.
–interjection 4. (used esp. to express disagreement.)

I also have preserved a copy of Harry Frankfurts essay On Bullshit I doubt anyone will take the time to read the essay in its entirety as it is presented but I found it an appropriate first post to the blog exposing lines of bullshit. I am looking forward to readers submitting their views on the various lines of bullshit they are fed daily by media and politicians.

Harry Frankfurts Essay "On Bullshit" Preserved In Its Entirety.

nospam@example.com (Lary Holland) — 2007-01-28T21:36:00Z

Harry Frankfurt

Princeton University

One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so
much bullshit. Everyone knows this. Each of us contributes his share.
But we tend to take the situation for granted. Most people are rather
confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being
taken in by it. So the phenomenon has not aroused much deliberate
concern, or attracted much sustained inquiry. In consequence, we have
no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it,
or what functions it serves. And we lack a conscientiously developed
appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, we have no theory.
I propose to begin the development of a theoretical understanding of
bullshit, mainly by providing some tentative and exploratory
philosophical analysis. I shall not consider the rhetorical uses and
misuses of bullshit. My aim is simply to give a rough account of what
bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not, or (putting it
somewhat differently) to articulate, more or less sketchily, the
structure of its concept. Any suggestion about what conditions are
logically both necessary and sufficient for the constitution of
bullshit is bound to be somewhat arbitrary. For one thing, the
expression bullshit is often employed quite loosely —
simply as a generic term of abuse, with no very specific literal
meaning. For another, the phenomenon itself is so vast and amorphous
that no crisp and perspicuous analysis of its concept can avoid being
procrustean. Nonetheless it should be possible to say something
helpful, even though it is not likely to be decisive. Even the most
basic and preliminary questions about bullshit remain, after all, not
only unanswered but unasked. So far as I am aware, very little work has
been done on this subject. I have not undertaken a survey of the
literature, partly because I do not know how to go about it. To be
sure, there is one quite obvious place to look — the Oxford
English Dictionary. The OED has an entry for
bullshit in the supplementary volumes, and it also has entries
for various pertinent uses of the word bull and for some
related terms. I shall consider some of these entries in due course. I
have not consulted dictionaries in languages other than English,
because I do not know the words for bullshit or bull in any other
language.

Another worthwhile source is the title essay in The Prevalence
of Humbug by Max Black. I am uncertain just how close in meaning
the word humbug is to the word bullshit. Of course, the words
are not freely and fully interchangeable; it is clear that they are
used differently. But the difference appears on the whole to have more
to do with considerations of gentility, and certain other rhetorical
parameters, than with the strictly literal modes of significance that
concern me most. It is more polite, as well as less intense, to say
“Humbug!” than to say “Bullshit!” For the sake
of this discussion, I shall assume that there is no other important
difference between the two, Black suggests a number of synonyms for
humbug, including the following: “balderdash”,
“claptrap”, “hokum”, “drivel”,
“buncombe”, “imposture”, and
“quackery”. This list of quaint equivalents is not very
helpful. But Black also confronts the problem of establishing the
nature of humbug more directly, and he offers the following formal
definition:

Humbug: deceptive misrepresentation, short of lying,
especially by pretentious word or deed, of somebody’s own
thoughts, feelings, or attitudes.

A very similar formulation might plausibly be offered as enunciating
the essential characteristics of bullshit. As a preliminary to
developing an independent account of those characteristics, I will
comment on the various elements of Black’s definition.

Deceptive misrepresentation: This may sound pleonastic. No
doubt what Black has in mind is that humbug is necessarily designed or
intended to deceive, that its misrepresentation is not merely
inadvertent. In other words, it is deliberate
misrepresentation. Now if, as a matter of conceptual necessity, an
intention to deceive is an invariable feature of humbug, then the
property of being humbug depends at least in part upon the
perpetrator’s state of mind. It cannot be identical, accordingly,
with any properties — either inherent or relational —
belonging just to the utterance by which the humbug is perpetrated. In
this respect, the property of being humbug is similar to that of being
a lie, which is identical neither with the falsity nor with any of the
other properties of the statement the liar makes, but which requires
that the liar makes his statement in a certain state of mind —
namely, with an intention to deceive. It is a further question whether
there are any features essential to humbug or to lying that are
not dependent upon the intentions and beliefs of the person
responsible for the humbug or the lie, or whether it is, on the
contrary, possible for any utterance whatsoever to be — given
that the speaker is in a certain state of mind — a vehicle of
humbug or of a lie. In some accounts of lying there is no lie unless a
false statement is made; in others a person may be lying even if the
statement he makes is true, as long as he himself believes that the
statement is false and intends by making it to deceive. What about
humbug and bullshit? May any utterance at all qualify as humbug or
bullshit, given that (so to speak) the utterer’s heart is in the
right place, or must the utterance have certain characteristics of its
own as well?

Short of lying: It must be part of the point of saying that
humbug is “short of lying,” that while it has some of the
distinguishing characteristics of lies, there are others that it lacks.
But this cannot be the whole point. After all, every use of language
without exception has some, but not all, of the characteristic features
of lies — if no other, then at least the feature simply of being
a use of language. Yet it would surely be incorrect to describe every
use of language as short of lying. Black’s phrase evokes the
notion of some sort of continuum, on which lying occupies a certain
segment while humbug is located exclusively at earlier points. What
continuum could this be, along which one encounters humbug only before
one encounters lying? Both lying and humbug are modes of
misrepresentation. It is not at first glance apparent, however, just
how the difference between these varieties of misrepresentation might
be construed as a difference in degree.

Especially by pretentious word or deed: There are two
points to notice here. First, Black identifies humbug not only as a
category of speech but as a category of action as well; it may be
accomplished either by words or by deeds. Second, his use of the
qualifier “especially” indicates that Black does not regard
pretentiousness as an essential or wholly indispensable characteristic
of humbug. Undoubtedly, much humbug is pretentious. So far as concerns
bullshit, moreover, “pretentious bullshit” is close to
being a stock phrase. But I am inclined to think that when bullshit is
pretentious, this happens because pretentiousness is its motive rather
than a constitutive element of its essence. The fact that a person is
behaving pretentiously is not, it seems to me, part of what is required
to make his utterance an instance of bullshit. It is often, to be sure,
what accounts for his making that utterance. However, it must not be
assumed that bullshit always and necessarily has pretentiousness as its
motive.

Misrepresentation … of somebody’s own thoughts,
feelings, or attitudes: This provision that the perpetrator of
humbug is essentially misrepresenting himself raises some very central
issues. To begin with, whenever a person deliberately misrepresents
anything, he must inevitably misrepresenting his own state of
mind. It is possible, of course, for a person to misrepresent that
alone — for instance, by pretending to have a desire or a feeling
which he does not actually have. But suppose that a person, whether by
telling a lie or in another way, misrepresents something else. Then he
necessarily misrepresents at least two things. He misrepresents
whatever he is talking about — i.e., the state of affairs that is
the topic or referent of his discourse — and in doing this he
cannot avoid misrepresenting his own mind as well. Thus, someone who
lies about how much money he has in his pocket both gives an account of
the amount of money in his pocket and conveys that he believes this
account. If the lie works, then its victim is twice deceived, having
one false belief about what is in the liar’s pocket and another
false belief about what is in the liar’s mind.

Now it is unlikely that Black wishes that the referent of humbug is
in every instance the state of the speaker’s mind. There is no
particular reason, after all, why humbug may not be about other things.
Black probably means that humbug is not designed primarily to give its
audience a false belief about whatever state of affairs may be the
topic, but that its primary intention is rather to give its audience a
false impression concerning what is going on in the mind of the
speaker. Insofar as it is humbug, the creation of this impression is
its main purpose and its point. Understanding Black along these lines
suggests a hypothesis to account for his characterization of humbug as
“short of lying.” If I lie to you about how much money I
have, then I do not thereby make an explicit assertion
concerning my beliefs. Therefore, one might with some plausibility
maintain that although in telling the lie I certainly misrepresent what
is in my mind, this misrepresentation — as distinct from my
misrepresentation of what is in my pocket — is not strictly
speaking a lie at all. For I do not come right out with any statement
whatever about what is in my mind. Nor does the statement I do affirm
— e.g., “I have twenty dollars in my pocket” —
imply any statement that attributes a belief to me. On the other hand,
it is unquestionable that in so affirming, I provide you with a
reasonable basis for making certain judgments about what I believe. In
particular, I provide you with a reasonable basis for supposing that I
believe there is twenty dollars in my pocket. Since this supposition is
by hypothesis false, I do in telling the lie tend to deceive you
concerning what is in my mind even though I do not actually tell a lie
about that. In this light, it does not seem unnatural or inappropriate
to regard me as misrepresenting my own beliefs in a way that is
“short of lying.” It is easy to think of familiar
situations by which Black’s account of humbug appears to be
unproblematically confirmed. Consider 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 surely humbug. As Black’s account
suggests, the orator is not lying. He would be lying only if it were
his intention to bring about in his audience beliefs which he himself
regards as false, concerning such matters as whether our country is
great, whether it is blessed, whether the Founders had divine guidance,
and whether what they did was in fact to create a new beginning for
mankind. But the orator does not really care what his audience thinks
about the Founding Fathers, or about the role of the deity in our
country’s history, or the like. At least, it is not an interest
in what anyone thinks about these matters that motivates his speech. It
is clear that what makes Fourth of July oration humbug is not
fundamentally that the speaker regards his statements as false. Rather,
just as Black’s account suggests, the orator intends these
statements to convey a certain impression of himself. He is not trying
to deceive anyone concerning American history. What he cares about is
what people think of him. He wants them to think of him as a
patriot, as someone who has deep thoughts and feelings about the
origins and the mission of our country, who appreciates the importance
of religion, who is sensitive to the greatness of our history, whose
pride in that history is combined with humility before God, and so on.
Black’s account of humbug appears, then, to fit certain paradigms
quite snugly. Nonetheless, I do not believe that it adequately or
accurately grasps the essential character of bullshit. It is correct to
say of bullshit, as he says of humbug, both that it is short of lying
and that chose who perpetrate it misrepresent themselves in a certain
way. But Black’s account of these two features is significantly
off the mark. I shall next attempt to develop, by considering some
biographical material pertaining to Ludwig Wittgenstein, a preliminary
but more accurately focused appreciation of just what the central
characteristics of bullshit are. Wittgenstein once said that the
following bit of verse by Longfellow could serve him as a motto:

In the elder days of art

Builders wrought with greatest care

Each minute and unseen part,

For the Gods are everywhere.

The point of these lines is clear. In the old days, craftsmen did
not cut corners. They worked carefully, and they took care with every
aspect of their work. Every part of the product was considered, and
each was designed and made to be exactly as it should be. These
craftsmen did not relax their thoughtful self-discipline even with
respect to features of their work which would ordinarily not be
visible. Although no one would notice if those features were not quite
right, the craftsmen would be bothered by their consciences. So nothing
was swept under the rug. Or, one might perhaps also say, there was no
bullshit.

It does seem fitting to construe carelessly made, shoddy goods as in
some way analogues of bullshit. But in what way? Is the resemblance
that bullshit itself is invariably produced in a careless or
self-indulgent manner, that it is never finely crafted, that in the
making of it there is never the meticulously attentive concern with
detail to which Longfellow alludes? Is the bullshitter by his very
nature a mindless slob? Is his product necessarily messy or unrefined?
The word shit does, to be sure, suggest this. Excrement is not
designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted, or dumped. It may
have a more or less coherent shape, or it may not, but it is in any
case certainly not wrought.

The notion of carefully wrought bullshit involves, then, a certain
inner strain. Thoughtful attention to detail requires discipline and
objectivity. It entails accepting standards and limitations that forbid
the indulgence of impulse or whim. It is this selflessness that, in
connection with bullshit, strikes us as inapposite. But in fact it
is not out of the question at all. The realms of advertising
and of public relations, and the nowadays closely related realm of
politics, are replete with instances of bullshit so unmitigated that
they can serve among the most indisputable and classic paradigms of the
concept. And in these realms there are exquisitely sophisticated
craftsmen who — with the help of advanced and demanding
techniques of market research, of public opinion polling, of
psychological testing, and so forth — dedicate themselves
tirelessly to getting every word and image they produce exactly
right.

Yet there is something more to be said about this.
However studiously and conscientiously the bullshitter proceeds, it
remains true that he is also trying to get away with something. There
is surely in his work, as in the work of the slovenly craftsman, some
kind of laxity which resists or eludes the demands of a disinterested
and austere discipline. The pertinent mode of laxity cannot be equated,
evidently, with simple carelessness or inattention to detail. I shall
attempt in due course to locate it more correctly.

Wittgenstein devoted his philosophical energies largely
to identifying and combating what he regarded as insidiously disruptive
forms of “non-sense.” He was apparently like that in his
personal life as well. This comes out in an anecdote related by Fania
Pascal, who knew him in Cambridge in the 1930s:

I had my tonsils out and was in the Evelyn Nursing Home feeling
sorry for myself. Wittgenstein called. I croaked: “I feel just
like a dog that has been run over.” He was disgusted:
“You don’t know what a dog that has been run over feels
like.”

Now who knows what really happened? It seems extraordinary, almost
unbelievable, that anyone could object seriously to what Pascal reports
herself as having said. That characterization of her feelings —
so innocently close to the utterly commonplace “sick as a
dog” — is simply not provocative enough to arouse any
response as lively or intense as disgust. If Pascal’s simile is
offensive, then what figurative or allusive uses of language would not
be? So perhaps it did not really happen quite as Pascal says. Perhaps
Wittgenstein was trying to make a small joke, and it misfired. He was
only pretending to bawl Pascal out, just for the fun of a little
hyperbole; and she got the tone and the intention wrong. She thought he
was disgusted by her remark, when in fact he was only trying to cheer
her up with some playfully exaggerated mock criticism or joshing. In
that case the incident is not incredible or bizarre after all.

But if Pascal failed to recognize that Wittgenstein was only
teasing, then perhaps the possibility that he was serious was at least
not so far out of the question. She knew him, and she knew what to
expect from him; she knew how he made her feel. Her way of
understanding or of misunderstanding his remark was very likely not
altogether discordant, then, with her sense of what he was like. We may
fairly suppose that even if her account of the incident is not strictly
true to the facts of Wittgenstein’s intention, it is sufficiently
true to her idea of Wittgenstein to have made sense to her. For the
purposes of this discussion, I shall accept Pascal’s report at
face value, supposing that when it came to the use of allusive or
figurative language, Wittgenstein was indeed as preposterous as she
makes him out to be.

Then just what is it that the Wittgenstein in her report considers
to be objectionable? Let us assume that he is correct about the facts:
that is, Pascal really does not know how run-over dogs feel. Even so,
when she says what she does, she is plainly not lying. She
would have been lying if, when she made her statement, she was aware
that she actually felt quite good. For however little she knows about
the lives of dogs, it must certainly be clear to Pascal that when dogs
are run over they do not feel good. So if she herself had in fact been
feeling good, it would have been a lie to assert that she felt like a
run-over dog.

Pascal’s Wittgenstein does not intend to accuse her of lying,
but of misrepresentation of another sort. She characterizes her feeling
as “the feeling of a run-over dog.” She is not really
acquainted, however, with the feeling to which this phrase refers. Of
course, the phrase is far from being complete nonsense to her; she is
hardly speaking gibberish. What she says has an intelligible
connotation, which she certainly understands. Moreover, she does know
something about the quality of the feeling to which the phrase refers:
she knows at least that it is an undesirable and unenjoyable feeling, a
bad feeling. The trouble with her statement is that it
purports to convey something more than simply that she feels bad. Her
characterization of her feeling is too specific; it is excessively
particular. Hers is not just any bad feeling but, according to her
account, the distinctive kind of bad feeling that a dog has when it is
run over. To the Wittgenstein in Pascal’s story, judging from his
response, this is just bullshit.

Now assuming that Wittgenstein does indeed regard Pascal’s
characterization of how she feels as an instance of bullshit, why does
it strike him that way? It does so, I believe, because he perceives
what Pascal says as being — roughly speaking, for now —
unconnected to a concern with the truth. Her statement is not germane
to the enterprise of describing reality. She does not even think she
knows, except in the vaguest way, how a run-over dog feels. Her
description of her own feeling is, accordingly, something that she is
merely making up. She concocts it out of whole cloth; or, if she got it
from someone else, she is repeating it quite mindlessly and without any
regard for how things really are.

It is for this mindlessness that Pascal’s Wittgenstein chides
her. What disgusts him is that Pascal is not even concerned whether her
statement is correct. There is every likelihood, of course, that she
says what she does only in a somewhat clumsy effort to speak
colorfully, or to appear vivacious or good-humored; and no doubt
Wittgenstein’s reaction — as she construes it — is
absurdly intolerant. Be this as it may, it seems clear what that
reaction is. He reacts as though he perceives her to be speaking about
her feeling thoughtlessly, without conscientious attention to the
relevant facts. Her statement is not “wrought with greatest
care.” She makes it without bothering to take into account at all
the question of its accuracy.

The point that troubles Wittgenstein is manifestly not that Pascal
has made a mistake in her description of how she feels. Nor is it even
that she has made a careless mistake. Her laxity, or her lack of care,
is not a matter of having permitted an error to slip into her speech on
account of some inadvertent or momentarily negligent lapse in the
attention she was devoting to getting things right. The point is rather
that, so far as Wittgenstein can see, Pascal offers a description of a
certain state of affairs without genuinely submitting to the
constraints which the endeavor to provide an accurate representation of
reality imposes. Her fault is not that she fails to get things right,
but that she is not even trying.

This is important to Wittgenstein because, whether justifiably or
not, he takes what she says seriously, as a statement purporting to
give an informative description of the way she feels. He construes her
as engaged in an activity to which the distinction between what is true
and what is false is crucial, and yet as taking no interest in whether
what she says is true or false. It is in this sense that Pascal’s
statement is unconnected to a concern with truth: she is not concerned
with the truth-value of what she says. That is why
she cannot be regarded as lying; for she does not presume that she
knows the truth, and therefore she cannot be deliberately promulgating
a proposition that she presumes to be false: Her statement is grounded
neither in a belief that it is true nor, as a lie must be, in a belief
that it is not true. It is just this lack of connection to a concern
with truth — this indifference to how things really are —
that I regard as of the essence of bullshit.

Now I shall consider (quite selectively) certain items in the
Oxford English Dictionary that are pertinent to clarifying the
nature of bullshit. The OED defines a bull session as
“an informal conversation or discussion, esp. of a group of
males.” Now as a definition, this seems wrong. For one thing, the
dictionary evidently supposes that the use of the term bull in bull
session serves primarily just to indicate gender. But even if it were
true that the participants in bull sessions are generally or typically
males, the assertion that a bull session is essentially nothing more
particular than an informal discussion among males would be as far off
the mark as the parallel assertion that a hen session is simply an
informal conversation among females. It is probably true that the
participants in hen sessions must be females. Nonetheless the term
hen session conveys something more specific than this
concerning the particular kind of informal conversation among females
to which hen sessions are characteristically devoted. What is
distinctive about the sort of informal discussion among males that
constitutes a bull session is, it seems to me, something like this:
while the discussion may be intense and significant, it is in a certain
respect not “for real.”

The characteristic topics of a bull session have to do with very
personal and emotion-laden aspects of life — for instance,
religion, politics, or sex. People are generally reluctant to speak
altogether openly about these topics if they expect that they might be
taken too seriously. What tends to go on in a bull session is that 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: It is understood by everyone in a bull session that the
statements people make do not necessarily reveal what they really
believe or how they really feel. The main point is to make possible a
high level of candor and an experimental or adventuresome approach to
the subjects under discussion. Therefore provision is made for enjoying
a certain irresponsibility, so that people will be encouraged to convey
what is on their minds without too much anxiety that they will be held
to it.

Each of the contributors to a bull session relies, in other words,
upon a general recognition that what he expresses or says is not to be
understood as being what he means wholeheartedly or believes
unequivocally to be true. The purpose of the conversation is not to
communicate beliefs. Accordingly, the usual assumptions about the
connection between what people say and what they believe are suspended.
The statements made in a bull session differ from bullshit in that
there is no pretense that this connection is being sustained. They are
like bullshit by virtue of the fact that they are in some degree
unconstrained by a concern with truth. This resemblance between bull
sessions and bullshit is suggested also by the term shooting the
bull, which refers to the sort of conversation that characterizes
bull sessions and in which the term shooting is very likely a
cleaned-up rendition of shitting. The very term bull session
is, indeed, quite probably a sanitized version of bullshit
session. A similar theme is discernible in a British usage of
bull in which, according to the OED, the term refers
to “unnecessary routine tasks or ceremonial; excessive discipline
or ‘spit-and-polish’; = red-tape.” The dictionary
provides the following examples of this usage:

“The Squadron … felt very bolshie about all that bull
that was flying around the station” (I. Gleed, Arise to
Conquer vi. 51, I942); “Them turning out the guard for us,
us marching past eyes right, all that sort of bull” (A. Baron,
Human Kind xxiv. 178, 1953); the drudgery and
‘bull’ in an MP’s life.” (Economist
8 Feb. 470/471, 1958)

Here the term bull evidently pertains to tasks that are pointless in
that they have nothing much to do with the primary intent or justifying
purpose of the enterprise which requires them. Spit-and-polish and red
tape do not genuinely contribute, it is presumed, to the
“real” purposes of military personnel or government
officials, even though they are imposed by agencies or agents that
purport to be conscientiously devoted to the pursuit of those purposes.
Thus the “unnecessary routine tasks or ceremonial” that
constitute bull are disconnected from the legitimating motives of the
activity upon which they intrude, just as the things people say in bull
sessions are disconnected from their settled beliefs, and as bullshit
is disconnected from a concern with the truth.

The term bull is also employed, in a rather more widespread and
familiar usage, as a somewhat less coarse equivalent of bullshit. In an
entry for bull as so used, the OED suggests the following as
definitive: “trivial, insincere, or untruthful talk or writing;
nonsense.” Now it does not seem distinctive of bull either that
it must be deficient in meaning or that it is necessarily unimportant;
so “nonsense” and “trivial,” even apart from
their vagueness, seem to be on the wrong track. The focus of
“insincere, or untruthful” is better, but it needs to be
sharpened. The entry at hand also provides the following two
definitions:

1914 Dialect Notes IV. 162 Bull, talk which is
not to the purpose; “hot air.”

I 932 Times Lit. Supp. 8 Dec. 933/3 “Bull” is
the slang term for a combination of bluff, bravado, “hot
air” and what we used to call in the Army “Kidding the
troops”

“Not to the purpose” is appropriate, but it is both too
broad in scope and too vague. It covers digressions and innocent
irrelevancies, which are not invariably instances of bull; furthermore,
saying that bull is not to the purpose leaves it uncertain what purpose
is meant. The reference in both definitions to “hot air” is
more helpful. When we characterize talk as hot air, we mean that what
comes out of the speaker’s mouth is only that. It is mere vapor.
His speech is empty, without substance or content. His use of language,
accordingly, does not contribute to the purpose it purports to serve.
No more information is communicated than if the speaker had merely
exhaled. There are similarities between hot air and excrement,
incidentally, which make hot air seem an especially suitable
equivalent for bullshit. Just as hot air is speech that has
been emptied of all informative content, so excrement is matter from
which everything nutritive has been removed. Excrement may be regarded
as the corpse of nourishment, what remains when the vital elements in
food have been exhausted. In this respect, excrement is a
representation of death which we ourselves produce and which, indeed,
we cannot help producing in the very process of maintaining our lives.
Perhaps it is for making death so intimate that we find excrement so
repulsive. In any event, it cannot serve the purposes of sustenance,
any more than hot air can serve those of cummunication.

Now consider these lines from Pound’s Canto LXXIV, which the
OED cites in its entry on bullshit as a verb:

Hey Snag wots in the bibl’?

Wot are the books ov the bible?

Name ’em, don’t bullshit ME.

This is a call for the facts. The person addressed is evidently
regarded as having in some way claimed to know the Bible, or as having
claimed to care about it. The speaker suspects that this is just empty
talk, and demands that the claim be supported with facts. He will not
accept a mere report; he insists upon seeing the thing itself. In other
words, he is calling the bluff. The connection between bullshit and
bluff is affirmed explicitly in the definition with which the lines by
Pound are associated:

As v. truns. and intr., to talk nonsense (to);
… also, to bluff one’s way through (something)
by talking nonsense.

It does seem that bullshitting involves a kind of bluff. It is
closer to bluffing, surely than to telling a lie. But what is implied
concerning its nature by the fact that it is more like the former than
it is like the latter? Just what is the relevant difference here
between a bluff and a lie? Lying and bluffing are both modes of
misrepresentation or deception. Now the concept most central to the
distinctive nature of a lie is that of falsity: the liar is essentially
someone who deliberately promulgates a falsehood. Bluffing too is
typically devoted to conveying something false. Unlike plain lying,
however, it is more especially a matter not of falsity but of fakery.
This is what accounts for its nearness to bullshit. For the essence of
bullshit is not that it is false but that it isphony.
In order to appreciate this distinction, one must recognize that a fake
or a phony need not be in any respect (apart from authenticity itself)
inferior to the real thing. What is not genuine need not also be
defective in some other way. It may be, after all, an exact copy. What
is wrong with a counterfeit is not what it is like, but how it was
made. This points to a similar and fundamental aspect of the essential
nature of bullshit: although it is produced without concern with the
truth, it need not be false. The bullshitter is faking things. But this
does not mean that he necessarily gets them wrong.

In Eric Ambler’s novel Dirty Story, a character named
Arthur Abdel Simpson recalls advice that he received as a child from
his father:

Although I was only seven when my father was killed, I still
remember him very well and some of the things he used to say.
… One of the first things he taught me was, “Never
tell a lie when you can bullshit your way through.”

This presumes not only that there is an important difference between
lying and bullshitting, but that the latter is preferable to the
former. Now the elder Simpson surely did not consider bullshitting
morally superior to lying. Nor is it likely that he regarded lies as
invariably less effective than bullshit in accomplishing the purposes
for which either of them might be employed. After all, an intelligently
crafted lie may do its work with unqualified success. It may be that
Simpson thought it easier to get away with bullshitting than with
lying. Or perhaps he meant that, although the risk of being caught is
about the same in each case, the consequences of being caught are
generally less severe for the bullshitter than for the liar. In fact,
people do tend to be more tolerant of bullshit than of lies, perhaps
because we are less inclined to take the former as a personal affront.
We may seek to distance ourselves from bullshit, but we are more likely
to turn away from it with an impatient or irritated shrug than with the
sense of violation or outrage that lies often inspire. The problem of
understanding why our attitude toward bullshit is generally more benign
than our attitude toward lying is an important one, which I shall leave
as an exercise for the reader. The pertinent comparison is not,
however, between telling a lie and producing some particular instance
of bullshit. The elder Simpson identifies the alternative to telling a
lie as “bullshitting one’s way through.” This
involves not merely producing one instance of bullshit; it involves a
program of producing bullshit to whatever extent the
circumstances require. This is a key, perhaps, to his preference.
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. On the other hand, a person who undertakes
to bullshit his way through has much more freedom. His focus is
panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to
inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not
constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He
is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need requires. This
freedom from the constraints to which the liar must submit does not
necessarily mean, of course, that his task is easier than the task of
the liar. But the mode of creativity upon which it relies is less
analytical and less deliberative than that which is mobilized in lying.
It is more expansive and independent, with mare spacious opportunities
for improvisation, color, and imaginative play. This is less a matter
of craft than of art. Hence the familiar notion of the “bullshit
artist.” My guess is that the recommendation offered by Arthur
Simpson’s father reflects the fact that he was more strongly
drawn to this mode of creativity, regardless of its relative merit or
effectiveness, than he was to the more austere and rigorous demands of
lying.

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.

In his essay, “Lying,” St. Augustine
distinguishes lies of eight types, which he classifies according to the
characteristic intent or justification with which a lie is told. Lies
of seven of these types are told only because they are supposed to be
indispensable means to some end that is distinct from the sheer
creation of false beliefs. It is not their falsity as such, in other
words, that attracts the teller to them. Since they are told only on
account of their supposed indispensability to a goal other than
deception itself, St. Augustine regards them as being told unwillingly:
what the person really wants is not to tell the lie but to attain the
goal. They are therefore not real lies, in his view, and those who tell
them are not in the strictest sense liars. It is only the remaining
category that contains what he identifies as “the lie which is
told solely for the pleasure of lying and deceiving, that is, the real
lie.” Lies in this category are not told as means to any end
distinct form the propagation of falsehood. They are told simply for
their own sakes — i.e., purely out of a love of deception:

There is a distinction between a person who tells a lie and a
liar. The former is one who tells a lie unwillingly, while the liar
loves to lie and passes his time in the joy of lying. … The
latter takes delight in lying, rejoicing in the falsehood itself.

What Augustine calls “liars” and “real lies”
are both rare and extraordinary. Everyone lies from time to time, but
there are very few people to whom it would often (or even ever) occur
to lie exclusively from a love of falsity or of deception. For most
people, the fact that a statement is false constitutes in itself a
reason, however weak and easily overridden, not to make the
statement.

For St. Augustine’s pure liar it is, on the contrary, a reason
in favor of making it. For the bullshitter it is in itself neither a
reason in favor nor a reason against. Both in lying and in telling the
truth people are guided by their beliefs concerning the way things are.
These guide them as they endeavor either to describe the world
correctly or to describe it deceitfully. For this reason, telling lies
does not tend to unfit a person for telling the truth in the same way
that bullshitting tends to. Through excessive indulgence in the latter
activity, which involves making assertions without paying attention to
anything except what it suits one to say, a person’s normal habit
of attending to the ways things are may become attenuated or lost.
Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on
opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the
facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is
guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other
defies that authority and refuses to meet its demands. The bullshitter
ignores these demands altogether. 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 the truth than lies are.

One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts
assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both
determinate and knowable. His interest in telling the truth or in lying
presupposes that there is a difference between getting things wrong and
getting them right, and that it is at least occasionally possible to
tell the difference. Someone who ceases to believe in the possibility
of identifying certain statements as true and others as false can have
only two alternatives. The first is to desist both from efforts to tell
the truth and from efforts to deceive. This would mean refraining from
making any assertion whatever about the facts. The second alternative
is to continue making assertions that purport to describe the way
things are but that cannot be anything except bullshit.

Why is there so much bullshit? Of course it is impossible to be sure
that there is relatively more of it nowadays than at other times. There
is more communication of all kinds in our time than ever before, but
the proportion that is bullshit may not have increased. Without
assuming that the incidence of bullshit is actually greater now, I will
mention a few considerations that help to account for the fact that it
is currently so great.

Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances
require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus
the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person’s
obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic are more
excessive than his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that
topic. This discrepancy is common in public life, where people are
frequently impelled — whether by their own propensities or by the
demands of others — to speak extensively about matters of which
they are to some degree ignorant. Closely related instances arise from
the widespread conviction that it is the responsibility of a citizen in
a democracy to have opinions about everything, or at least everything
that pertains to the conduct of his country’s affairs. The lack
of any significant connection between a person’s opinions and his
apprehension of reality will be even more severe, needless to say, for
someone who believes it his responsibility, as a conscientious moral
agent, to evaluate events and conditions in all parts of the world.

The contemporary proliferation of bullshit also has
deeper sources, in various forms of skepticism which deny that we can
have any reliable access to an objective reality and which therefore
reject the possibility of knowing how things truly are. These
“anti-realist” doctrines undermine confidence in the value
of disinterested efforts to determine what is true and what is false,
and even in the intelligibility of the notion of objective inquiry. One
response to this loss of confidence has been a retreat from the
discipline required by dedication to the ideal of correctness
to a quite different sort of discipline, which is imposed by pursuit of
an alternative ideal of sincerity. Rather than seeking
primarily to arrive at accurate representations of a common world, the
individual turns toward trying to provide honest representations of
himself. Convinced that reality has no inherent nature, which he might
hope to identify as the truth about things, he devotes himself to being
true to his own nature. It is as though he decides that since it makes
no sense to try to be true to the facts, he must therefore try instead
to be true to himself.

But it is preposterous to imagine that we ourselves are determinate,
and hence susceptible both to correct and to incorrect descriptions,
while supposing that the ascription of determinacy to anything else has
been exposed as a mistake. As conscious beings, we exist only in
response to other things, and we cannot know ourselves at all without
knowing them. Moreover, there is nothing in theory, and certainly
nothing in experience, to support the extraordinary judgment that it is
the truth about himself that is the easiest for a person to know. Facts
about ourselves are not peculiarly solid and resistant to skeptical
dissolution. Our natures are, indeed, elusively insubstantial —
notoriously less stable and less inherent than the natures of other
things. And insofar as this is the case, sincerity itself is
bullshit.