One of the worst things in the world - not the things that feel bad to me, but things that are bad for others - is the pernicious phenomenon of bullshit - and I don't mean crap from a bull, but the kind of crap that comes out of people's mouths when they're trying to sell people a load of crap.
This kind of bullshit is a particularly pernicious kind of lying - a kind of lying so bad that philosophers aren't even sure that it's lying at all. A liar, after all, envisions a model of a world better for them than the one we live in, and deliberately tries to falsely impress that model into in the mind of their hearers.
But a bullshitter doesn't care about true or false at all: they just care about creating an impression. I recall running into a bullshitter at a friend's party once who claimed "there are no Native American vegetables" and when I later came back with a list (it's a long list) he blew this off as irrelevant.
Because he wasn't concerned with the truth. He was concerned with holding court. He was a loud, showy, know-nothing know-it-all, who was constantly trying to find ways to dominate the conversation at this particular social grouping. He didn't care about the facts - he just cared about being the center of attention.
I didn't care to go to too many of those parties. :-)
It should be obvious that bullshit has corrupted American politics. While both ends of the political spectrum can fall victim to it, our current leadership is bullshitting dangerously about everything from the legal justification for their illegal actions to the strategy behind their irresponsible wars.
And the bullshitters I know personally have given away the game on this. They have repeatedly said things like, "the only reason you're raising that objection is that you oppose what I'm trying to do". No, no, my friend, you have it backward: we're opposing what you want to do because of those objections.
We do not live in a world defined by different movies running in different people's heads.
We live in exactly one shared world, where there are facts to matters to which appeal can be made - exactly one shared reality which we cannot fake in any way whatever, and if you try, sooner or later, it will bite you.
-the Centaur
Pictured: A path in our yard choked by invasive succulent plants. They grew from cuttings which we got from local plants that thrived in our dry climate; we didn't know they were invasive when we planted them. I guess they showed us. Invoke what symbolism you can from this about bullshit in public discourse.
