A Decent Respect to the Opinions of Mankind

I'm a little embarrassed to say I've never read the influential essay On Bullshit by the philosopher Harry Frankfurt, or even read anything about it, in part because it never occurred to me that I needed to. I've felt very clear on what I took to be the subject, making the distinction between lying and bullshit, with my own semiotic theory of the former (the object of a lie is to hide a particular truth, so its structure is dictated by that function) and a general moral understanding that lies are bad (they're hiding something) and bullshit is more or less harmless (it doesn't seem to do anything, beyond entertainment, in which case you can call it jive or more grandly fiction).

But apparently Frankfurt's philosophical idea is compatible with my semiotics, but much more original and interesting than I imagined, as I learn from a Substack post of the other day by the very-online political scientist Daniel Drezner. In fact bullshit (entertainment bullshit excepted, I should say) is worse than lying, as Frankfurt writes:

ICE raids: Where were the criminals?

Photo by Rogelio V. Solis/AP/Shutterstock used, as it happens, by Mr. Pierce, who reminds us of who did not get arrested on Wednesday, namely any of the actual criminals, the executives of the chicken-processing plants that illegally gave jobs to these workers.

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I'm so old I remember when these massive ICE raids were being publicized as a stab at purging the violent criminal element in our midst, way back, oh, almost four weeks ago:

President Donald Trump on Friday insisted upcoming immigration raids set to begin this weekend will focus primarily on deporting criminals though he acknowledged his administration will target anyone who entered the country illegally.

“We’re really looking for criminals as much as we can. Trying to find the criminal population, which has been coming into this country the last 10 years,” Trump told reporters as he prepared to depart Washington. He touted his administration’s removal of members of the violent gang MS-13, claiming he’d deported them “by the thousands.”

Of course they had to scotch the operation after that, once again, but on Wednesday President Blabbermouth was able to restrain himself, or rather they managed to hide it from him, and don't mind admitting it—

International Fact-Checking Day

Ceci n'est pas un cigare volant, this is not a flying cigar, by Bonny Doon Vineyard, via Vincent Pousson.

In honor of International Fact-Checking Day, I would like to check a fact:

In 1998, Rep.Jerry Nadler strongly opposed the release of the Starr Report on Bill Clinton. No information whatsoever would or could be legally released. But with the NO COLLUSION Mueller Report, which the Dems hate, he wants it all. NOTHING WILL EVER SATISFY THEM! @foxandfriends

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 2, 2019

One of the signal differences between the Starr report and the Mueller report is, in fact, that while Attorney General Barr is intent on making redactions in the Mueller report before allowing members of Congress to see it, of

grand jury material, sensitive intelligence, matters that could affect ongoing investigations, and infringements on the privacy rights of “peripheral third parties.”

Attorney General Reno gave the Starr report to every member of Congress with no redactions at all (it was over his own grand jury testimony that Clinton was accused and subsequently acquitted of committing perjury, or, as I would prefer to call it, gentlemanly obfuscation of the unpleasant facts), and what Nadler was talking about was something he'd been allowed to read.