How to Tell BF from BS

A recent op-ed article in the New York Times raised an interesting (and eponymous) question:  has Trump stolen philosophy’s critical tools? The author, Casey Williams, argues that some of the blame for Trump’s rather casual relationship with the truth lies in some measure with the philosophers, literary critics, and social scientists who have chipped away at the notion that truth can in any way be deemed objective, universal, and unquestionable.  In a world where the one universally acknowledged truth is that the truth cannot be known, it is a short hop, skip, and a jump to proclaiming the legitimacy of “alt-truth.”  Certainly, truth is subjective.  If nothing else, neuroscience has established that the evidence of our eyes and of our memory is anything but reliable.  A quick peek at Neuroscience News reveals how researchers are learning how fragile, friable, and fantastical our memories—so critical to our understanding of “truth”–are.  Trump therefore cannot be lying, because there cannot be such a thing as the truth.  Instead of lies, Trump is merely recasting his version of the truth, or rather, is positing one of an infinite possible truths.  This situation raises the hitherto unthinkable possibility that Trump is a b.f. (bona fide—good faith) philosopher, and not a b.s. (bullus shittus) artist.

And yet this prospect doesn’t sit well with me, and I think Williams finds it a quite uncomfortable notion, too. Indeed, he ends by stating that the only way for us to determine the legitimacy (or otherwise) of Trump’s pronouncements is for us to use critical thinking skills.  After all, philosophy and truth-seeking should be supported by sound reasoning, right? So, let’s put on our Critical Thinking Caps and do it!  Let’s root out rotten reasoning!

First, intentions should matter. And something tells me that Trump’s intentions are not pure.  Someone who acknowledges the possibility of a subjective truth, and who rejects the notion of a universal truth, tends to be anti-authoritarian.  If you have a nuanced view of the world, and are willing to accept that there is, indeed, more than one way to skin a cat,[1] then you are far less likely to attempt to impose your world view upon others.  This is evident in literary criticism, which by its very nature encourages the reader to develop personal interpretations of texts.  Analyzing a canonical work such as Othello through a feminist lens, for example, enables us to view the characters of Emilia and Desdemona as far more critical (and interesting) than if we simply accept the heavy-handed traditional view that the female characters are merely stock figures whose sole purpose in the play is to move the plot along.  Similarly, adopting different ways of viewing the world might make one a bit more sensitive to the impact of history upon current events.  So, for example, one might be a tad more willing to concede the importance of asserting that “black lives matter” if one looked at the history of slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching through the eyes of African Americans.  I know that if I were African American, I would be a bit shrill in asserting my right to exist in the face of a power structure that has done everything possible to downplay the importance of black lives.[2] Absolutists, on the other hand, appear to have no difficulty with declaring that their point of view is the correct position to take. Frankly, there is nothing in Trump’s biography, rhetoric, or actions to support the idea that he is a subtle observer of the human condition.  Indeed, I think that Trump himself would scoff at the idea that he really need to see things from another person’s point of view. Atticus Finch he is not.[3] At the very least, his sweeping generalizations indicate that he is a man who sees the world in absolute terms.

But even if we assume that Trump’s intentions are as pure as Sir Galahad, and that Trump were posing an alternative truth instead of a downright lie, there should still be some relationship to the “truth” he is refuting.  Let’s look at the example Williams used:  Trump’s tweet in response to the increased heat generated by the investigation into Russian interference with the election.  Here it is, in all its glory:

 “Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism.”

Now, you might look high, and you might look low, but there is nothing in this statement that is in any way relevant to the question of just how far up his puppet Putin’s hands go.[4]  This lack of a logical relationship between the statement (“Putin really had his hand way, way, WAY up his puppet!”) and the refutation (“Obama bugged me!”) can be either intentional (a red herring) or inadvertent (ignoratio elenchi)[5].  But either way, as any Critical Thinking Teacher worth her salt can tell you, this disconnection is a fatal flaw to the argument Trump is making, because all it does is throw sand into the reader’s eyes.  Instead of shedding light on the matter at hand, Trump is obscuring it.  Blurts do not sound reasoning make.

Furthermore, even if “truth” doesn’t exist, “facts” sure do.  There are observable, measurable phenomena whose existence can be verified.  Temperatures can be measured, stock prices recorded, and hot mic remarks  replayed.  To date, he has not offered any evidence to back his claim about Obama bugging Trump Tower.  Nor is this an isolated lapse: Trump’s relationship with facts is notoriously lax. Politifact, an independent fact-checking website, reckons that 71% of the 394 statements by Trump that they fact-checked were mostly false (20%), false (33%), or “pants-on-fire” (16%).  And these statements include easily fact-checked falsehoods (“All pipelines that are coming into this country from now on has (sic) to be American steel”) and some just plain silly pants-igniting lies ( “Before the presidential campaign, ‘I didn’t know Steve [Bannon]’”). I think that we can all agree that a philosophical truth-seeker will, if nothing else, at least try to make his or her statements consistent with the factual record.

But mostly, Trump’s rhetoric is simply not consistent with typical philosophical discourse.  Can any among you honestly say that The Critique of Pure Reason was simply un-put-down-able?  Or that Of Grammatology was a real page turner?  Anyone?  Bueller?  Bueller?

Of course not.  And there is an excellent reason for this:  philosophical writings are intellectual, rational, and about as exciting to read as paint can labels.  That’s why most people don’t read them and instead use Sparknotes.[6]

Now, there are many things you can call Trump’s rhetoric, but “dry” and “intellectual” certainly aren’t among them.  Look at these examples to see what I mean:

“Happy New Year to all, including to my many enemies and those who have fought me and lost so badly they just don’t know what to do. Love!”

“I will build a great wall – and nobody builds walls better than me, believe me – and I’ll build them very inexpensively. I will build a great, great wall on our southern border, and I will make Mexico pay for that wall. Mark my words.”

“If I were running ‘The View’, I’d fire Rosie O’Donnell. I mean, I’d look at her right in that fat, ugly face of hers, I’d say ‘Rosie, you’re fired.’”

They are not identical in tone or subject.  In that first quotation, Trump’s New Year’s greeting manages to conflate love and vague threats to his “enemies” in a rather memorable –and disturbing—manner, while the repeated references to the greatness of his wall in the second quotation brings to mind the hubristic musings of an illiterate eight-year-old.  The revenge fantasy of the third quotation is marked by its viciousness.  But they share a vital quality:  they are all riddled with emotive language.

Emotive language, as its name strongly suggests, is used to create an emotional response in the reader or listener.  And that emotional response is often visceral, which literally means taking place in the gut.  Fear, love, humor, horror all have physical manifestations: sweat, increased heart rate, laughter.  Even my usual response to Trump’s language, nausea, is merely the physical manifestation of my disgust.

You might notice that in the midst of all this emotion, there is very little intellectual reaction going on.  It takes real effort to think after reading a Trumpism, because you feel emotionally drained.  A b.f. philosopher, on the other hand, leaves you exhausted because she exercised your brain.  By purposely creating an emotional reaction, Trump is using linguistic prestidigitation to distract the reader from the critical task at hand of evaluating the legitimacy of his “alt-truth.”  Far from seeking his own subjective truth, he is preventing the reader from engaging with the meaning of his words in any substantive way.

And that, dear reader, is why I feel utterly comfortable with labeling Trump as a b.s. artist, and his “alternate truths” as lies.

[1] My cat hates this expression.

[2] And in case you think I’m being ever so slightly hysterical, you might want to check out this book.

[3] I am, of course, referring to the Atticus Finch of To Kill A Mockingbird, or, as I like to call him, the real Atticus Finch.  Someday I will write a blog about the immorality of tricking an old lady with dementia into publishing a draft of a crap novel she had abandoned decades ago.  But more of that anon.

[4] My!  That’s a disturbing image!

[5] If you want to know the difference, I suggest you click here to read a really, really AMAZING blog that uses the best words to explain it!! Nice!

[6] Yes, yes, yes.  I know that there are a few among you who have, indeed, read these works in their entirety and really, really liked them.  Bully for you.  But I was talking about normal people.

 

Copyright 2017 D. R. Miller

Why we need mourning bands

I first ran across a mourning band back in my teens, when watching a Lord Peter Wimsey mystery on PBS (I was a very strange teenager).  The band in question was worn by Detective Charles Parker, Wimsey’s sidekick, brother-in-law, and confidant.  I don’t recall which mystery it was, or for whom Parker was in mourning, but I was very struck by the idea of the band itself.  It was a simple piece of black cloth, neatly worn around Parker’s well-muscled arm.  The effect it had on the other characters was amazing:  open hostility would spontaneously morph into quiet deference, as the band silently, but clearly, announced that this was a man who has sustained a loss.  Be gentle with him.

What a quaint custom, I thought.  I wonder why we don’t wear them now

And I never thought about them again, until last week.

If you happened to have been in my local Home Goods store last week, you might have been startled by the bewildering sight of an otherwise sane-looking middle-aged woman crying silently, but openly, while holding a turquoise colored ice bucket to her chest.  That would have been me.

Certainly, there were several people out there who did see me—I could tell that they had noticed me by how wide a berth they gave me (and believe me, given the crowded conditions of your typical Home Goods store, it involved some pretty tricky maneuvering to give me even a narrow berth).  I certainly don’t begrudge them their wariness.  Indeed, if the roles had been reversed, I would doubtlessly have sent my cart careening down the aisles in my rush to avoid contact with such a sight.  After all, in these perilous times, who knows what insane thoughts and dark desires could have triggered those tears?

As it happens, I do know what had caused my tears upon beholding the ice bucket:  it was the recent death of my eldest sister. My sister, you see, had pancreatic cancer, which, after a string of disastrous misadventures too gloomy to enumerate, resulted in her being able to ingest only liquids and ice chips. She especially liked chewing the ice, because it allowed her to pretend to be eating something.  Consequently, we had to make sure that she had a steady supply of ice. Now, my sister could hardly be unique in this regard: after all, a hospice is generally chockerblock with the dying, and surely a fair proportion of them would be unable to eat anything but ice chips.  So you would think they would supply you with a halfway decent ice bucket, wouldn’t you? However, the hospice had only those flimsy Styrofoam ice buckets/pitchers, the kind that seem to specialize in turning ice chips into ice slush.

So, when I saw that sassy little ice bucket, with its efficient insulation and darling little rope handles, I immediately thought of my sister, whose favorite color, as it happens, was turquoise.  Cue water works, because her death is so recent, and my heart so raw, that any reminder of her is likely to get me going.

Having put the string of events into words, it is quite apparent that the connection between the ice bucket and her death is so tenuous that it is hard to say with a straight face that there is a connection at all.  Indeed, to a rational mind, the existence of a turquoise ice bucket would hardly rise to the stature of a mere coincidence.  But that’s grief for you:  crazy, fitful, and prone to mischief.  That’s precisely why a mourning band would be so handy:  it would tell the world, “Watch out!  Grieving sister ahead!  Be careful:  she might do something in-saaaane!”  And the world, in turn, would gently nod its head and allow me to cry in the middle of the party section of my sister’s favorite store without feeling too embarrassed about it.

Mourning bands were first introduced to the male mourner’s wardrobe in the 1770’s, but they really hit their heyday in the Victorian era.  When Prince Albert died, Queen Victoria ordered her male servants to wear their mourning bands for eight years! Now you generally see them on police badges when an officer dies in the line of duty, but even then, they are so small (they’re generally worn on the badge) and on for so short a time (usually from the date of death to the funeral), that they are hardly noticeable at all.[1]  Given how prevalent death was in the Victorian era, with little kids, pregnant women, and consumptive factory workers kicking the bucket all around you, you would think that people would try to escape it.  But no!  Instead of avoiding death, Victorians positively wallowed in complex and restrictive funerary practices. But that is the paradox identified eons ago by Elisabeth Kübler Ross in On Death and Dying:  when death was prevalent, we incorporated dying into our daily life.  Now, when death is conveniently boxed away in a hospital, we keep it at arm’s length.  Or else, in the event of spectacular deaths like the victims of mass shootings or marathon bombers, death becomes a media event, something that happens to other people, and thus remains beyond our personal experience. But that’s crazy, really—we’re all going to die.  We are all born, and we all die.  That’s life.  Get used to it.  Yet we rarely do get used to it, and we rarely treat death as the inevitability that it is.

In this, as in so many other things, my sister was an exception.  She had been a nurse, and therefore had both the experience and the analytical mind necessary to meet death head-on, in a totally matter-of-fact manner.  Thus it was that I actually read out loud the obituary I had written for her in order to obtain her editorial approval—the fourth most surreal incident of my life. I suspect that if my sister had seen a sobbing woman in the middle of Home Goods, she would have guessed that the woman had lost someone dear to her.  I don’t know exactly what it is she would have done, but it would have been done with the knowledge that here was a person who needed special consideration.

Most people do not have my sister’s preternatural powers of observation, which is why a mourning band would be handy.   Even though it started out as a mourning accessory for men, there is no reason why it couldn’t be used universally.  It would give the mourner space to grieve, to cry for no apparent reason, and it would also allow the on-looker to back away discreetly.  Or even to pat a stranger’s shoulder, in recognition that we are all at death’s mercy.

[1]Different cultures do still have mourning practices.  For example, Jewish men don’t shave their beard for thirty days after the death of a loved one.  But, frankly, that wouldn’t do too much for me, as I don’t generally shave my beard anyway.  No one would notice.  Also, the mourning band has the advantage of being universal:  anyone can use it, even a grieving atheist such as myself.  It is merely a simple banner stating that the wearer is grieving, with no religious or gender-specific overtones (or undertones, for that matter).

Copyright 2017 D.R. Miller