http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/6324Lies, Bullshit and Something Worse
by Matthew Hubbard | Mar 25 2007 -
“I was a prisoner, too, but for bad reasons.”
-- George W. Bush to Argentine president Nestor Kirchner, January 13, 2004, when informed that all but one of the Argentine delegation had been imprisoned during the time of the military dictatorship
I was given the George W. Bushisms one-a-day calendar for my birthday this year, and the quote above shows up on this weekend’s page. I usually recall Bush’s most outrageous quotes, but I didn’t remember this. Was he admitting to going to prison or even jail time? We have some idea about his arrest record, but officially he has avoided incarceration longer than an hour or two in the drunk tank, if that. Why didn’t this story have legs?
I don’t know the facts behind this seeming admission, but my best judgment is that Bush was just bullshitting, using the definition put forward by Harry Frankfurt in his best-selling philosophical essay On Bullshit. Consider this web blurb for Frankfurt‘s slim volume, put forward by his publisher Princeton Press.
Bullshitters seek to convey a certain impression of themselves without being concerned about whether anything at all is true. They quietly change the rules governing their end of the conversation so that claims about truth and falsity are irrelevant. Rather, Frankfurt concludes that although bullshit can take many innocent forms, excessive indulgence in it can eventually undermine the practitioner's capacity to tell the truth in a way that lying does not. Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
By this definition. George W. Bush is an inveterate bullshitter. We have his quote to West Virginia lawmaker Bob Kiss, "I've been to war. I've raised twins. If I had a choice, I'd rather go to war." Kiss is also the father of twins. Jeff Tedrich put the quote on his about Bush screwing Bin Laden “up the ass”, said to a somewhat startled Ariel Sharon. We also have his quote to a Palestinian leader about God telling him to smite the Taliban and Saddam Hussein, and he did both of these things.
It makes more sense to put all these statements under the category of bullshit than to try to figure out the truth or falsity of them. Bush probably didn’t do any real jail time in his sordid past, but wanted to make a connection to the Argentine president. Bush didn’t go to war and knows it, but he wanted to make a connection with another father of twins. He tried talking tough in front of a former general like Sharon, not knowing that anal rape talk would deeply offend his listener. As for hearing voices, I think that’s probably bullshit too. He was either trying to show piety or indirectly saying “I’m a crazy motherfucker, so you Palestinians don’t want to fuck with me or with Israel.”
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