The Breach: America’s B.S. Artist-in-Chief
President Donald Trump lies, but is he just a liar, or is he something more confounding? Jeet Heer argues that Trump’s “say anything” philosophy puts him in a whole new—and potentially much scarier—category.
Jeet Heer is a senior editor at the New Republic, an award-winning author, and one of Canada’s foremost public intellectuals. He swears he didn’t invent the Twitter essay, but he perfected the genre.
As Donald J. Trump’s political fortunes began to jell, Heer was among the first to grasp the philosophical significance of the tycoon-candidate’s unconventional relationship to the truth. Trump is not a liar, he argued, but rather a “bullshitter,” as described in Harry G. Frankfurt’s classic essay, “On Bullshit.” A liar understands the power of the truth, but a bullshitter is wholly indifferent. All politicians lie, but never has the leader of the free world embraced “say anything” as a governing philosophy.
Join Heer and fellow Canadian Lindsay Beyerstein for a discussion of philosophy, world affairs, and emo Justin Trudeau.
Recommended Reading:
- Julia Harte’s “A New York hotel deal shows how some public pension funds help to enrich Trump,” Reuters, 2017
- Tarini Parti’s “The House Mother and the Fraudster,” Buzzfeed, 2017