Just Finished Reading: Post Truth – Peak Bullshit and What We Can Do About It by Evan Davis (FP: 2017) [302pp] 

Bullshit seems to be everywhere these days and not just in the political realm. Of course, it may be just because the level has been rising for some time now from the previous ankle deep to the present waist deep plus the fact that the smell is getting worse. It’s certainly nothing new and, contrary to some opinion has been around LONG before Donald Trump made its use increasingly blatant. 

We are, of course, used to BS in advertising. Indeed, I’m sure in some language advert & BS are synonyms. Over the decades we’ve individually and as a society developed mental defences against the exaggerated and (when they can get away with it) bogus claims of advertisers and discount most of what they say about any particular product or service. The good question is why do they continue to bullshit us if they know we discount it? Part of the answer rests with us – because we expect them to lie to us, if a company just told us the plain (unexciting) facts about a product we’d still discount it and be even less likely to buy it. So, bullshitting doesn’t ‘work’ but NOT bullshitting is an even worse option. 

Until relatively recently if a politician was caught to rights in a lie, they would initially deny it and then (generally) confess – often with some added BS to smokescreen things – and then, hopefully for them, we’d either forget about it or something would come up to distract the public. Being caught in a scandal – often presaged with a period of lying/bullshitting - would normally end a politician’s career at least temporarily. Today the playing field has shifted. Not only do politicians lie – as they always have – but now they lie more frequently and FAR more blatantly. As always, they use ‘political speech’ to say things in certain ways (often so that they can’t be accused of actually lying) but today the use of “alternative facts” - AKA bullshit of the 1st order – has taken things to a whole new level. When you can stand up and tell people not to believe their own eyes but to believe only what a politician SAYS is happening you know we’re no longer in Kansas. The problem – for us not them – is that far too many people either believe the bullshit or ignore it as irrelevant. Facts and actual truth (yes, it does exist) are no longer seen as important or relevant, at least not compared to other things. In a lot of ways this is OUR fault (and not just the politicians who spout this stuff or the media who reports (or ‘reports’) it. Politicians today know that they can get away with blatant lies because, even at the ballot box, there are no real consequences. When they’re caught in a lie they can simply deny it, attack their accuser, throw up smoke screens and 100 other deflections. Even when, much against their better judgement, they are forced to apologise everyone knows – including the person making the apology – that its far from sincere. Even if, in the very rare occasion it happens, someone is forced to resign over an issue you can bet that they’re back onboard their particular political gravy train in quick order. 

This was an interesting read despite the fact that I agreed with the author quite a bit – which usually means the book bored me (not true in this case). As an Economics journalist he’s had his fair share of bullshit to work through and has struggled through his whole career to understand WHY politicians and others use it knowing that we know what they’re doing and that they know that we’re discounting much of what they say. There’s lots of insight into the use of language – especially of the political type – and how we detect when people are bullshitting us. There’s also the sad truth that said bullshitting isn’t going away anytime soon. Although this was written 7 years ago now (so has only taken me 6 years to get around to) I really don’t think we’ve hit PEAK bullshit just yet. I do wonder (and hope against hope) when we’ll all get royally sick of it? Recommended.