B.S.

[tijd]

В книге маститого философа Гарри Франкфурта "On bullshit" дается всестороннее философское определение этого понятия.
http://www.cc.com/video-clips/zz9jnz/the-daily-show-with-jon-stewart-harry-g--frankfurt

It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing bullshit requires no such conviction. A person who lies is thereby responding to the truth, and he is to that extent respectful of it. When an honest man speaks, he says only what he believes to be true; and for the liar, it is correspondingly indispensable that he considers his statements to be false. For the bullshitter, however, all these bets are off: he is neither on the side of the true nor on the side of the false. His eye is not on the facts at all, as the eyes of the honest man and of the liar are, except insofar as they may be pertinent to his interest in getting away with what he says. He does not care whether the things he says describe reality correctly. He just picks them out, or makes them up, to suit his purpose.



В качестве примера искусства bullshit со стороны изгнанного Билла О'Райли Slate приводит то, как он освещал тему расследования российского вмешательства.

Repeatedly, O’Reilly insisted that while Russia was a story, so too were the actions of Susan Rice. Both were “big political allegations,” said O’Reilly. “Whether the Trump campaign colluded with Russia. Whether Susan Rice was spying on the Trump campaign and transition team to hurt them. Answers to both of those questions haven’t been provided. They must be.” Some sensible viewers might have appreciated that O’Reilly had at least acknowledged that the Russia story was real; at least O’Reilly wasn’t outright changing the subject, as the Trump administration tried to do with the Rice accusations. But it was classic O’Reilly bullshit, of the obfuscatory variety. The host was pretending to strike a fair and balanced pose that nevertheless clouded the actual news. There is no credible way to argue journalistically that the Trump-Russia story and the Susan Rice story exist on the same plane. It’s intellectually dishonest, and O’Reilly did this sort of thing all the time.
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2017/04/bill_o_reilly_s_most_corrosive_trick_was_turning_bs_into_common_sense.html



Нападки на Сюзан Райс пока что обернулись пшиком. Стало известно, как именно эту историю придумали для попытки оправдания твитов Трампа про прослушку.

The intelligence source told me that he knows, “from talking to people in the intelligence community,” that “the White House said, ‘We are going to mobilize to find something to justify the President’s tweet that he was being surveilled.’ They put out an all-points bulletin”-a call to sift through intelligence reports-“and said, ‘We need to find something that justifies the President’s crazy tweet about surveillance at Trump Tower.’ And I’m telling you there is no way you get that from those transcripts, which are about as plain vanilla as can be.”
http://www.newyorker.com/news/ryan-lizza/the-continuing-fallout-from-trump-and-nuness-fake-scandal

Между тем Билл О'Райли - не единственный, кто на днях лишился работы. Из министерства юстиции уходит Мэри Маккорд, которая надзирала над расследованием ФБР.



The Justice Department official who is leading the government’s investigation into potential collusion between President Donald Trump’s campaign and the Russian government will step down next month. Mary McCord, who has served as acting assistant attorney general for national security since October, informed DOJ employees this week that she will be leaving in mid-May, a spokesman confirmed to POLITICO.
http://www.politico.com/story/2017/04/20/top-doj-cyber-official-to-leave-post-next-month-237427