Stephen Colbert and Philosophy - Aaron Allen Schiller [43]
CLINTON: Well, you know, George, I think we’ve been for the last seven years seeing a tremendous amount of government power and elite opinion basically behind policies that haven’t worked well… . Somehow elite opinion is always on the side of doing things that really disadvantage the vast majority of Americans.
STEPHEN: Sure. If you think about it, lifting the tax will increase demand and ultimately will lead to higher gas prices. But doesn’t it feel like this is going to help somebody? [text on screen: OPEC?]87
This is a very bad defense, but a great example of the kind of truthiness Colbert mocks. In discussing truthiness on that first segment of The WØRD, Colbert even uses this same tactic in calling books elitist because they are “Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true or what did or didn’t happen.”88 What makes Clinton’s defense so bad is that she dismisses the economists by lumping them into the vague notion of ‘elite opinion’ and then blames bad policies on those elites. Do we know what Krugman, Shultz, and Friedman have been saying about the various policies over the past seven years? Maybe they have been criticizing those policies too. And what policies are we talking about? Are all government policies responsible for the high gas prices, or only just some of them? Might it also be that the gas prices are not just the result of American policy, but global factors outside the control of presidents and congresspersons?
Notice also that Clinton linked elite opinion with government power. Now, I agree that we should be suspicious of those in power serving their base over the rest of us. But does all “elite opinion” couple with government power? Economists don’t always agree and both the right and left have economists on their side. Many economists call their shots one by one without joining a political team. And many other kinds of elite opinion may advise those in government power without having an agenda at all. Should we think that surgeons advising healthcare regulations might try to promote unnecessary surgeries because of their closeness to Big Scalpel? It looks like she’s trying to tie any elite opinion with the authoritarian Bush administration. And hey, wait a minute! Isn’t the Senator from New York and former First Lady a part of the government establishment herself? When we consider it rationally, Clinton’s defense of her proposal allegedly pandering to the angry consumer is itself pandering to angry citizens.
But perhaps Clinton is not very interested in pursuing truth anyway. Perhaps she’s more interested in spewing a type of bullshit. Harry G. Frankfurt, professor emeritus of philosophy at Princeton University, started a line of inquiry with his celebrated 2005 essay “On Bullshit.” Frankfurt goes to some lengths to show that even a liar has an implicit respect for the truth. A liar must think there is a truth to lie about and thinks he knows the truth when he is lying. Liars and truth-tellers are both truth-oriented:
One who is concerned to report or to conceal the facts assumes that there are indeed facts that are in some way both determinate and knowable.89
In contrast, a bullshitter is indifferent to the truth. The bullshitter doesn’t have his eye on the facts at all. The bullshitter just wants to get away with what he is saying for whatever his purpose is. What he says may be true, may be false. A student who’s just trying to pass the test may bullshit through an exam only