I don’t recall Frankfurt making this point, but bullshit functions as a mechanism to destabilize context. When you are being precise in your rhetoric and paying appropriate attention to true/false distinctions, it’s much harder to be taken out of context.

He only talks context once, “[the bullshitter] does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it. He is prepared to fake the context as well, so far as need requires”

Thinking of it as yet again we descend into an tedious analysis of whether Trump ever called Covid a hoax. Meaningless question. He drops words like “hoax” into bullshit the way a terrorist might drop poison into water supply, as a general flavoring added to a developing gestalt.

Here’s Frankfurt again: “[The bullshitter’s] focus is panoramic rather than particular. He does not limit himself to inserting a certain falsehood at a specific point, and thus he is not constrained by the truths surrounding that point or intersecting it.” http://www2.csudh.edu/ccauthen/576f12/frankfurt__harry_-_on_bullshit.pdf

It is disingenuous to pretend that he is being generally precise enough to match qualifiers and claims. It’s a stream of resonant phrases that could be in almost any order. His audience is clearly listening for sentiment cues not clear arguments. It is sentiment steganography.

Did he make the precise claim that Covid is a hoax? He never makes precise claims of any sort. He just lets loaded words like “hoax” hang in the air, creating a general drift of commitment. The “panorama” he painted over weeks and months was of skepticism of the pandemic.

Don’t analyze his words. Analyze the effects. Eg: a supporter:

‘“It’s a hoax. There’s no pandemic. As Trump said, how many millions die of flu?” said the 56-year-old truck driver outside the early voting station in St Joseph, Missouri.’ https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/03/donald-trump-base-stays-loyal-president-fights-covid-19

Persuasion is not about making clear arguments to make people adopt specific beliefs. It’s about creating the right panoramic background of doubt and certainty in context given their belief predispositions, that they reach conclusions you want and behave as you need them to.

In late February and early March, Democrat-leaning population-centers on social media were beginning to worry, and two groups: media (all of it) and Trump, were downplaying threat as overwrought. Trump was fomenting a general skepticism of anything blue cities took seriously.

It’s insulting to argue about the precise logic of bullshit being deployed by someone with clear FUD intentions that had no intention of coherent argumentation, only unambiguous behavioral effects.

Count the damn masks. And tell me this group took Covid seriously on 9/26.

Throughout the early days, the 2 democrat politicians I was listening to, Newsom and Garcetti, were both doing careful and serious daily briefings. Very little they said could be taken out of context. Right or wrong, it wasn’t bullshit. They played it straight. It wasn’t hard.

On the other coast, Cuomo delayed and made some tragic tactical errors, and paid for some early genuine confusions about how the virus worked, but again didn’t stream bullshit designed to sow skepticism about the reality and seriousness of the threat.

Biden is in many ways like Trump (and unlike Garcetti or Newsom). He’s not a naturally precise speaker or thinker. He too is a bit of a bullshitter. But his bullshitting comes across as hair-trigger emotionalism. Not cynically calculated demagoguery.

He lacks charisma. He can’t paint sentiment panoramas. He can’t create general moods of skepticism. You’ll get a vague sense of what he believes and a clear sense of what he’s mad/happy about, but you won’t go where he’s pointing, to the extent he’s pointing consistently at all.

In general, people who think careful use of language is an effete mark of elite weakness don’t deserve careful analysis of their own words. Only of the cumulative effect of those words over time, on general sentiment and behavioral dispositions. Because that’s all they intend.

Ie if your attitude is “fuck nuance” be prepared to be judged on broad contours and evidence of strategic intent, not the details you clearly don’t care about. https://kieranhealy.org/files/papers/fuck-nuance.pdf

There’s a syndrome here you could call “stochastic offense, deterministic defense.” When his bullshit works, oh my, he’s a master manipulator illusionist magician beating the elites at their own word games and owning the libs. When it fails “he was taken out of context!”

Trump apologist trolls like Scott Adams do this a lot. When it works for them, they are masters of postmodern subjectivist solipsism, deftly weaving bullshit force fields. The only way they can be “taken” at all is “out of context.”

When the bullshit blows back, whine and moan.