By Niall McLaren
In a considered piece on Tony Abbott and the Peter Slipper affair, John Lord pointed to how Abbott’s statements often appear to conflict. For example, we have his clear statement that his leadership aspirations are “dead, buried and cremated,” meaning the “Abbott era is over.” However, we now read credible reports that he may have another shot at the top job. Lord was unimpressed by Abbott’s apparent lack of principle: “This of course is just further proof that lying comes easily to him.” I want to look at this conclusion more closely.
In a recent piece, I elaborated on the idea of Bullshit as a formal, defined concept in the philosophy of science. The philosopher, Harry Frankfurt, has differentiated between lying and merely bullshitting. Lying is
“…an act with a sharp focus. It is designed to insert a particular falsehood at a specific point in a set or system of beliefs, in order to avoid the consequences of having that point occupied by the truth. This requires a degree of craftsmanship…”
The bullshit artist, on the other hand, has no regard for the truth. Bullshit he defines as an utterance which is neither true nor false, but is designed to create a particular impression in the audience.
This raises a critically important point, that any statement about the future is neither true nor false, just because it hasn’t happened. Concepts of truth and falsity don’t apply to events that haven’t happened. If I say “I will do X,” I don’t know whether X will actually happen. All I am doing is stating my intention as at the time of speaking, in order to create an impression in my audience. Ipso facto, statements about one’s future actions meet the definition of bullshit.
So let’s go to Lord’s assessment of Mr Abbott’s statements about his political ambitions: “This of course is just further proof that lying comes easily to him.” Unfortunately, that overstates the case of Mr Abbott’s honesty or lack thereof. Nobody can lie about the future; we can lie either about the past, or about our current intentions. And it is on this point that we can determine the worth or value of what Mr Abbott has to say, and by extension all politicians and all public figures. Because when a person says something about his current intentions, he will rarely say anything about how those intentions arose.
Without explicitly stating so, Mr Abbott wants us to believe that his intentions are generated by principle when in fact they are generated by expediency. In his case, expediency means saying whatever comes into his head that he intuitively recognises as (a) what his audience wants to hear and (b) that will be to his advantage. As Lord notes, Abbott is a totally political animal with very little experience of the world outside his bubble of hyperactive, self-interested politics. It is second nature to Abbott to say whatever he thinks his audience will like; that’s what he does, that’s the person he is, that’s how he got to where he is. But he’s not alone, of course: Trump, Hansen, Alex Tsipras in Greece, Clinton a lot of the time, and so many others, advance themselves by detecting and capitalising on people’s discontent.
Abbott will say whatever comes into his head that he thinks will sway his audience to his side, but he also wants his audience to believe that the stuff that he spouts is driven by principle rather than a moment to moment perception of how he is moving them. Intuitively and remarkably quickly, he detects his audience’s grievances and fears and plays to them, hoping to create in them a perception of himself as a caring, principled individual whom they can trust to deliver the goods. That’s not the case but he is not thereby guilty of lying. What he says will vary from minute to minute, depending on who is listening. Like all good politicians, he watches his audience closely, instantly detecting the signs that he has correctly divined their fears, and playing to them.
Insofar as Abbott subtly misleads his audience, he is guilty of dissimulation (“to conceal one’s true feelings and intents by pretence”) but, by Frankfurt’s definition, that’s not lying. I’d go so far as to say that at the time he says something, Abbott does feel the same firmness that I feel when I say I would never vote for him. But his firmness doesn’t last, it is driven by a need to be at one with his audience, to give them the feeling that he and they are united, albeit for a few moments. He really does feel for them when they complain about losing their jobs to off-shoring, it just doesn’t last. If he were to address the Business Council of Goanna Creek that afternoon, he might tell them the same thing, or he might tell them the exact opposite. That’s not lying, that’s working the crowd. That’s what politicians do.
So I have to disagree with Lord’s assessment. In his conflicting statements of his intentions, we cannot say that Abbott is lying. He is simply doing what he does best, bullshitting. Nixon was a liar, a serial liar. Tony Blair and George W Bush were liars, or so the Chilcott Report clearly implies. Tony Abbott, on the other hand, is so far guilty only of being a bullshit artist extraordinaire. Small stuff, really. I mean, who would believe a politician anyway?
Niall McLaren is an Australian psychiatrist, author and critic, although not necessarily in that order.
