“. . . flood the zone with shit.”

How should we respond to Trumpist falsehoods? "DOGE saved 555 billion! Aircraft accidents are caused by diversity! 38,000 people of our country died building the Panama Canal! USAID spent millions for condoms in Gaza! Ukraine caused the invasion of itself! " Should we even bother?

Mainstream media pundits tell us that effective leadership calls for teamwork, and go on to criticize the embarrassing assembly of MAGA operatives in Trump's cabinet. Pundits miss the point. Trump's not a leader, he’s a bullshitter. The clown show is deliberate, MAGA's objective is disorientation. Rather than functional policies, instead of building anything, the MAGA strategy for seizing power was spelled out by Steve Bannon in 2018: “The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit.”  

Harry G. Frankfurt On Bullshit (Princeton University Press, 2005)

In the struggle against creeping fascism, the concise treatise "On Bullshit" has assumed the importance of Thomas Paine's Common Sense. As explained by Professor Frankfurt: “One of the most salient features of our culture is that there is so much bullshit. Everyone knows this. . . But we tend to take the situation for granted. . . In consequence, we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves. . . My aim is simply to give a rough account of what bullshit is and how it differs from what it is not . . ."

On Bullshit makes clear that the bullshitter is not a mindless slob. "Is his product necessarily messy or unrefined? The word shit does, to be sure, suggest this. Excrement is not designed or crafted at all; it is merely emitted or dumped.” But most bullshit demonstrates, “thoughtful attention to detail” and requires “discipline and objectivity. . . Therefore, laxity or focus on the presentation of bullshit are not, in themselves, the essence of the genre.”  Instead, it is the “lack of connection to a concern with truth - this indifference to how things really are - that I regard as of the essence of bullshit . . . "

Professor Frankfurt goes on to emphasize "[t]he fundamental nature of bullshit” is that “it is produced without concern with the truth. . . Someone who lies and someone who tells the truth are playing on opposite sides, so to speak, in the same game. Each responds to the facts as he understands them, although the response of the one is guided by the authority of the truth, while the response of the other defies that authority and refused to meet its demands. The bullshitter ignores these demands altogether. He does not reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all. By virtue of this, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are."

We will not change the opinions of those enamored with bullshit by holding rational arguments or expressing emotional outrage. But we can't walk away, or tune out, or retreat into a small group of friends who think just like we do.  Abandoning the struggle is exactly what the elite profiteers want, to condemn us to a prison of bullshit.

The best way to respond to MAGA bullshit is by taking action, growing into a person of resistance and resilience, a radical human who puts bullshitters in their place – because by taking action we ignore their bullshit and there's nothing worse to a bully than to be ignored.

It won't be easy, it's a struggle that may take a lifetime, so the best time to start is now.

And if you want company, Parallel Polis 2030 may be the right neighborhood. It's not something to join; it's something to help create. We can live in the autonomous zone or enter for a while and then leave – whatever suits your form of activism. Somehow, we need to connect better and establish effective coalitions. The parallel polis's primarily focus is transformative and oppositional, working to stop ecological overshoot the only way possible: creating democratic structures open to everyone willing to create the nonviolent power necessary to shut down the carbon state.