In 1986, the philosopher Harry Frankfurt published a short essay with an indelicate title and a devastating insight. In On Bullshit, Frankfurt argued that bullshit is not the same thing as lying — and is, in fact, more dangerous.
A liar knows the truth and deliberately conceals or distorts it. A bullshitter, by contrast, is indifferent to whether what he says is true or false. His concern is not accuracy but effect: persuasion, dominance, momentum, attention. Truth simply does not matter.
Three decades later, the journalist Fareed Zakaria applied Frankfurt’s framework to modern politics, most notably to Donald Trump, arguing that Trump was not best understood as a liar but as a “bullshit artist” — someone who spoke freely, confidently, and continuously without regard to factual constraint.
That analysis has aged disturbingly well. But in 2026, it is no longer sufficient to focus on Trump alone.
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From lying to bullshitting: a cultural shift
What Frankfurt anticipated — and Zakaria identified early — has become a structural feature of modern political life. Politicians are now expected to speak constantly, instantly, and decisively about matters of enormous complexity: geopolitics, economics, climate change, national security.
Silence is treated as weakness.
Uncertainty is treated as incompetence.
The result is not merely error. It is indifference to truth as a governing norm.
In this environment, bullshit has a decisive advantage. It is faster than careful analysis, more flexible than evidence-based argument, and largely immune to correction. A lie can be exposed. Bullshit simply pivots and moves on.
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Trump and Greenland: why this isn’t quite lying
Consider Donald Trump’s recurring remarks about Greenland, framed as a strategic necessity to act before Russia or China does. These statements are delivered with urgency and confidence, yet without evidence that Russia or China intends to take control of Greenland — or even that such a move is realistic in the way implied.
Is this lying?
That is a harder question than it first appears. To lie, Trump would need to know that these claims are false and assert them anyway. Frankfurt’s point is that the bullshitter does not bother to find out.
The statement functions rhetorically, not factually. It signals strength, foresight, and geopolitical seriousness. Whether it is true is beside the point — and that is precisely the danger.
This is bullshit in Frankfurt’s strict sense: speech unmoored from truth, aimed at effect.
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Canada: a cross-party problem, not a partisan one
It would be a mistake to treat this phenomenon as uniquely American, or uniquely populist. Canada is not immune — and the issue is not confined to any one political party.
To make that clear, it is worth looking briefly at the leaders of all three major federal parties.
Pierre Poilievre has built a highly effective political style around certainty and simplicity. He speaks confidently about inflation, housing shortages, crime, energy policy, and economic anxiety. Some of what he says may be accurate, some overstated, some contestable. The defining feature is not falsity but unqualified assurance. Complex systems are reduced to clear villains and obvious solutions, delivered with little acknowledgement of uncertainty, trade-offs, or incomplete information. That rhetorical certainty is powerful — and it is precisely the environment in which bullshit thrives.
Leaders who present themselves as technocratic or values-driven are not exempt. Justin Trudeau has often spoken in expansive moral or geopolitical terms — about Canada’s global leadership, values-based foreign policy, or historical momentum — that exceed what the available facts can comfortably sustain at the time they are spoken. This is not dishonesty. It is the substitution of narrative confidence for evidentiary grounding, a move that shifts attention away from what is known toward what sounds right.
Nor is this limited to the traditional governing parties. Jagmeet Singh frequently frames complex economic and social problems in stark moral terms, offering certainty about causes and remedies that outpaces the underlying evidence. Again, the issue is not bad faith. It is the temptation to speak decisively about matters that resist simple answers, because hesitation and nuance are punished in modern political discourse.
Taken together, these examples point to a broader pattern. The pressure to speak constantly, confidently, and conclusively pushes politicians of all stripes away from careful truth-seeking and toward performance. The result is not always lying. More often, it is what Frankfurt identified decades ago: speech that is indifferent to whether it is true, so long as it is effective.
This is an epistemic critique, not a partisan one. It concerns how claims are made, not which policies are preferred.
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Why bullshit is worse than lies — especially for law
Frankfurt’s most unsettling conclusion is that bullshit is a greater enemy of truth than lies are. Liars still acknowledge the authority of facts, even as they violate it. Bullshitters do not.
For lawyers, judges, arbitrators, and anyone whose work depends on evidence and credibility, this is not an abstract concern. Legal systems assume that facts matter, that reasons can be tested, that claims can be evaluated.
Bullshit corrodes those assumptions.
When public discourse becomes saturated with confident nonsense, evidence loses authority, correction loses force, and expertise is treated as weakness. The careful speaker is disadvantaged. The bullshitter is unconstrained.
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What is actually happening
What we are witnessing in 2026 is not simply polarization or misinformation. It is an epistemic shift.
Politics is moving from a contest over what is true to a contest over who sounds convincing. The discipline of truth-seeking — of checking, qualifying, revising — is being replaced by performance.
Frankfurt warned us. Zakaria applied the warning early. We largely ignored it.
The result is a political culture in which it is increasingly difficult to tell whether a statement is false, exaggerated, careless, or simply untethered from reality — because truth itself has stopped being the point.
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A closing thought
The solution is not nostalgia, nor moral panic, nor calling everyone a liar. It is something more demanding: a renewed insistence that truth matters, even when it is inconvenient, uncertain, or incomplete.
Bullshit thrives where standards are abandoned.
It withers where facts are insisted upon.
That is as true in law as it is in politics — and it may be the most important distinction Harry Frankfurt ever asked us to make.