The Truth About Lies

Michael Harmon
Bullshit.IST
Published in
4 min readFeb 27, 2017

Well helloooooow America! It’s a new day, right? A new year(ish), too, huh? So I’m looking for a resolution and BAM! It hits me. Become a Bullshitist@bullshit.ist! It’s got everything, right? It’s all about image, baaybeee! No messy solutions or deconstruction or Red/Blue anything, just pure, smooth calling out the BS. Perfect for a high cyclic rate spewer like myself. Been flirting with meaning waaay too long, now. Time to stop trying to find the answer and take a stand against… well, everything.

So where to start? Calling it out or straight BSing, either way it’s a fine line, right? So, the best of both worlds, I say! Fire with fire, BS with BS! Bullshit.ist’s banner boasts “we are going to cut ourselves on the edge.” Oh, yeah? I vow to KILL myself on the edge! Top that! (Okay, okay, may take a while, you know, death of a thousand cuts, but I digress.)

So what’s my target? Politics? Naw… too last January. Globalism? World Peace? The coming Apocalypse? Naw… too much, like, well, thinking. Oh no, I have to get right to the heart of things. Go to the source, yank back the veil of darkness and reveal the utter VOID behind it! Uh-huh. I’m going after bullshit itself! Drop myself a nuclear bomb where one bullet would suffice! What better (read easier) target for my BS than the center of the BS universe; the self-immolating paradox of kicking a walking Achilles heel while it’s down! (This is going to be EPIC!)

So, gotta start big, right? Splashy headline. Take the high ground and start digging. Pile the BS so deep it’ll take a backhoe just to read it. “Bullshit is God and I’m the Devil!” Nah, to blunt. “BS is my BFF so RBTL how much it STBU” Nah, too much Googling for the old people. Wait a sec. I’m confusing BS with flaming again. Oh, I know! I’ll do the opposite. I’ll pump bullshit’s cred to the MAX and show how weak its underbelly is by contrast. Okay, okay, I got it. “Bullshit Saved Me From Myself.” Or maybe “Bullshit: the Truth About Lies!” Oooo, I like that one.

Okay, what next? Need some filler. Something to catch the eye, some gaudy fluff, true BS, literary Bread and Sircuses! Here we go:

We bullshitists know the the Truth about lies: They are not true! Oh sure, you say. True enough, but tautological. (Nice. See that? Big word nobody knows put smack dab in the mouths of everybody reading this drivel. Tautological: rain is wet. True, but meaningless. But that’s the beauty of BS, Watch:) Right! But compared to what? (Whoah! Double blind BS coup. Planted it, called it, and neither of us knows what the hell “it” is. Dang, should have saved that for the last.) Compared to the Evil Corporate Media BS, that’s what! (Hat trick! Tag word, segue, hook.)

Yes, what is true is what people believe to be true, not what actually exists outside of our own warped perceptions. (Boilerplate BS) And the media is so full of lies (toxic BS) that have now become truths that something has got to give, right? Either civilization as we know it devolves under a mushroom cloud of Orwellian (Or is it Huxlian? Doesn’t matter, because BS.) doublespeak or do we take arms against a sea of troubles? (Bard Suicide as solution reference: Classic highbrow BS!) We take arms is what! We embrace the sanctuary, the bedrock reliability, the timeless tradition of surgically targeted bullshit to combat Corporate Media LIES!!! Fire with fire!

In the spirit of satirist martyrs everywhere (RIP Jon Stewart) we must conquer the lies, not with reason, not with facts, not with the mere truth, but with the truth as it COULD be; with the larger-than-life-force of unadulterated distortion that only bullshit can deliver. We must call high-octane, K Street think tank bullshit with main-street, hyper-hipster super-hero-(whine) bullshit! We must wrest humanity from the iron-fisted grip of our capitalist overlords with the same semantic magic that has sustained Los Angeles from the very beginning. We must bullshit our way to power, to greatness, to FREEDOM! (Too much with the caps? No?)

Okay, I think my manic phase is tailing off. Need to wrap it up. (God, I hate my meds.)

So, America. This is my pledge to you. I will strive to inspire all I meet to join me in my crusade of truth through galling contrast of bullshit. I swear to endeavor to undertake us out from under the enslavement of the lies and corruption of the real world to a place where what is is subject to review, and what should never be is left to its own devices! Indeed, I vow before God and country to work tirelessly to insure my eventual heroic death at the hands of cutting edge bullshit, or die trying!

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