America is a rhetorical republic. Our people are united not by ethnicity, institutions, territory, nor even, as is becoming evident, language, but rather by narrative – specifically, epic narrative; more specifically, Biblical epic; and more specifically still, America identifies itself nationally in terms of the grand Biblical epic of Exodus. To be sure, others have appealed to Exodus – the Voortrekkers of 19th century South Africa and the civil rights marchers of 20th century America are two neatly opposed instances – but no other great nation has modeled itself on the migration led by Moses from Egyptian servitude across the desert to the Promised Land.

If Exodus tells us who we are in general terms, the Jeremiad reminds us of certain particulars. It seeks to make us aware, and even establish as the central theme of the story, that the journey is dangerous, and that we will prevail under such harsh conditions only through absolute unity and individual self-sacrifice. It reassures us that our ideals are high – that God is on our side – but also warns that any loss of faith in them – any doubt that reliance on God alone is enough to ensure our delivery to Canaan – will be severely punished. Indeed, the journey to freedom is a test of our basic beliefs, and we will be singled out for extraordinary punishment if we waver from them. Special care must therefore be taken to identify, castigate, and ostracize backsliders and others who are less than unreservedly enthusiastic about the mission.

President George W. Bush and his administration have followed this narrative closely. September 11th threatened a new form of Egyptian servitude, and a trek into the desert (Afghanistan, then Iraq) was duly instigated to protect our freedom. Indeed, Bush turned out to mimic Moses in a great many details. Like Moses, Bush is prickly, defensive, and a poor speaker. Though Moses had only one brother, Aaron, to correct his garbled speech, Bush relies on a whole band of brothers – and a sister, if one adds Condoleezza Rice to Donald H. Rumsfeld, Richard V. Cheney, and Colin Powell. Moses gave his people the Ten Commandments, and Bush saw to it that the Patriot Act was brought down to Americans from the Hill, if not the Mountain. In tune with the Jeremiad, he regularly warns of the hazards that threaten and the monsters that lurk, and even supplemented his sermons with the more user-friendly color-coded Threat Level System of Homeland Security, which gets turned up or down in accordance with the administration’s desire for unity and discipline (as I write, the level is yellow, for “elevated,” like one's blood pressure). He loves nothing more than to mean-spiritedly hector those with the temerity to express skepticism about the wisdom of his advenure.

But in Bush’s case, there is more to all this than mere analogy. Scholars such as Sacvan Bercovitch and Perry Miller have pointed out the way in which the Puritan Jeremiad was transformed and secularized as a central public mode of political address in America. Faith in God became fidelity to America's founding principles, and criticism took the form of attributing the nation's ills to a failure to live up to our political ideals coupled with a call to renew our commitment to them. With Bush, however, secularization doesn’t enter in. Literally like Moses, not just metaphorically, Bush hears God instructing him on policy and leadership, to the apparent awe and delight of his constituents. Bush literally believes that he has been called by God to lead his people through the wilderness to the land of milk and honey, though in this version Bush marches the faithful back to the Holy Lands for the migration to end all migrations, the “end-time” of Armageddon.

The Jeremiad provides one explanation for Bush’s inability to express disappointment with the way things are turning out in Iraq. According to the Exodus-Jeremiad logic, the worse one’s suffering in the desert, the more certain one can be of God’s interest in one’s project. The hardships are provided by God expressly to test the missionaries’ faith in Him. An easy victory, in fact, would have been a disturbing indication that God was not really interested in Bush’s war. From the point of view of Bush’s fundamentalism, his horrendous record of defeat in Iraq not only offers welcome opportunities to demonstrate his and his people’s faith in their God in the face of powerful evidence that He has in fact abandoned them, but also provides confirmation that what Bush takes to be God’s voice is indeed His.

The policy implication is that nothing is going to convince Bush to change course. In his heart of hearts, he truly believes: the worse, the better.

It occurred when Clinton, on January 17, 1998, in the course of his grand jury testimony for Kenneth W. Starr’s expanded Whitewater investigation, said: “It depends on what the meaning of the word ‘is’ is.” He was answering a question as to whether he wasn’t lying when, earlier, he assured one of his top aids that “there’s nothing going on between us,” i.e., Clinton and erstwhile White House intern Monica Lewinsky, or when he told PBS newscaster Jim Lehrer that “there is no improper relationship” between Lewinsky and him.

Now, logicians distinguish three "modes" of the word “is”: the existential, the predicative, and the “is” of identity. One can say of something that it is in the sense that it exists, such as when the believer asserts that “God is” (existential). Or one can say of something that it possesses a certain property, as when the geologist states that a particular rock is reddish, light, and porous (predicative). Finally, one can say of something that it is the same as x, as when the astronomer says that Venus is the morning star or Lois Lane says that Clark Kent is Superman (identity).

But these distinctions are not what Clinton had in mind. He was concerned with the grammar of “is,” specifically its indication of the present tense and the fact that since, by the time he made his statements about Lewinsky, their sexual relationship had ended, what he said, given that it referred to the present, was strictly true. Clearly, Clinton did not say: “There was no improper relationship.” He even went so far as to implicitly admit that “if 'is' means is and never has been,” then he had lied. But, of course, as a matter of grammar, “is” doesn’t behave that way. Whether considered as simple present, active or passive, or present progressive, active or passive, Clinton’s denial that there “is” an improper relationship was, when he issued it, by all accounts true.

Even though what mattered to Clinton, so far as “is” was concerned, was grammar not modality, it’s nonetheless worth noting that the mode of “is” in question was existential. The issue was whether a sexual relationship between Lewinsky and Clinton is, whether such a relationship exists or is non-existent and by extension the question of what it means that things are, that there is something rather than nothing. And that is precisely the question that Heidegger attempts to re-assert beginning with "Sein und Zeit" (1927): the question of the meaning of being, the significance of the fact, which is more than one fact among others, that quite apart from their properties and identities, their characteristics and behavior, their origins, causes, effects, and purposes, their structures and functions, things just are.

True, Clinton raised the issue in a regrettably tawdry context, and neglected to develop it very far, but he did raise it. It is to be hoped that, among the projects of Clinton’s presidential library, some consideration is being given to furthering his legacy as a thinker of the relationship between being, or isness, and language by supporting further inquiry into these questions.

MySpace.com is a web-based communications network featuring software tools that enable its members to create “profiles” of themselves, that is, public personae, not only in the form of verbal information but also by means of a variety of expressive media such as digital images, video, and music. Indeed, the sheer act of presenting (or representing) oneself is a central activity of MySpace members. In addition to profiling themselves, however, members may also attract other members, who become their “friends,” and contact friends already in their network. Contact takes the form of posting commentary and testimonia on profiles (which are retained or deleted at the profiler’s discretion), which may then be commented on in turn by the profiler or others. The effect is to bring into being a “community” – if that is the right term – that is powerfully centered on individuals and their performance, through the expressive media available to them, of their own personalities. There is nothing necessarily “confessional” about this, though the occasional confession may take place; the atmosphere is more akin to the theatrical: what matters are the style, the stance, the intensity, and attraction of the personalities who appear to one another. Because the performances of their identities are “witnessed,” albeit virtually, by others, the question of who one is has as much to do with the opinions of others as with the raw data of one’s own profile. Seeing and being seen, in other words, or what the social interaction design theorist Adrian Chan characterizes as “presence” – presence constituted through the participation of witnesses who form judgments and comment on what they see – is what matters.

What sort of a “space” is MySpace, then? Some have pointed out that it is not a public space, because the kind of talk that goes on in it is anything but rational deliberation aimed at reaching a consensus on a matter of common concern. (When I asked my 16-year-old daughter whether anyone on MySpace discussed politics, she looked at me in silence but with an expression of grave concern for my mental well-being.) But this is to invoke an overly narrow conception of public space and its value.

For a more expansive perspective, we can turn to the insights of Hannah Arendt, one of the few truly original political philosophers of the last century. For her, the point of establishing a public space is to enable the experience of freedom and the appearance of individual distinction. Freedom – that is, spontaneous, creative, unscripted activity in speech or deed – is possible to the extent that purely instrumental enterprises, activities that are valuable and meaningful only because they contribute to the achievement of a pre-established goal, are excluded. That exclusion is in large part what constitutes a public space. The participants in a public space come together for the sheer intrinsic pleasure of interacting with one another – seeing and being seen. Since nobody is in charge, there are neither leaders nor followers, but only peers who are at the same time actors and who might, if they are sufficiently impressive, become leaders of a sort and for a time. What matters here is the quality of an actor’s performance, above all his performance of his identity. That, of course, is a matter of taste, an aesthetic judgment, and Arendt insisted that the kind of commentary appropriate to what goes on in public is closer to literary criticism – how does this or that strike us, what does it mean? – than to the application of universal principles in accordance with the rules of rational argumentation.

To a great extent, this is the world of MySpace. Undoubtedly, there are many members who are more concerned with blending in than standing out, and so have little interest in what Arendt characterized as the “fiercely agonal spirit” that dominated what was for her the exemplary public space of the ancient Athenian polis. Nevertheless, agonism is very much on offer in the drive towards self-display, to distinguish oneself from others, to be noticed, to attract an audience, and to do so, again, in freedom – in a non-regulated environment where the only authority is that constituted momentarily by the expressed judgments of witnesses, such that whatever consensus might temporarily be achieved could be undermined at any time by the introduction of a fresh point of view.

As the digital communications theorist Danah Boyd has pointed out, it is no accident that it is young people, primarily teenagers, who have flocked to MySpace. Of course, they call what they do there “hanging out” and being “cool,” not the enactment of freedom. But perhaps they should. Their lives are, after all, profoundly characterized by the two elements that Arendt found most inimical to freedom: subjection to an external, undebatable goal, and regulation by means of rulership and rules. From school to home, this picture changes very little for today’s teenagers, for whom the steady parental and political drumbeat to organize their entire lives according to the imperative of enhancing their future marketability must be very close to unbearable.

Readers of Arendt, however, will no doubt be thinking at this point that Arendt herself was adamant that children must be protected from the potential calamities of the public sphere and its freedom. The public sphere is, she pointed out, essentially anarchic, because no one can predict or control the consequences of what is said and done there. Who one is as a public figure depends on reputation, and a reputation can go overnight from good to bad. Adults can decide to take on the risks of appearing in public, but children need a stabler, safer, more predictable world.

If it were only a matter of reputation, we might be inclined to regard Arendt’s views on children as merely quaint. Today’s teenagers cannot avoid an education in freedom – that is, in imagination and spontaneity – for nothing less will equip them with the spiritual resources to find meaning in a cold and lonely society (certainly not Creationism or Intelligent Design). But as the news media and politicians have lately insisted, there are other dangers that come along with the freedom of expression and communication provided by sites like MySpace – though it is also clear that these dangers have been hysterically exaggerated. Education, awareness, and forms of accountability are clearly in order. But it would be a travesty if, in the name of safety and security, measures were taken to suppress the very features by means of which MySpace shelters freedom for self-assertion and self-development for a generation badly in need of it.

Last year saw the publication of Harry G. Frankfurt’s "On Bullshit" (Princeton, 2005), a tongue-in-cheek but sincere effort to articulate the concept of bullshit. Since then some spinoffs have appeared, such as Laura Penny’s "Your Call Is Important to Us" (Crown, 2005) and "Why Business People Speak Like Idiots" by Brian Fugere, Chelsea Hardaway, and Jon Warshawsky (Free Press, 2005). As these titles suggest, the focus is on bullshit that originates in the officeplace rather than the world of politics, which is unexpected to those of us for whom George Orwell’s "Politics and the English Language" (1946) is the canonical study of the subject, but is also perhaps telling.

I’m troubled by this zeal to identify bullshit because it seems to me that there probably is nothing other than bullshit. Frankfurt defines bullshit as pretending that you know what you’re talking about when in fact you don’t. But that strikes me as a good description of human communication as such. Compassion dictates that one appear confident in what one is saying. Every parent learns this early on; nothing is more terrifying to young children than the idea that they are being cared for by people who don’t really know what life is about. So one learns to mime the self-confidence that is demanded. But the rule holds for all ages. Uncertainty is disturbing, and we love to hear from those who convincingly ape a command of relevant facts and concepts. It’s all a mere mummer’s play, but we couldn’t do without it.

That the answer to “Is There Anything Besides Bullshit?” is “No” captures something important in the position expressed by the early Wittgenstein in his "Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" (1927), which held that what matters can’t be put into words, and that what can be put into words doesn’t matter. On this view, any verbal performance that is more ambitious than the sheer stating of fact (“such-and-such is the case”) is bullshit.

But – is it possible not to go beyond the facts? Doesn’t the assertion of even a purely factual statement imply a judgment that these facts and not others that might be mentioned are significant from one or another point of view? Indeed, isn't everything that we think of as “culture” and “science” and “scholarship” and “expert opinion” a matter of going beyond the facts – generalizing, inferring, postulating? Modern physics would be bullshit, on this view, to say nothing of religion, law, literature, and social science (which most of us are already prepared to acknowledge are bullshit).

To find our way in this imbroglio, we would have to define “bullshit” more carefully. It is true that everything we (really want to) say is bullshit. But not all bullshit is equal. Some bullshit goes beyond the facts in ways that are benign, and even beneficial. In these worlds, there is an ongoing contest among bullshits as to which we will accept and which we will abandon at any given moment. Here, we can even admire extraordinary bullshit artists without in any way being convinced that their bullshit is true. There is a place for such bullshitters in this world.

Other bullshit goes beyond the facts in an insidious way: by making it appear that its inferences and postulates and generalizations possess the force of facts. So, to answer the question: No, there is nothing besides bullshit, but some kinds of bullshit are worse than others, and a great deal is at stake in exposing the worst as such. On the other hand, a great deal is also at stake in recognizing the way in which, despite the difference among bullshits, everything we say is, in the end, bullshit. At a time when more and more people seem all too ready to believe that some talk is not bullshit – that some talk, for example, is the unalloyed word of (their) god – this is this lesson that seems especially urgent to learn. At the same time, however, the significant minority of relativists need to be reminded that some bullshit is deadlier than the rest, and that their very commitment to relativism enjoins them to identify this bullshit and heap scorn upon it.

On the other hand, one might say that the very idea that there is good bullshit and bad bullshit is itself bullshit.

All readers of Vladimir Nabokov are astonished by his extraordinary ear for American speech in all its varieties. In "Lolita," though, there is what appears to be a curious anomaly. On two or three occasions, Humbert Humbert informs us that he stopped at a “candy bar” to purchase sweets for Lolita. So far as I know, a candy bar is something you eat, not a place to buy candy. Is this is a slip on Nabokov’s part? In a sense, it’s impossible to say, because Humbert is the narrator and the slip might just as well (or even more plausibly) be attributed to him. Or perhaps it isn’t a slip – perhaps there are or were such places as candy bars. But it’s a usage I’ve never encountered.