My Review of "On Bulls***"

On Bullshit by Harry G. Frankfurt
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

On Bulls*** is an enjoyable and quick read.
Frankfurt attempts to ascertain what Bulls*** is and why it is so prevalent these days. He compares Bulls*** to several similar concepts, such as Humbug and Hot Air. He also notes Bulls*** is different than lying, in that lying focuses on a false impression concerning a thing instead of concerning the mind of the speaker and Bulls*** makes no distinction between falsehood or truth—it is bluffing through come what may.
Here are two few of my favorite lines:
“It is impossible for someone to lie unless he thinks he knows the truth. Producing Bulls*** requires no such conviction.”
“Bulls*** is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about.”


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My review of "Our Revolution: A Future to Believe in"

Our Revolution: A Future to Believe in by Bernie Sanders
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book.
Bernie Sanders shines a light on issues, and on people, often left in the dark by our society. In this book we can see that he has a grasp on details that the media often claimed he did not. He has a thorough holistic program, ideas cohering and interlinking, it’s all very solid.
There are a few faults to this book.
One of them, was something he couldn’t really do anything about, but at a certain point talking about a billion dollars here, 80 billion dollars there, becomes almost meaningless, really important, but unless you are writing down figures and following everything through it becomes overwhelming. In fact, if I followed the math it appears he’s using the same taxes on trading in 2 different ways, but I’m not entirely sure.
Additionally, he does take a lot of material previously used (previous speeches, stuff from other media sources) and sticks them into the book, sometimes in ways that disrupts the overall narrative. Because of this, and the holistic nature of his program (which is a good thing, to be clear) there are places where his ideas and themes overlap in a way that can be repetitive.
Reading this book also helps me understand how Trump grasped some of the same issues as Bernie and made them his own, the main difference being there is no overall cohering/interlinking/holistic program behind his use of the issues, in the way there is for Bernie.


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