Such a flagrant disregard for truth displays contempt for the citizenry of a republican democracy. But, as Putin suggests, it works nicely for power’s purposes. The impulse to destroy what displays contempt, to throw caution to the wind, explains why so many wish to take their chances on breaking up the Republican political establishment. To his supporters, Trump offers hope of either taking over the GOP or blowing it up for something better.

Not that Trump appears to care deeply about truth or love democracy. He merely took over the bull session and won the contest. Now he runs it, having proven his dominance.

This is the tough guy who skipped the war in Vietnam because of an alleged bone spur in his foot—the same ailment that didn’t stop Joe DiMaggio from playing a pretty good game of baseball. For a time, the GOP establishment really was scared of him, and it came late to challenge him for fear of his usual scathing Twitter retaliation, splashed through the media the next morning, probably with some colorful insult, which millions would be repeating with a chuckle. For Trump is an insult ace, no doubt about it. The quick, disproportional comeback, vague enough not to be easily answered (“low energy”) but nevertheless funny (“low energy”). But why do insults that stick count as a win with the GOP audience? How are he and his audience simpatico in their scorekeeping? According to linguist George Lakoff, the contest primes the “strict father model” of morality.[19] In a world governed by personal responsibility and discipline, those who win deserve to win. But electoral competition is a contest. So “insults that stick are seen as victories—deserved victories.” “In strict conservative eyes, that makes him a formidable winning candidate who deserves to be a winning candidate.” Winners win—and so Donald Trump is a political winner.

1. On how this works, see Jerry Useem’s “Why It Pays to Be a Jerk.”

2. https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/assclown.

3. CEO of Sharper Image Jerry Levin explained: “We literally sold almost no steaks”; it was a “bad business idea” and a mere “exercise in branding.” The Sharper Image made significant money only because people would enter the store having seen Trump’s picture posted (which Trump had insisted on) and buy other products.

4. “Is Ted Cruz Really an Awful, Terrible Jerk?”

5. “How to Win an Election.”

6. http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/01/28/upshot/don ald-trump-twitter-insults.html?_r=0.

7. Sarah Palin suffers from a comparable condition, though insofar as her speeches (e.g., her Trump endorsement) can be reconstructed as slam poetry, her ass-clownery may have something of a method.

8. Harry Frankfurt, On Bullshit (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2005), p. 34.

9. G. A. Cohen, “Complete Bullshit,” in Finding Oneself in the Other (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013), p. 97.

10. Frankfurt, On Bullshit, p. 17.

11. Ibid., p. 36.

12. On the depth of bullshit in academic life, see G. A. Cohen’s “Complete Bullshit.”

13. To pause for psychoanalysis: Could Trump’s obsession with money be tied to, or an expression of, a childhood fascination with playing with shit, the first thing a child produces? Sándor Ferenczi, Freud’s disciple, would say so.

14. See Aaron James, Assholes: A Theory, pp. 74–76.

15. http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/nicole-hemmer/arti cles/2016-03-15/donald-trump-is-conning-america-with-his-lies.

16. That’s probably also true of the pathological liar, though he’s still trying to deceive people. The pathological bullshitter isn’t necessarily trying to get others to believe anything; he can know his audience understands the nature of his performance.

17. Putin is “the ultimate political performance artist” whose self-described main skill is “to get people—in this case the Russian people, his audience(s)—to see him as what they want him to be, not what he really is,” especially as “the ultimate Russian action man, capable of dealing with every eventuality.” This is according to Russia experts Fiona Hill and Clifford Gaddy in their excellent character study of Mr. Putin (Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution Press, 2015). Dr. Hill also happens to be a world-class asshole expert, having encountered a few during her time in government. She helped me immensely in writing Assholes: A Theory.

18. There’s also such a thing as “ideology” in world history, according to the Frankfurt School (no relation to Harry Frankfurt) and perhaps G. W. Hegel. This is collective bullshit of world-historical proportions, but more than mere bullshit, because it finally upends the power of those who produce it (e.g., liberal democracy is at first a rationalization of capitalism, but then overtakes it).