With apologies to Immanuel Kant.

What does the Flatland model tell us about the success of Donald Trump?

First, we understand that bullshit is ubiquitous in human affairs as explained in the third essay. This is especially true in politics, where every assertion illustrates motivated reasoning (or motivated cognition = bullshit). The content of the bullshit is unimportant, but the bullshit must be plausible (see below).

What is important is that the bullshit must resonate positively with those evaluating it. Hillary's bullshit resonates with her supporters and Bernie's bullshit does not. And vice versa. This is entirely a social (group) phenomenon (review the third essay).

There is no difference in kind between Hillary's assertions and Trump's assertions—it's all bullshit.

However, there is a difference in the attitude of the bullshitter. Trump's bullshit is pure in the sense that he knows he's bullshitting, he's telegraphing that self-knowledge to those his bullshit resonates with, and he doesn't care. And neither do they. He's making shit up as he goes along. Arguing with Donald Trump about "facts" is entirely beside the point. Facts are weak. Bullshit is strong. This is Homo sapiens we're talking about here.

Thus Trump can (correctly) point out that everybody else in the presidential race is bullshitting too. He does that all the time. It is not sufficient to say that everything Trump says is self-serving because he would be the first to admit that. He would also be the first to tell you that everything the other candidates is self-serving too.

Long story short, in Flatland terms, Trump isn't playing fair. Everyday he breaks the rules of the game. Political bullshit is supposed to sound plausible within the bounds of already agreed-to (consensual) social realities. Trump might say X in one self-serving morning outburst, and then turn around and say not-X that same evening. Plausibility doesn't matter. Trump's bullshit is pure. He makes no attempt to hide it.

This outrages the media and other elites who run the show here in the United States. These are the people who have tried to carefully orchestrate things (albeit mostly unconsciously) so that only certain kinds of bullshit have plausibility. In so far as Trump doesn't care about plausibility. he's breaking the rules, which is very threatening to elite interests.

And because Trump is breaking the rules, he resonates with lots of disaffected Americans who believe (correctly again) that the game is rigged against them. A lot of them know that Hillary is lying to them, but Trump isn't lying to them—he's not saying anything at all, really—because his pure bullshit/reality TV approach, along with his relentless ridicule of all the other candidates, calls into question the legitimacy of our political system.

To defeat Trump, the elite mainstream media would have to ignore him. But the system is self-defeating because the media is making money hand-over-fist covering him. Psychologically, Trump's rule is simple—any coverage, good, bad or indifferent, is good for Donald Trump.

The best part of John Oliver's Trump take down was the quote from Washington Post reporter Robert Costa—"Donald Trump" is a brand. According to Costa, Trump believes his brand is worth three billion dollars. "Hopey-Changey" was a brand too, but Obama was playing the game within the rules. Trump does not.