I used to work with a guy who liked to say “you can’t bullshit a man with a turd in each back pocket”. It’s, well, the sort of thing male salespeople say when surrounded by male salespeople.
But I would suggest you can definitely bullshit bullshitters. But you can’t do it without them wondering if something is up. We–and I include myself here, since I may vary the truth on occasion for mild and unimportant reasons that happen to be convenient–understand how, why, and when people say things that are not true. And when those conditions are met, we pay extra attention.
But the EVIDENCE is not always there. And for myself, I have learned that I very certainly tend to be more distrustful than most situations warrant. As I told someone today, though, sometimes my paranoia pays off.
The naive, though, don’t even look.
If I might continue the shit metaphor, and perhaps give Freudians some hope their bad ideas are not fully empty and pointless, SEAL founder Roy Boehm commented in his biography that he wanted sinners for his Teams, since people who are not sinners can “rationalize a turd in a drinking fountain”. For whatever reason that line has always stuck with me, as has his story about having a friend snatched from his arms by a shark.
All of us need a little sinner in us. It’s not useful or good to be so compulsive that the idea of breaking rules triggers panic attacks. You can terrorize anyone into consistent behavior. That does not make them good people, and it certainly does not make them reliable people, in any sense outside rote conformity.
Me, I’m definitely also a bit of a fuckup. That means I get along great with average people from all walks of life. I can walk into nearly any bar in this country and feel at home. The only places I don’t like are overpriced rich people bars. I know where they are. I just don’t go to them. The conversations bore me. Trust me, it’s a lot more fun in places where people are meeting life at its basic level.