It is possible to build a career on bullshit in Brussels
’s Global Gateway initiative, launched on December 1st. It is a sprawling scheme that will supposedly result in €300bn of investment in infrastructure across the developing world by 2027. Diplomats compare it to the “Belt and Road Initiative”, which China uses to expand its influence. Beneath the spin lurks bullshit. It is not just the language but the content.
Anywhere politicians, journalists, wonks and lobbyists gather tends to produce a surplus of bullshit. But the’s de facto capital is especially prone to it. It is a city of great power but little scrutiny. Media attention is still focused on national capitals. Mr Frankfurt wrote that bullshit is “unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about”. In Brussels this happens every day.
Much as all models are wrong but some are useful, there is good bullshit and bad bullshit. All bullshitters are winging it, but some get it right. At one end of the spectrum are total chancers. Onechannels into putting him on air, even though the “think-tank” he ran had a spelling error in its title, stock images for staff and existed mainly in his head.
Boredom can breed bullshit. For all the late-night suspense of conclaves of the European Council, in essence they are just long meetings to argue about revisions to a document. Diplomats who offer the juiciest bits of gossip know that their views will be reflected best. The upshot is that even the blandest summit is jazzed up for the sake of hungry hacks. Likewise, crunch points rarely crunch in the.
If bullshit can be an opportunity in Brussels, it is also a prison. “Bullshit jobs”, as the anthropologist David Graeber called them in another addition to taurascatics, are rife within the. Most officials dealing with big topics in Brussels are intelligent and diligent. Stay in Brussels long enough, however, and sad souls who are overpaid and underworked reveal themselves.
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