Do they think we don't know bullshit when we hear it?

Remember our definition of  "bullshit": language that doesn't care whether what it's saying is true or false because the only objective is to affect perception? Here's another pile, this time from our good friends at the Organization of the Islamic Conference, which met this week in Islamabad, Pakistan.

Apparently on Sept. 11, 2001, while we were mourning thousands violently dead at Muslim extremist hands, Muslim foreign ministers were witnessing something even more horrific: the birth--on that very date!--of a "campaign of calumny against Muslims" in the U.S. and Europe and the beginning of an "Islamophobic terror." Oh, I almost forgot: the Madrid and London bombings also exacerbated the "deliberate defamation of Islam and discrimination and intolerance against Muslims," which has assumed "xenophobic" proportions. "The linkage of terrorists and extremists with Islam in a generalized manner is unacceptable," the foreign ministers said, complaining about "the increasingly negative political and media discourse targeting Muslims and Islam in the United States and Europe."

Right now my blood pressure is about 200/95.

This, ladies and gentlemen, is textbook bullshit.

• The esteemed leaders in Islamabad have shared feelings, which cannot be contradicted.
• They have accused the U.S.--a nation nearly turning itself inside-out with efforts to not demonize Islam and Muslims--with doing that very thing. ("Xenophobic"? Look it up, assholes.)
• And they have neglected to admit their own culpability in whatever discomfort they're feeling from the U.S. and Europe: namely, that the Muslim leaders of the world have not acted to stop Muslim terrorists, vowed to stop Muslim terrorists, or even so much as denounced Muslim terrorists.

This is textbook bullshit because the point of these pronouncements was neither to tell the truth nor even to tell lies. Truth and lies have long since ceased to matter to these men. No, they spouted this bullshit because they want our perception of them to change, regardless of the truth. Bullshit is never about reality--just perception. CEOs and presidents and spouses and kids who bullshit do so because they want to be thought of in a certain way, whether that's really the way they are or not. It's so much easier, no?

Refuse to go along. Without exception. Bullshit never bodes good.