It’s not time for some game theory, it’s time for some Gene Sharp. Rather than attempting to rebut each argument, writes Crowe, opposition activists must first choose their goal: It’s the political equivalent of a bed of nails, where the sheer number spreads the pressure out so that no single outrage can stab you and give you tetanus. How? Because he presents too many targets for his opponents to get any purchase against a single one, and they exhaust themselves. But because Trump generates as many outrages in a day as most politicians do in a year, his political career stays alive. But Trump has elevated rapid-fire lying to angry mobs to heights not seen in presidential politics since the days of George Wallace.Ĭanadian historian and blogger Jonathan Crowe writes that the Trumpian strain of Gish Gallop is particularly pernicious:ĭonald Trump’s variant of the Gish Gallop substitutes weak arguments with scandals and outrage, any one of which would normally be a political career-ender. Trump is not the first politician to use it effectively, and he probably won’t be the last. The Gish Gallop is an effective debating technique when used in front of laypeople who don’t know the facts, or believers who simply don’t care. In July 2016, Steven Andrew (“DarkSyde”) wrote in the Daily Kos that Donald Trump, then the Republican nominee, had perfected the Gish Gallop, “leaving media overwhelmed in trying to correct his many whoppers”: (From 2011, here’s an example of a climate-science Gish Gallop.) Scott did not engage in unstructured public “debates” with creationists, preferring instead written debates that allow “the opportunity for documentation and references, impractical in oral debates.” (He was at one time the vice president of the Institute for Creation Research.) The American anthropologist Eugenie Scott, who was for many years the director of the National Center for Science Education, coined the term “Gish Gallop” in the 1990s to describe the “presentation of misconception after misconception” in public forums. Trump, with outright lies.) The technique is named for Duane Gish (1921-2013), who managed, despite having earned a PhD in biochemistry from UC Berkeley, to define himself as a Young Earth creationist. This fallacious tactic seeks to drown an opponent “in a flood of individually weak arguments.” (In the case of Donald J.
Then there’s the Gish Gallop, also known as “proof by verbosity,” “ baffle them with bullshit,” or, latterly, the “Trump Tirade. In debate strategy, there are assertions, counter-assertions, framing, reframing, rebuttals, and undermining.
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