The Gish Gallop Tactic Used by Trump
The particular tactic used by trump has a name for it. Gish Gallop which is a technique, named after the creationist Duane Gish who employed it, whereby someone argues a cause by hurling as many different half-truths and no-truths into a very short space of time so that their opponent cannot hope to combat each point in real time. This leaves some points unanswered and allows the original speaker to try and claim his opponent lacks the counter-arguments.
This was introduced by a commenter named MikeyB who was commenting on the trump methodology in talking to Biden. This was no debate and it totally unregulated except for running out of time. Net time, the moderators should interfere with trumps running of the mouth with lies.
MikeyB: Well, that wasn’t pretty. Trump’s technique worked great and would have worked even if President Biden wasn’t sick. That means Trump will use it again. Here is a counter for that “debate” technique that could even turn it mercilessly back on Trump. I’ve been putting the below comment in social media to explain what happened.
“Biden stood almost no chance to win, but not because of his health.
This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.
In hindsight I see one way that might have worked to defeat Trump’s “Gish Gallop” strategy of throwing out rapid fire lies.
It is too many lies to respond to, so Biden should have stood at his podium holding up one hand and every time Trump told a lie, raise one more finger. When it was his time to speak, Biden would just say “OK, you just told x number of lies. Now let me tell you about my policy to help America”.
What would be great is if he said “Whoops, ran out of fingers”.
By the end, people would have been laughing along with him and apparently the excessive lies of Trump’s are what annoy people.
Trump refused to say what he was doing on Jan 6. He changed the subject when asked if he would honor the election, then when asked again, he waffled and said if it was fair. He didn’t answer about Ukraine. He gave a new answer to about supporting a nationwide abortion ban. All he did was lie. That is how that debate really should be judged. Even if Biden hadn’t had a cold, he would have almost certainly fared badly in that barrage of lies, but it’s about the lies.
At least with all of Trump’s lies, he sort of showed it as a battle between good and evil. The details don’t matter.”
What’s funny is I had never heard of Alinsky’s supposedly leftie Rules for Radicals until the whitie-righties got their panties in a twist over Obama, so I read it: the Gish Gallop is sucking all the air out of the room, or as Trumper Bannon puts it flooding the zone with shit. I first noticed it as a tactic with the tea baggers hijacking town halls. It’s very successful
It is like the Cheshire Cat said to Alice.
”My reality is different than yours”.
You can’t call lies things you don’t respect as real.
Suppose deplorables and teabaggers have more epistemology than Biden fans?
Paddy
Supposition, Conjecture. and Inuendo based on nothing of substance is your reality? Your reality has no foundation, the same as trumps. And there is no supposing.
paddy
no, they’re lies. particularly ugly lies.
god help us if we are ever caught in Trump’s reality.
and Bill
I agree with you, but it is dangerous to dismiss the whole thing as a result of an “unfair” debate tactic. The people want a “strong leader” who can reply to an unfair tactic and knock it down.
The people don’t know anything about policy, but evolution and experience has taught them to seek a “strong leader” who will protect them from “the other”. Tyrants have always exploited this, and anti-tyrants need to be better at the game. There is no use “explaining” policy to people unless you can project the strength they look for in a leader. It does not matter that that strength actually has nothing to do with the President’s real job…unless that real job means inspiring the people (with apparent strength) to sign on to the needed policies.
I think Biden can still do this. But he, they, we, need to focus on that and not on weak sounding explanations for why our candidate looked weak.
That said, if anyone knows what Biden was trying to say when he said “beat Medicare” I would very much like to know.