Trump’s Gish Gallop

Duane Gish was an outspoken, publicity-loving creationist who happened to be a trained scientist.  For years, he milked the lecture circuit, often in ersatz ‘debates’ with practicing scientists who defended evolution (and who put an easy buck and fringy fame before self-respect, rather like the Stanley Fish/Dinesh D’Souza travelling dog-and-pony show of the same era).  Gish also wrote ‘books,’ the selling of which was a prime motivator for his live events.

People who paid attention to such sideshows noticed that Gish’s performances had both a distinct script and a distinct rhetorical strategy.  Actually, the strategy was the script.  Gish would talk non-stop, lobbing unsubstantiated ‘fact’ after outright lie (scientifically speaking), changing topics rapidly to avoid answering arguments or questions, repeating pet examples and catch phrases, sprinkling his patter with ad hominem attacks.  Neither his debate opponents nor journalists exiled into covering Gish could keep up.  Before one spurious assertion could be refuted, seven others would be raised. 

This strategy became known as ‘the Gish Gallop.’ 

Duane Gish, evolution opponent, 1921-2013.

For months, I’ve been wondering how Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump gets away with his barrages of lies, overstatements, evasions, insults, and contradictions . . . why interviewers don’t call him on his prevarications and why opponents don’t fight back effectively.  The answer?  Trump has perfected the Gish Gallop.  Moreover, he has adapted it to social media through incessant tweeting and retweeting of anything he finds useful, hurtful, controversial, or outrageous enough to yet again dominate a news cycle, of which there may be three or four per day. 

One reason Duane Gish’s strategy worked, years ago, was that he did have a simple core message: Evolution is a hoax/lie/calumny on the human race.  His rhetorical chumming deflected counter-arguments and sent opponents scurrying to refute the tangential points he would toss out willy-nilly.  It’s harder to identify Donald Trump’s core message.  Despite the stupid and expensive seed hats, it seems to be less ‘Make America Great Again’ than ‘I’ll Make America Great Again Because I’m Great.’ 

Chumming: the practice of throwing morcelized baitfish or innards into the water to attract (and then catch) big fish.  Trump does this by tossing tasty, ratings-raising bait-bites to the press, thus distracting and catching them and dominating yet another news cycle.

As far as I know, Trump has no position on evolution (although, as a self-professed Bible-toting Presbyterian, he should follow that denomination’s acceptance of evolution as consistent with belief in God).  He does, however, deny climate change and believe that autism is caused by vaccines; during the Ebola epidemic, he advocated stopping all flights from Africa and not allowing any infected U.S. citizens to receive treatment here.  One concludes that although Trump may not (yet) be onboard with Gish’s signature issue, he’s a fellow traveler in the netherworld of consensus-science denial.

And a happy camper in other netherworlds.  Such as wingnut conspiracy theory-land.  And white-supremacist grievance territory.  And America-firsterismopolis.  Mix in a childishly Manichean worldview in which people and institutions and policies are either ‘good’ or ‘bad’ depending on whether or not they are ‘nice’ to Trump (one supposes ‘nice’ means supporting or flattering or agreeing with) or ‘unfair’ (which evidently means disagreeing or asking hard questions or most terribly, making fun of him).  Add a generous helping of cartoonish 1980s morality in which wealth and ‘winning’ equal virtue, and it’s ‘being authentic’ to do or say whatever offers momentary gratification. And you’ve got galloping Trump, 2016 edition.

And just plain bizarre conflation, like blaming the Chinese for global warming, I guess.  Thanks Obama.

Unlike hamstrung Duane Gish, who had to keep navigating self-generated flak to return to his evolution-bashing agendum, Trump – by not having clearly-defined issues -- can charge through interviews and press conferences, kicking up obfuscatory shitstorms because he has so many steaming piles of shit to kick. 

As we plod through the summer and autumn, be prepared for Trump’s Gish Gallop to reach Triple Crown proportions.  It’s up to us, (and, yes, the media, some members of which seem hesitantly ready to step up to the plate) to identify, counter, avoid, resist – better yet, just stop – the stampede.  Or the deadly elephant walk (see upcoming blog!).