The
Gish Gallop, named after creationist Duane Gish, is the debating
technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of half-truths,
lies, and straw-man arguments that the opponent cannot possibly
answer every falsehood in real time. The term was coined by Eugenie
Scott of the National Center for Science Education.
A Gish Gallop involves spewing so much
bullsh*t in such a short span on that your opponent can’t address
let alone counter all of it. To make matters worse a Gish Gallop will
often have one or more 'talking points' that has a tiny core of truth
to it, making the person rebutting it spend even more time debunking
it in order to explain that, yes, it's not totally false but the
Galloper is distorting/misusing/misstating the actual situation. A
true Gish Gallop generally has two traits.
- The factual and logical content of the Gish Gallop is pure bullsh*t and anybody knowledgeable and informed on the subject would recognize it as such almost instantly. That is, the Gish Gallop is designed to appeal to and deceive precisely those sorts of people who are most in need of honest factual education.
- The points are all ones that the Galloper either knows, or damn well should know, are totally bullsh*t. With the slimier users of the Gish Gallop, like Gish himself, its a near certainty that the points are chosen not just because the Galloper knows that they're bullsh*t, but because the Galloper is deliberately trying to shovel as much bullsh*t into as small a space as possible in order to overwhelm his opponent with sheer volume and bamboozle any audience members with a facade of scholarly acumen and factual knowledge.
I recently became aware that this was a
recognized technique in a comment about the Obama – Romney debate,
perhaps it does explain the glazed look in Obama's eyes!
It seems to me that the Harper Caucus
has been made aware of this technique and are secretly training their
key ministers so that they are ready to answer questions in the
House, or perhaps its just the regime's script writers that are fully
versed in its use? The technique seems to have been adapted to
encompass the release of public information, committee hearings,
advertising and even legal proceedings!
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