Together, we can all keep Trump accountable and maintain some sense of sanity in the process. Maintaining reality and defending the truth takes energy, but it’s worth the effort if we want to avoid wading into an Orwellian future. Facts can only give way to lies if we allow it. Avoid getting into energy-zapping comment section feuds with strangers, but if your Aunt Muriel shares an inaccurate story about the dangers of Islam, kindly point her in the right direction. While supporting credible media outlets is a good start, we should all be questioning claims that sound untrue. Step 2: Become fact checking’s biggest fan. NBC’s Chuck Todd did a good job of this when Kellyanne Conway offered up “ alternative facts.”
Drown out all the little lies by hammering down on one clear, concise counter argument. Now we need to take a few pointers from seasoned debaters: Answer (1 of 3): A Gish Gallop is a debate tactic where you fire off so many specific arguments and examples so quickly, without regard for accuracy, that the opponent is overwhelmed and has no time to respond, and therefore it'll look like they lost the debate. Acknowledging it exists is the first step, which you’ve already accomplished if you’ve read this far. Luckily, we aren’t defenseless against this tactic. It’s easy to see how reporters and readers alike can get overwhelmed. For instance, it takes one sentence to claim Trump has no business conflicts, but how much research and thoughtful reporting does it take to prove that he does? By the time you’re done reading a story about his entanglements, Trump has likely already rattled off a dozen other lies that all need disproving. Failing to disprove just one of those lies renders the truth-seeker’s argument essentially worthless even if they’ve proven dozens of other claims to be false.īut at its most basic level, the Gish Gallop method comes down to time. The responsibility to disprove all of those falsehoods falls on the liar’s opponent, which takes momentum away from their own argument and places all of the focus on upholding facts. To the spectator unfamiliar with this strategy, the interlocutor’s inability to accurately respond to all the claims in the given time is fallaciously seen as a win for the Gish Galloper or. Otherwise known among expert debaters as “spreading,” the Gallop tactic capitalizes on mankind’s imperfect reasoning abilities by dispersing several false claims, Quartz reports. A Gish gallop is a rhetorical technique that involves overwhelming the opponent with as many arguments as possible, with no regard for the accuracy, validity, or relevance of those arguments. Named after biochemist-slash-creationist Duane Gish who mastered it during the evolution debates of the 1980s and 1990s, the Gish Gallop method involves putting your opponent in the awkward position of having to refute everything you say.