Galloping Bullshit

 

The amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than that needed to produce it.
-- Brandolini's Law, also: The Bullshit Asymmetry Principle

I can't say I'm surprised. 

The debate was ugly right from the introductions. 

Bash and Tapper looked like they were presiding over an execution. 

Biden started out with a persistent cough and sounded like he had a cold. To be brutally honest, his age was very much on display. 

And there was Trump with what has become his trademark scowl and angry victim demeaner. 

No one was in good humor, none of them looked like they wanted to be there. 

And it didn't take long to realize The Press was going to fail democracy once again. 

I was live posting on Threads and I think my first comment thirty seconds in set the tone for the rest of the night.

The moderators went after Biden first thing. 

President Biden, inflation has slowed, but prices remain high. Since you took office, the price of essentials has increased. For example, a basket of groceries that cost $100, then, now costs more than $120. And typical home prices have jumped more than 30 percent. What do you say to voters who feel they are worse off under your presidency than they were under President Trump?

Biden's answer was predictable. He immediately put the onus on Trump, 

We’ve got to take a look at what I was left when I became president, what Mr. Trump left me...

Biden talked about the economy in freefall, the Pandemic and how Trump mishandled it, dying people, injecting bleach, etc. The economy collapsed, no jobs, unemployment at 15 percent. Terrible. 

Then Biden talked about how "we" had to put things back together again, 15,000 new jobs. 800,000 manufacturing jobs. More to be done. Working class people still in trouble. Biden mentioned he was from a working class family in Scranton, PA. Price of eggs. Price of gas. Price of housing. All those things are personal to him. And he's working hard to bring prices down, cap rents, rein in corporate greed, bring down the price of prescription drugs, cap the prince of insulin for seniors, etc. 

In addition to that, we’re in a situation where if you had to take a look at all that was done at his administration, he didn’t do much at all. By the time he left, there’s – things were in chaos, literally chaos.

That's a good answer. 

Here. On the screen. 

But Biden had something going on with his voice. A cold. An incipient cough. A frog in his throat. And even though it was a good answer, it came out feeble and weak. 

No. 

Stop. 

If you watched, you know I'm right. Biden looked old. There's no way around that. Pretending otherwise isn't going to help. 

I warned you about this. 

Debates are not about fact. Debates are theater. No one watches debates for polite exchanges by reasonable people. You watch a debate for the same reason you watch NASCAR or reality TV or the WWF.

Debates are about appearance. 

Let me give you an example. Many years ago I was participating in a cookoff. Chili. Now, I'm pretty good at it. I've won awards for my recipe, I've won a number of contests here and there over the years and I've got the trophies to prove it. But the rules of this contest were different, they allowed for toppings to be added after the initial test tasting. So, after the initial sampling, one of the judges added sour cream and cheese to his bowl. That changed the color of my entry from rich dark red to a light orange. 

Which he then gleefully announced looked like "baby shit." 

Tasted great, he said. First place, taste wise. But it looked like baby shit. Baby shit. Baby shit. He kept saying it. 

Didn't matter that he's the one who changed the appearance. 

Didn't matter that he wasn't deliberately trying to prejudice the results. 

Didn't matter that he thought the taste was first place. 

What mattered was "baby shit."

(I learned later that he and his wife recently had become parents and that likely influenced his comments)

And from that point forward, I was doomed to lose because no matter how good my chili tasted, the only thing the other judges would remember was "baby shit." 

Biden was right. He gave a good answer. It was obvious he was prepared, knew the right things to say, where to put the blame, he used "we" instead of "I" in all the right places. 

But it was baby shit. 

He looked weak and feeble. He kept clearing his throat. He was too quiet -- yes, likely working around his disability, and the ableism that will no doubt be the subject of the New York Times editorials for the next month is certainly something we should talk about. Nevertheless there it was. And there it was immediately on every livestream that I was following, left and right and those pretending impartiality. 

It's about perception.

And once someone puts "baby shit" into the public consciousness, well, no matter how good the recipe tastes you're going to lose. 

And that's how it started. Right there. 

At first, Trump was restrained. 

Well, restrained for Trump. He was likely coached to rein it in. To adhere to the rules. To avoid wandering off into a discussion of sharks and batteries and his unhinged lunacy. 

His answers were the usual nonsense, every declaration ending in "the likes of which we've never seen." Which is the only time he uses "we" and not "I." He was mad, obviously so, glowering like an old 1970s red leather chair that's faded over the years to the color of blotchy orange baby shit. 

He has not done a good job. He has done a poor job. And inflation’s killing our country. It is absolutely killing us.

But in contrast to Biden, well, Trump seemed on his game. 

It was fucking ugly. 

And it did indeed get uglier. 

It was a shoving match between two old angry men who hate each other. 

Biden started to find his footing, but it didn't take long for Trump to lose any appearance of restraint and go full Trump. 

Thirty minutes in and on the subject of abortion and Trump was running roughshod over the debate rules, as expected. Tapper and Bash were trying to hold him down, but by then Trump was wielding a machinegun of rapid-fire bullshit, spraying obvious lies -- and accidental obvious truths that his handlers probably wished he hadn't, like this beauty: 

Like Ronald Reagan, I believe in the exceptions, I am a person that believes. And frankly, I think it’s important to believe in the exceptions. Some people, you have to follow your heart, some people don’t believe in that. But I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest, and the life of the mother. I think it’s very important. Some people don’t. Follow your heart. But you have to get elected also and – because that has to do with other things. You’ve got to get elected. The problem they have is they’re radical because they will take the life of a child in the eighth month, the ninth month, and even after birth – after birth.

I believe in exceptions, but you've got to get elected (and obviously with Republicans and fanatical evangelicals you can't do that by supporting abortion in any form), so now I'm going to immediately lie about Democrats wanting to kill babies after they're born.

Where do you start?

How do you respond? 

Because that was the dismount after two full minutes of absolute bullshit starting with Trump declaring 

Fifty-one years ago, you had Roe v. Wade, and everybody wanted to get it back to the states, everybody, without exception, Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives. Everybody wanted it back. Religious leaders.

Everyone. Democrats. Liberals. Everyone wanted Roe v. Wade overturned. 

Now that is obvious bullshit. Utter nonsense. That never happened. And what followed was even more obvious bullshit, a whole barnyard of bullshit. 

But where do you start?

Trump got two full minutes to spray this firehose of bullshit, falsehood after falsehood, and Biden got one minute to respond, followed by Trump getting another full minute of rebuttal. 

It's called the Gish Gallop. 

It's a rhetorical technique used to defeat normal debate rules. It's where you overwhelm your opponent with bullshit, that is an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments. Quantity, not quality. A dozen subjects, related or not. There's no way to remember it all it, let along counter it in the time allotted. It was named for Duane Gish, a creationist who in any debate with actual evolutionary scientists would spew rapid fire nonsense, making a coherent response next to impossible in any sort of live debate format. Creationists in the audience didn't care about the words, they were there to see those snooty God hating scientists get owned. It's the same here. 

Trump isn't doing it on purpose, or rather I mean Trump isn't doing it as some sort of learned discipline. Trump does it because that's who he is -- an endless source of high pressure liquid bullshit. 

There was no way for Biden or CNN to address each of Trump's lies in the established format of the debate. It's not possible for anyone. That's why the gallop works. 

Biden should have been ready for it.

Yes, Biden should have been ready for it, because this is what Trump does. He does it every time. In every conversation. In every rally. In every speech. In every debate. Biden should have been ready for it. There are tactics for countering the Gish Gallop and Biden should have been prepared. His handlers should have prepped him. He should have practiced those techniques. 

Anyone who engages Trump should be ready for it.

Because Trump is a one trick pony. That's all he's got. Galloping bullshit. 

It's not all on Biden. CNN bears plenty of blame here too, as does the rest of The Press who are already this morning declaring Trump's victory in the lede and burying the cautionary caveats far, far down in the text that no one reads. 

CNN should have been fact checking in real time. 

Yes, there are those who would have protested fact checking as prejudicial to their candidate. 

So? 

That's what happens when your guy spews lie after lie. 

The point of presidential debates, allegedly, is to provide the voting public with the information they need to make an informed decision at the polls. That is the reason why The Press is the only private enterprise granted a specific enumerated right in the Constitution. The Press's responsibility is to democracy, to the Republic, not to any particular ideology or political party -- otherwise they don't deserve Constitutional protection. And if the fascism they're enabling gets into power, they'll be the first ones against the wall. 

CNN should have been fact checking in real time, both for Trump and for Biden. Failure to do so is a dereliction of duty. No one gives a shit about fact checking the debate a day later. If you're trying to influence voters, what matters is the moment. That's what people remember. 

Biden should have been prepared for Trump's galloping bullshit. 

Biden should have stuck to his strengths: intellect, the political zinger and above all, humor. 

Everyone involved looked grim. But Biden, well, he's got a great sense of humor. He can mock his opponent without being mean. He can make the other guy look ridiculous without effort, he's been doing it for 40 years in Congress and it was apparent from Republican panic before the debate, that's exactly what they expected him to do. 

But he didn't. 

It's water under the bridge now. 

It's not a disaster. 

Obama bombed his first debate. 

But he got himself elected twice in a landslide. 

I doubt this will have much impact on the election. 

Four years ago, you said "Vote blue no matter who" and "I'd vote for a ham sandwich with rancid mayonnaise over Trump."

We elected Biden to be not Trump and it turns out the ham sandwich has done a pretty decent job. 

Nothing has changed in that regard. 

What has changed is this: the damage Trump did continues to echo years after he left office. The chaos he caused continues to swirl. We're going to have to not only stop and reverse those effects, we have to completely undo it, before we can get back to where we were -- let alone make any progress. Exactly as you were repeatedly warned. And yes, I am talking about the Supreme Court, along with many other things. And again, you were warned over and over and over again. And here we are. 

The debate didn't change that. 

You're faced with the same choices and it doesn't matter if you don't like them, they are the choices.

Now, we can either keep slogging forward, up hill, knee deep in stinking bullshit, or we can give up and lay down and drown in it. 

Same as it ever was. 

I wish Biden was better at debates, but he's not and that's just how it is. 

I wish Trump was a better human being, but he's very much not and he's never going to be, and the odds are he's going to get even worse if we let him back into power. 

Your choices haven't changed. 

The danger hasn't changed, it's only gotten worse.

The people whose lives we must protect, that hasn't changed. 

Our duty to the Republic, to democracy, to the future we leave our children, that hasn't changed. 

The man Biden is, and the man Trump most certainly isn't, well, that hasn't changed. 

Who wins or loses the debate doesn't matter. 

Who wins the election does. 

And you are the one who will decide. 

A good leader can engage in a debate frankly and thoroughly, knowing that at the end he and the other side must be closer, and thus emerge stronger. You don't have that idea when you are arrogant, superficial, and uninformed.
-- Nelson Mandela