Campaign’s ‘Gish Gallop’ in full swing
Hear ye, all you Democrats! Now is not the time for indecision. Our democracy is on the line. There is a reason our mascot is a donkey and not a squirrel crossing the road.
Donkeys are stubborn and are good at kicking. Forget the media hype, it is distracting. So was the recent “debate” itself.
There’s no reason we should have been surprised. We know that Donald Trump is a blustering braggart who has no problem boasting and twisting the truth and Joe Biden is a serious President who happens to have a stutter that he has to overcome every time he speaks.
Biden’s concern for our country and the knowledge that a lot would rest on how he performed in this “debate” must have weighed heavily on him. He was very prepared with facts and figures, and proof of what his administration has accomplished, though he was fighting a cold and his delivery was rough. To try to concentrate, collect your thoughts, and participate in an actual informative debate was impossible with what he was dealing with in an opponent.
There is a name for the technique that Trump was using, it’s called the Gish Gallop. It is defined as “a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm their opponent by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard for the accuracy or strength of those arguments.” Gish galloping prioritizes quantity over quality. And in Trump’s case, the truth. Biden didn’t need to express verbally what he was feeling, the looks he gave said it all. He was flabbergasted at the impunity with which the lies kept coming.
Truth is, Biden is a real person, a statesman, not a performer. He has lived a life like many of us have lived, while Trump has never experienced anything but wealth and non-responsibility. Biden endured personal loss and gained empathy, turning it into service and love for our country. Joe believes in America where Trump continually denigrates it. He is JFK’s famous quote backward.
While their age is comparable, Biden admits he has aged, but knows he can still do the job and I believe him. He’s already proven that he can. I don’t believe a single word out of Trump’s mouth. His proof of physical capability is winning a trophy at his own golf tournament. What does that have to do with running a government? The nonsensical ramblings at his rallies either belie his cognitive decline or his utter disdain for the intelligence of his MAGA followers. Europeans get the impression that all Americans are MAGAs, and they either laugh at us or feel sorry for us.
Trump is playing a part, like he did on the “reality show” The Apprentice. Viewers transposed the character he played into an idol to worship. He is a concoction of what his MAGA supporters imagine him to be.
He is not a hero; he can’t fix everything — his many bankruptcies and failed business ventures prove that. He is not the second coming of the messiah; he can’t quote a single verse from the Bible and has broken every commandment. He really did a number on “Thou shalt not kill” with the deaths of so many Americans due to his mishandling of the pandemic response and his listening to quacks instead of science and experts like Dr. Fauci.
He listens to and is influenced by the wrong people. As long as they stroke his ego and pocketbook, he will be under their spell. He admires dictators and would let the likes of Putin or Kim Jong-Un do whatever they want. NATO allies he would extort, Ukraine he would abandon. European democratic leaders are in grave fear of his return to the White House.
Dozens of his prior cabinet and staff, along with Trump himself, are now convicted criminals. He went through them during his campaign and presidency like they were on a merry-go-round. The good ones left in time or were fired. Now he will bring the rogues gallery back with him: Steve Bannon the anarchist, Steven Miller the racist (he even looks like Goebbels), Roger Stone, Paul Manafort, and others. Half of his staff were “acting” (like him), because congress wouldn’t confirm their appointments.
I wish the subject of Trump was over and done with. I am sick of him. It’s ironic that a word in the Merriam Webster dictionary, “trumpery,” which first appeared in the English language in the mid-15th century, fits him so perfectly. It is defined as worthless nonsense. Synonyms would be blarney or malarkey. That’s how Joe should have described the sounds coming from the other side of the debate stage.
Then there is the verb phrase, “to trump up,” which means to concoct with the intent to deceive. The fact that the media is saying that Trump “won the debate” is maddening. A post on social media says “Saying a liar won a debate is like saying a player who cheated won a game.” The government extreme right-wingers need to take lessons from organized sports where rules are rules that apply to all participants.
The ultra-conservative majority in the Supreme Court has now established the fact that rules apply to everyone unless you are a Supreme Court justice, Donald Trump, a Jan. 6 insurrectionist, or just really rich. They have reversed the Chevron doctrine which allowed congress to give the experts in government agencies the power to decide how best to enforce rules pertaining to their field, putting the decisions in the hands of the judiciary who are experts in law, not chemistry. Justice Gorsuch doesn’t know the difference between Nitrous oxide in a dentist’s office and Nitrogen oxide in smog, so naturally he should be making the decisions on EPA regulations. And remember, they know better what’s good for a woman dealing with a pregnancy, of course not her doctor.
We are seeing a consolidation of power of the extreme right. The last bastion of our democratic form of government is the executive branch, with Biden at the helm. The house is being manipulated by the extreme-right crazies, carrying on the Trump revenge for him till he comes back. The Senate has the slimmest of democratic majorities, barely able to help. Now the SCOTUS has put the nail in the coffin of democracy by putting the president above the law. Trump will have the power to “send Seal Team 6 to assassinate a political opponent” or “shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue” himself if he is able to get back in the White House. Biden could conceivably do that now. But he won’t. And that’s why he is our President who will protect democracy. Along with Joe, I dissent.
So voters, now is not the time to wonder whether another candidate is in order. They tried that with Hubert Humphrey when LBJ stepped down. It did not work.
Now is the time to put every effort into supporting Joe Biden. He has a good team around him, he has a good economic track record, unemployment down, stock market up, He got the vaccines out to us to fight COVID, put stimulus checks into our hands and funded businesses with government loans to keep them going, now the necessary inflation that caused is slowing and he is fighting the corporate price-gouging that contributes to high prices.
Ask governor of Maryland, Wes Moore, how fast his harbor was cleared as an example of Biden’s attention to infrastructure. Investment in environmentally friendly energy-saving transportation, increases in veterans’ benefits, student loan forgiveness, lowering prescription prices, protecting women’s rights, LGBTQ rights, voting rights — democracy itself — the list is long. Joe is there for us. We need to be there for him, stay strong and stubborn democrats, or our country’s next birthday may look very different.
Susan Bigler is a Sheridan resident. Send comments to editorial@observertoday.com