You Can Get with Gish, or You Can Get with Fact
I met Jake when I was in 2nd grade. My family had just moved into the neighborhood, and he was the first kid I met. We were in the same grade, and he seemed pretty cool. He gave me the lay of the land on the street, he had a story for everything, and it seemed like he ran the place. All the other kids looked up to him, that was, until I actually started meeting some of the other kids. What became pretty clear was that Jake was simply a liar, and for no real reason. There was no need for him to tell me he was Ken Griffey Baseball on the Nintendo and hit a line drive so hard that it put a hole in the pitcher’s head, and then his brain hopped out and started walking on the screen. None. And yet there we were, walking to school as he went red in the face, insisting that he was telling the truth. I wish this story was fake, but it has been seared into my permanent memory, and not every claim was this egregious, but he was willing to go to the mat for any and every one he made.
Jake’s not a unique person. We all know someone whose stories were just a little too good, and the moment you ask any kind of clarifying question, they double down with something even less credulous. The challenge with someone like that is that they live and die by their claims, and never by their proof. Each boast is initially something that sounds good, but each subsequent interrogation elicits another claim, but this one is slightly less believable, and to be fair, we’ve all done that before like LarryBoy and his Fib from Outer Space. But for folks like Jake, it’s habitual and bordering on pathological. He seemed to have some need to be viewed as the best and wasn’t gonna let the truth stand in his way.
Right now, we essentially have two Jakes running the country. Both are masters of what’s known as the Gish Gallop. Duane Gish was a creationist who loved debating, but his whole strategy revolved around unleashing an onslaught of claims that it becomes impossible to refute simply due to the sheer quantity. Now, some may end up being true, some sorta true, and some outright lies, but the truthfulness isn’t the important part. The key to the gallop is volume. That’s why former Trump advisor Steve Bannon once said that “the way you deal with the media is to flood the zone with sh*t.” Refuting each claim takes time, and because some claims might be true, it gives their supporters something to glom to and hold up in their defense, while they ignore every other piece. Trying to take them down one by one, especially at the speed of online discourse, is like pushing rope. This is intentional.
The key thing to remember is that claims are not proof, and no matter how much someone might insist, they will never be. We can interrogate any claim. The founding fathers, for example, claimed that certain truths were self-evident, but even a cursory look at their actions would tell any honest observer they didn't believe all men were created equal. It's an evidence free claim. Many still tout America as a home of freedom, and yet the support for that claim is scant. The good news is that we don't have to take every claim at face value.
You may remember how frequently Elon Musk and DOGE reported finding fraud. They were finding it everywhere. People were making memes about it. Within weeks, they had uncovered tens of billions of dollars in fraudulent spending. That was until journalists began investigating the claims within an even shorter time frame, they began reporting calculation errors, bad data, and spending that wasn’t fraudulent at all. The current administration simply didn’t like it. And as the receipts rolled in, DOGE’s Wall of Receipts website began quietly removing claims and adjusting their claims downward. the claims had no proof.
This can be easier to do if you’re a journalist and it's your job, but what about us regular people? According to Medhi Hasan, one of the best interviewers in news media, the key is to follow three basic steps:
- Pick one argument; preferably the weakest one, but just one to rebut. This also means you're gonna need to do research.
- Hold your ground and keep pushing on that one issue. They might want to move on or play a cute game of Whataboutism, but we’re sticking on that one point.
- Call out the lie for what it is. I am prone to say things like “that’s simply not true” and then state what the truth is with my evidence.
It takes a bit of discipline, but that’s the playbook. It’s worked well in person, and it’s worked reasonably well online. Not that I’ve converted the masses because I haven’t. Even with the truth, most will still reject it, but you gotta leave the door open in case someone wants to walk through it. Occasionally I get comments from others with whom I bitterly disagree with that they appreciate my approach, but it’s not my invention. It's a praxis I've intentionally honed over time, borrowing from people like Medhi, James Baldwin and even Jesus.
When the Rich Young Ruler comes to Jesus, to ask about getting in on that salvation action, Jesus delivers a pretty simple message. “What do you need to do? Let me tell you.” The guy ended up leaving dejected, but there was no lecture or criticism or superiority involved. It says that Jesus even showed loved to him, but he delivered the plain truth and let the ruler make his choice. That’s all I'm trying to do.
The only caution I'd provide is that it is patently unhelpful to talk about folks being brainwashed or drinking the kool aid or whatever kind of insult we can think of. Those are all signals for people to dig in and it hurts our chance to reach them. That doesn't mean you cannot be direct. I would not hesitate to call something racist if I believed it is. A spade is still a spade, but it should be enough to make the point, "I believe you are wrong," as opposed to "you are wrong, and dumb."
A key feature of Trump’s first term was Bannon’s strategy to “flood the zone with sh*t,” and this term is the same method on steroids. You can’t fight every battle, so I’d encourage you to pick a thing or two that you care about and is in your wheelhouse. Research the claims being made and collect your evidence, complete with bulletproof sourcing. From there, it should be fairly easy to respond to those claims, and only those specific claims with gentle pressure. For most, they’ll eventually give up or move on because even if they try to find evidence, it will be paper thin, if it even exists at all.
I don’t remember if I was the one to pull away from Jake or if he pulled away from me, but after a while we’d gone ‘round the bush enough that if I pressed even a little bit, he wouldn’t admit defeat, but he’d just kind of drop it. He needed his claims to be viewed as proof, which is Trump and Elon’s whole game; finding people who will accept their false claims uncritically. We won’t get a chance to confront them directly, but for the people we do encounter, there is a meaningful path to push back against it.
