Faithful shipmates may recall back during the ill-fated 2024 Biden-Trumpf debate, the Captain wrote about Trumpf’s debate technique known as “Gish Gallop”. Coined in 1994 by the anthropologist Eugenie Scott, it is named after the American Creationist Duane Gish, who was dubbed the technique's "most avid practitioner".
The Gish Gallop is a rhetorical tactic in which a debater overwhelms an opponent by making a rapid-fire series of arguments, with no concern for their accuracy or strength. The sheer volume of false, misleading, or specious points makes it impossible for the opponent to refute them all in the allotted time, creating the illusion that the person making them has "won" the debate.
During that fateful debate, President Biden stood by, befuddled, unable to keep up with Trumpf’s lies.
Biden was quickly replaced on the ballot.
What we’re seeing in American politics today is the Gish Gallop on a far larger scale. Mass lay-offs of government employees, the unprecedented deployment of National Guard and U.S. Marines in American cities based on lies, yet another government shut-down due to the Republicans’ failure to pass a budget or even a continuing resolution, the assessing-then-rescinding of outrageous tariffs and the accompanying lies about who pays the tax, lies about reducing costs of goods and pharmaceuticals by numerically-impossible thousands of percents, the unilateral sinking of foreign vessels in international waters without proof of wrongdoing, the on-going flurry of Executive Orders and the usurpation of the role of Congress in all of this – not to mention that most of this is illegal and is slowly wending its way through an overwhelmed court system – it’s hard for the average American – and the Captain – to keep up.
And while the president keeps us occupied / distracted with all of that, much more sinister deeds are being perpetrated on the American people.
Humans are capable of only so much outrage before we surrender to the lies.
Yer Captain will never surrender – that’s just not in my blood. But only nine months in, I am growing weary of it all.
The Captain wakes up every morning to a Facebook page filled with outrage.
CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Yes, I have purged most of the MAGAts out of my FB feed with no regrets, but my liberal-minded friends continue to rage about the daily pronouncements of the president.
I am sick and tired of seeing the president’s ugly mug every time I open FB or my news apps or even when I turn on the Today Show. I have a couple openly-MAGA neighbors who wear their gear proudly, which I try to ignore. The Nightly News is filled with more Trumpf nonsense, and the late-night talk shows just beat the day’s news like a dead horse.
Is there nothing else left to talk about in this world? Can we not go for a single day/hour/minute without him invading our consciousness?
I yearn for a return to the day when my feed was filled with cat posts!
I’d even settle for the return of that annoying Farmville!
Since Trumpf lost the 2025 Nobel Peace Prize to a Venezuelan actually working for democracy and peace in her country, others are trying to assuage the man-baby. Israel is considering giving him a made-up Israeli Peace Prize for his “peace through strength” attitude.
CAPTAIN’S NOTE: The announced cease-fire between Israel and Hamas (who was not included at the negotiating table) has not been signed by Hamas, although I understand today the hostages have been released. I don’t expect the fighting to end.
And because today is Columbus Day – a day Liberals recognize instead as Indigenous People Day in opposition to the mythology of Christopher Columbus – Trumpf issued edicts for his minions to reclaim Columbus Day, for which the National Italian-American Federation publicly praised him.
CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Although they did not give him the prestigious “Meucci Award for Italian-American Man of the Year”, which they gave to Michael Corleone in 1979 (a Godfather 3 reference).
So, instead of Trumpf, today let’s talk a little about Christopher Columbus and why the U.S. recognizes Columbus Day.
Christopher Columbus (1451-1506) has long been hailed as the one who discovered America; we were all carefully indoctrinated from grade school on up. An Italian-born explorer and navigator, he developed a plan to seek a western sea passage to the East Indies, hoping to profit from the lucrative spice trade. He convinced the Spanish (Catholic) monarchs, Isabella I and Fedinand II, to sponsor his voyage with three ships.
Thus, “In 1492, Columbus sailed the ocean blue”.
CAPTAIN’S NOTE: Recent DNA research suggests that Columbus was a Sephardic Jew, so sailing under a Catholic banner strikes yer Captain as odd, but I guess it pays the bills.
Columbus knew the Earth was spherical (as did most educated people of his time), but he sorely misjudged how large the Earth is. Three months after setting sail, he landed on an island in the Bahamas – only 8,300 miles off-course! – on October 12, 1492, claiming the populated island for Spain and the Roman Catholic Church.
Because he thought he was in the East indies, he called the native people “Indians”.
He made his way through Cuba and Hispaniola and established a colony in Haiti, spreading European diseases, murdering and enslaving the native peoples along the way. By his own accounts, he was brutal toward the native people, and when he returned to Spain in 1493 he brought captured natives along with him.
Columbus made four such journeys to “the new world”, and for a time was appointed colonial governor of what would be renamed the West Indies. Word of his violent treatment of the native people made its way back to Spain and he was recalled in 1499.
In all this time, he never set foot on what today constitutes The United States of America or its territories.
So why the big deal? Why a federal holiday in his honor?
In 1866 the date was celebrated by Italian-Americans as an Italian heritage festival, not so much about Columbus.
In 1892, after the lynching of 11 Italian immigrants in New Orleans, President Benjamin Harrison declared a one-day Columbus Day celebration in hopes of ease tensions between the U.S. and Italy. Teachers used the occasion to teach their students about patriotism, citizenship, and loyalty to the United States.
In 1934, after much lobbying by Italian-Americans, Congress encouraged the President to officially recognize Columbus Day. President Roosevelt did so, but that did not make it a federal holiday.
During WWII, 1,881 Italian immigrants were put in internment camps as “enemy aliens”.
In 1942, FDR removed that designation, and offered citizenship to 200,000 elderly Italian immigrants who could not pass the citizenship test due to, among other things, illiteracy.
The interned Italians were not released until 1943 following Italy’s surrender.
More lobbying followed and President Lyndon Johnson formalized the day in 1968 – to begin as a federal holiday in 1971.
So, in short, we celebrate Columbus Day due to the lobbying efforts of Italian-Americans.
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CAPTAIN'S NOTE: It should have been Antonio Meucci Day, who actually did invent the telephone a year before Alexander Graham Bell.
Many years ago, when I was an up-and-coming Captain, the local mayor proposed erecting a giant cross where the town’s main street meets the Ohio River. Attempting to evade questions of the Establishment Clause, she declared it was to commemorate Christopher Columbus’ discovery of America. Throwing caution to the wind, yer Captain put pen to paper and challenged her proposal in the local newspaper: Columbus did NOT discover America, did NOT set foot on American soil, and most importantly, did NOT navigate the Ohio River to our fair town. Why would we honor him?
The proposed cross was never raised.
Columbus Day has lost its luster in recent years - perhaps because the Italians let us believe that Olive Garden was authentic Italian cuisine?
Whatever the cause, the it has been relegated to “just another day” in many states and municipalities. It was replaced with “Indigenous People Day” in Berkeley, CA in 1992, acknowledging the thousands upon thousands of native peoples killed or displaced by the colonialism that built America. That idea has caught on and it is this "Liberal mindset" the president railed against last week in his proclamation.
As for today, the only thing I could tell that is different today is that the mail did not run.
Or was it mis-delivered?
