nobody knows the trouble i’ve seen k

5/26/2018 Nobody Knows the Trouble IVe Seen K

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Nobody Knows the Trouble Ive Seen K

LD debate has become something that allows oppressive behavior anddiscourse. The only reason Im participating this year is in order educate the

community in hopes of helping them becoming better debaters and humans as

a whole and furthermore its my last year in debate and I want to make a

difference in todaysdebate community. I dont care if I lose this round,

however I will attempt to win to spread my message throughout the

tournaments participants.

Partaking in LD makes me endorse oppression inside the community. This is the

closest I will come to a framework for the round. Thus, today, I would like to

have a discussion with my opponent and you judge.Bleiker Writes

1

A conceptualization of human agency cannot be based on a parsimonious proposition, a one-sentence

statement that captures something like an authentic nature of human agency. There is no essenceto human agency, no

core that can be brought down to a lowest common denominatorthat will crystallize one day in a long

sought after magic formula. A search for such an elusive center would freeze a specific image of

human agency to the detriment of all others. The dangers of such a totalizing position have been well rehearsed.

Foucault (1982, 209), for instance, believes that a theory of power is unable to provide the basis for analytical work, for it

assumes a prior objectification of the very power dynamics the theory is trying to assess.Bourdieu (1998, 25) speaks of the imperialism of theuniversal and List (1993, 11) warns us of an approach that subsumes, or,

rather, pretends to be able to subsume everything into one concept, one theory, one position. Such a master discourse,she claims, inevitably oppresses everything that does not fit into its particular view of the world.

Next, is the Link, I have been given RFDs, and told by debaters, locally and

nationally, horrible things. For example, Your Ableism Kritik doesnt matter

because youre not disabled and nobody says retarded anymore. By telling me

that, not only am I offended as abelism is a dear topic to me, but that judge

condoned offensive rhetoric in round. Recently,

Jonathan Alston and Aaron

Timmons wrote an article extending my outrageThey Write

2

1Roland Bleiker (Professor of International Relations Harvard and Cambridge, Discourse

and Human Agency, Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. p. 37-38)


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Above are statements that we and our students have heard from judges. There are many other equally offensive

statements that can be shared. It seems like the statements above, and similar comments, have become more frequent. Recently the NationalSymposium on Debate featured a strategy article by Emily Massey, Geoffrey Kristoff and Grant Reiter that inadvertently I do not believe that they fully understand the

implication of their wordsperpetuates the hateful and hostile atmosphere that exists in high school Lincoln-Douglas debate.Hundreds of students

around the country are coached to say that oppression, rape, genocide, and lynching are not

inherently bad. You have to explain why theyre bad, say many respected leaders in thecommunity. Instead of engaging in a debate about the best methods to prevent, reduce,

mitigate, [and] eradicate oppression, too many adults, coaches, and judgesin high school Lincoln-Douglas debate[LD]

believe a more strategic conversation is to talk about the philosophy that justifies why such

things are bad. But doesnt having to prove rape is bad open up the possibility that it is not?

Furthermore

Above are statements that we a nd our students have heard from judges. There are many other equally offensive statements that can be shared. It seems like the statements above, and similar comments, have become more frequent. Recentlythe

National Symposium on Debate featured a strategy article by Emily Massey, Geoffrey Kristoff

and Grant Reiter that inadvertentlyI do not believe that they fully understand the implication of their wordsperpetuates the hateful and hostile

atmosphere that exists in high school Lincoln-Douglas debate.Hundreds of students around the country ar e coached to say t hat oppression, rape,

genocide, and lynching are not inherently bad. You have to explain why theyre bad, say many respected leaders in the community. Instead of engaging in a debate about the best methods to prevent, reduce, mitigate, eradicate oppression, too many adults,

coaches, and judges in high school Lincoln-Douglas debate believe a more strategic conversation is to talk about the philosophy that justifies why such things are bad. But doesnt having to prove rape is bad open up the possibility that it is not? The

writers of the article seem deeply offended and or confusedby an argument that many students around

the country have recently found it necessary to make. Students pushing back against the idea

that they have to prove that rape or genocide is bad have taken to routinely using the works

of of Dr. Shanara Reid Brinkley, Tim Wise, Henry Giroux, Tommy Curry,Chris Vincent, (former CEDA andNDT Champion), Elijah Smithand others to

warrant the benefit to making arguments that challenge structural oppression. Though debate is a game, it is a gameabout issues that have real consequences. We teach future generations how to deal with issues of freedom and oppression. Often the evidence shows that debaters go on to become leaders and impact policy in the real world. This means that it is appropriate for the

judge's role to be an educator responsible for training future generations. Justifications of moral frameworks that dont preclude rape, slavery and genocide are dangerous because rights are only important so long as a critical mass of society believes that they

should exist. To better understand the significance of the aforementionedarticle, the young authors are heroes

to many younger [LDers]. All of them qualified to the high schoolTournament of Champions and reached late

elimination rounds at multiple national tournaments.They graduated from high school just r ecently enough to be legends in the minds of those currently competing.Fourteen through seventeen year

olds look up to them; they want to be like them. The authors of this article respect t he accomplishments of Kristof, Massey, and Reiter, and we understand that there are manyhundreds of coaches and judges who think the way that they do. However, the adults in the debate community, who have made education a lifelong commitment, have an obligation to call out harms to young people. However well-intentioned the authors of that

article are, they are contributing to an environment that hurts young people.

2 Jonathan Alston and Aaron Timmons (Jonathan Alston is the Head debate coach at

Science Park High School (Newark Science) in Newark, New Jersey Aaron Timmons is the

Head coach at Greenhill School in Addison Texas.) 2014

(http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-

circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/pre)
http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/prehttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/prehttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/prehttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/prehttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/prehttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/nobody-knows-the-trouble-i-see-and-in-national-circuit-lincoln-douglas-debate-does-anyone-really-care#!/resources/pre


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Now, Ill now being going over the major issues The NSDs article raised, and

analyzing them.

Of course, the pre-fiat debater needs to do much more than win that oppression is bad. They

must win that (a) it is bad, (b) it is the only thing that is bad, and (c) the particular conception

of oppression with which they operate (usually one that denies the relevance of the intent/foresight distinction)

is theright one. Pre-fiat arguments typicallyassert all ofthese claims, and an opponent could contest

every one of them. Kristof, Massey, and Reiter

As Alston and Timmons write,

There is a direct connection between the logicof the above quoteand theracist, sexist, ugly statements

said by tournament judges to high schools students, and by other high school students to each other.

Sexual violence is bad. We dont think we should have to go any further. But according to the

above logic, we just made an unwarranted claim about sexual violence.According to their logic, high schoolstudents should not assume that s exual violence is bad so that we can focus on how to keep people safe from it. We need to just delve into the question of why.

Inserting particular forms of oppression into the above quote reveals even more how

reprehensible it is: Of course, the pre-fiat debater needs to do much more than win that[sexual violence] is bad. They must win that (a) [sexual violence] is bad, (b) [sexual violence] is

the only thing that is bad, and (c) the particular conception of [sexual violence] with which

they operate (usually one that denies the relevance of the intent/foresight distinction)is the right one. Pre-fiat arguments typically

assert all ofthese claims, and an opponent could contest every one of them (Kristof et al). Inserting the words

lynching and genocide have a s imilar effect. The last line of the paragraph further exposes its repugnance. The horrible nature of sexual

violence, lynching and genocide, according to [the authors] could be contested. Couldnt we

contest anyone saying that these things are bad? This logic is what encouraged a Florida

debater to argue that the only moral recourse for a woman to avoid imminent sexual assault

is suicide. This logic encouraged the judges to support that position against a horrified teenage

girl.Massy et als article is akin to a four year old repeatedly asking why and , when told by their parent that thei r line of questions isnt relevant, loudly proclaiming victory.Their common refrain has been that the arguments based on the belief that sexual assault is bad are based only on intuition. This ign ores hundreds of years of social

movements and cultural debates and bloodshed tha t created a culture where we understand the i mplication of those statements. The word genocide was created to capture the

horror of the experiences of World War II. Emmett Tills death was a horror that spoke to the countless horrors of lynchingsthat plagued the United States since the inception of

slavery. Social movements were responsible for defining these atrocities. Moreover, all arguments are based on assumptions, prior knowledge that we believe to be true. Given

the history of oppression, why not adopt these premises rather indifference towards suffering. Communitarian philosophers like Michael Sandel would take exception to rape,

lynching and genocide being bad only through intuition, as would critical race theorists like Maria Matsuda, Patricia Williams, and Derrick Be ll. Philosopher George Yancy would

criticize such theories as views from nowhere that assume white privilege to be the universal norm. Rather than accepting the conclusion that a debater has to prove why sexual

violence is bad before a meaningful conversation can be ha d, we would suggest expanding the library. Being expected to prove why slavery is bad is n ot a meaningful

conversation; it is a highly offensive and insu lting conversation precisely because it ignores history, culture and the hard fought experiences of students whose reality has never

been safe. When a judge lectures an Afro-Dominican stud ent that it is okay for a moral framework to not preclude his lynching, tha t judge has amplified the students isolation in

a community where he had always perceived his membership to be tenuous. When students push back against structural violence in their homes and their communities,

oppression isnt hypothetical. The verbal and rhetorical attacks against Blacks and women become attacks against the studentsthemselves. When Rutgers College debater Chris

Randall declared war against the University of Kentuc ky, students of color from around the United States filled his in-b ox and his Facebook page with love because he articulated

a resistance to the constant psychic attacks of a privileged, inhumane community actively hostile to their existence. There a re many theorists who understand that moral

decisions are not made by isolated uses of rationality, intuition, empiricism, and emotivism. Expanding our library is important. The hateful arguments defended by Kristof,

Massey, and Reiter represent only a small, warped part of a much larger world.

Being expected to prove why sexual violence is bad is not a meaningful

conversation; it is a highly offensive and insulting conversation preciselybecause it ignores history, culture and the hard fought experiences of students

whose reality has never been safe. This destroys all hope of possible education

in LD debate.


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Vote for Me

A. Visibility: If I win this round, I advance further in the tournament,creating a larger audience for my discussion of the problems in the LD

community.

B. Reject the LD Debate community: The Role of the Judge is an educator.Alston and Timmons

Though debate is a game, it is a game about issues that have real consequences. We teach

future generations how to deal with issues of freedom andoppression. Often the evidence shows

that debaters go on to become leaders and impact policy in the real world. This means that it

is appropriate for the judge's role to be an educator responsible for training future

generations. Justifications of moral frameworks that dont preclude rape, slavery and genocide are dangerous because rights

are only important so long as a critical mass of society believes that they should exist

Debate,while a competitive game, isan educational gamean extension of the classroom. The idea that regardless of what is

done in a debate, the judge has no jurisdiction or obligation to act as a critical educator is short

sighted at best, and sociopathic in our current environment. In a world of just vote for the better debater,judges

would be under no obligation to give a reason for decision in either a written, or oral form. Theconcept of just vote for the

better debater absolves the judge of any real responsibility to give constructive feedback to

students, either good or bad. In a worst case scenario a student could use language that was

racist, sexist or homophobic, and if they won the substance of the debate, the language and

behavior would be ignored.In fact, if things became physical between the students, and the ag gressor won the debate, using a literalinterpretation of the position of Kristof et al, the judge would be under no obligation to act.

Judge take a stand and vote me up to show the LD community that judges ought not stand for

offensive rhetoric.

C. Embrace awareness: Vote for me to endorse my attempts to showpeople the horrible behavior of the LD community towards marginalized

groups. Only by embracing these facts can we work towards solutions to

stopping these things.


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Blocks


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A2: Ground

Believing in foundations in which we all are to ground our advocacy is both

impossible and exclusionary.

Bleiker, 2000. (Roland, Professor of International Relations Harvard and Cambridge, PopularDissent, Human Agency and Global Politics, Cambridge University Press, 2000. p. 13)Departing from both a discursive fatalism and an overzealous belief in the autonomy of human action, I search for a middle ground

that can draw together positive aspects of both opposing traditions of thought. I am, in this sense, following authors such as Pierre

Bourdieu and Richard Bernstein, for whom the central opposition that characterises our time, the one between objectivism and

relativism, is largely misleading and distorting. It is itself part of a seductive dichotomy that is articulated in either/or terms: either

there is an ultimate possibility of grounding knowledge in stable foundations, or there are no foundations at all, nothing but an

endless fall into a nihilist abyss. 33 But there are no Either/Or extremes. There are only shades of

difference, subtleties that contradict the idea of an exclusionary vantage-point. My own attempt at

overcoming the misleading dichotomy between objectivism and relativism revolves around

two major propositions, which I will sustain and expand throughout this book: (1) that one can theorise

discourses and still retain a concept of human agency; and (2) that one can advance a positive

notion of human agency that is neither grounded in a stable foundation nor dependent upon a

presupposed notion of the subject. The point of searching for this middle ground is not to abandon foundations as

such, but to recognise that they are a necessary part of our effort to make sense of an increasingly

complex and transversal world. We need foundations to ground our thoughts, but foundations impose and

exclude. They should not be considered as stable and good for all times. They must be applied inawareness of their function and with a readiness to adjust them to changing circumstances.


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A2: Pre-Fiat Args

Pre-Fiat in LD is dumb-Theyre misusing pre-fiat. Pre-Fiat doesnt exist in LD.

James McElwain, Coach at St. Thomas Academy in Minnesota writes3:

If pre-fiat arguments need to die, it is only becausethe very idea of pre-fiat is no longer useful within LDdebate. As

much has been said about the nature of pre-fiat,

there is generallya lack of clarity within the LD community as to

what pre-fiat arguments look like and how they function. While pre-fiat arguments have

traditionally been associated with a specific kind of kritik that draws its link from the

discourse used in a debate, there has been a recent trend of referring to any argument that

discusses race or gender as being pre-fiat. Althoughmany positions that address race and

gender involve arguments about discourse, I would argue thatlabeling these positions as generically

pre-fiat allows critics of such arguments to dismiss them as an argumentative fad or trick that

exploits the structure of fiat in order to gain an unfair advantage and win rounds.Contrary to what thelabel pre-fiat might suggest, critical arguments about structural oppression are not an attempt to avoid substantive debate for a strategic advantage.

in policy debate, fiat is a device designed to limit the scope of debate to substantive discussionof the

plan. Fiat provides for the passage of the plan as if by gracein order to refocus the debate on thematerial effects of a particular policy proposal rather than its feasibility on the floor of the senate.At its core, fiat

affirms the importance of the resolution as defining the limits of what can be considered

substantive debate.If policy debate is simulation, it is not a simulation of passing public policy,

with all the corresponding legislative rules and procedures, but a creative act of imagining a

world different than the status quoan educational exercise of exploring what public policy

can do rather than what specific legislators cannot do.

Thus, my opponent is A). Using pre-Fiat in the wrong context and B). Using the idea of fiat in the

wrong context. They have no plan thus they do not deserve a fiat. Dont listen to their

arguments that they deserve one, as LD and Policy are very different styles of debate. We are

not discussing public policy rather we are discussing ethics. Thus, pre-fiat does not exist in LD.Dont let them tell you otherwise. Remember were in a LD round, not a policy round. Finally,

Dont drop the debater, but rather drop their args saying they are winning fiat wise.

Even if you dont by that, they dont have legit Pre-fiat arguments in the first

placeMcElwain Continues,

4

In this way, given that fiat is a primarily a defense of substance, it would make sense that the

only legitimate pre-fiat arguments would be arguments that are also theoretical checks on

3

James McElwain, Coach St. Thomas Academy, Pre-Fiat in LD: A Defense of "Kritikal"Engagement,2014, (http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-

engagement)

4James McElwain, Coach St. Thomas Academy, Pre-Fiat in LD: A Defense of "Kritikal"

Engagement,2014, (http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-

engagement)
http://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagementhttp://victorybriefs.com/vbd/2014/4/pre-fiat-in-ld-a-defense-of-kritikal-engagement


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non-substantive arguments, e.g. checks on arguments that function outside of the limits of the

resolution or arguments that unfairly prevent substantive clash.If we understand the purpose

ofthe pre-fiat layer of debate as being merely procedural, theorywould be [is] understood as

a kind of distraction from substantive debate that is permitted only insofar as it

simultaneously recognizes the value in substantive debate. Despite offering an obvious

structural advantage in a debate, theoretical pre-fiat arguments are legitimate as a necessary

evil to deter non-substantive debate.

Therefore, youre still going to drop my opponents args concerning how theyre winningpre-

fiat.


9/10

A2: Theyre turning themselves

There is no possible way I am turning myself. You can sign the ballot in their

favor and I wouldnt care. I just want people to hear what LD has become so we

can make this great event better. In the Debate community LD doesnt get therespect they deserve and for good reason from the evidence I have presented,

like we need to prove why sexual violence is bad, but doing that leaves the

possibility Sexual Violence is good. By expecting me to prove that the current

norms is in the LD community my opponent is doing the exact same thing

Alston, Timmons, and I are trying to warn everyone against.


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A2: Limits

My Framework Arguments Call for Limitations in How Things are to Be

Interpreted-this is The Same Obsession with Limits Characterized by ModernThought. We Must Reject Limits in Favor of The Possibilities of New Political

Thought

Dillonin 96(Michael, Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at The Universityof Lancaster, The Politics of Security)What is most at issue here, then, is the question of the limit and of how to finesse the closure of the fatally deterministic or

apocalyptic thinking to which the issue of limits ordinarily gives rise in onto-theological thought: as the authoritative specification of

an eschaton; as the invocation of our submission to it; or in terms of the closure of what it is possible for us to say, do and be in

virtue of the operation of it. The question of the limit has therefore to be posed in a way that invokes

a thinking which resists the siren calls of fatal philosophers and historians alike. That is why

limits have to be thought differently, and why the question concerning limits has to be posed,

instead, in terms of that which keeps things in play(for demarcation is lacking nothing can come to presence

as it is) exciting a thinking, in particular, which seeks continuously to keep open the play ofpossibility by subtracting the sense of necessity, completeness, and smugness from established organ-izations of

life, all of which are promoted by an insistence upon security.

nobody knows the trouble i’ve seen k

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