Placitis,+Jonass

Former Niles West and MSU debater Late elims of multiple National Circuit tournaments + TOC - Senior Year Coach and Card Cutter for GBS.


 * Paradigm Update 11/28/16 **

I feel it necessary to be a bit more specific with regards to kritik debates. I have absolutely no issues with kritiks in general - I think they're an absolute necessity for a comprehensive analysis of any policy/topic. However, I do take issue with how kritiks are deployed these days. In a lot of debates I see a striking lack of specific link analysis, along with an absence of turns case arguments based on those links. You should ask yourself this question before any speech which includes extending a kritik: Could I give this speech against any aff, or is my speech/links/overview specific to the aff at hand (and its particular impacts and advantages)? I'm not sure what happened over the past 2 or 3 years, but people need to get back into tailoring their kriticisms to the specific aff being debated. Ask yourself this as well: why not be more specific? Specificity is the best way to take your kritik debating to the next level. One more thing: for the China topic in particular, why aren't you reading more IR-based kritiks (i.e., security etc.)? Rather than reading abstract, vacuous kritiks, why not take advantage of the MASSIVE amount of existing kritik evidence about threat construction, securitization, and so on?

^ You won't be penalized in any way for not doing this - just a thought. ^


 * Paradigm Proper **

I'm very open-minded when it comes to debate, by which I mean that I will listen to any argument and evaluate it as long as it is explained and impacted throughout the round. Do not take this statement as an indication that I don't know anything about debate - I just don't see the value in specifying how I perceive each component of each type of argument.

That being said, I do have some specific argumentative preferences and thoughts on the current direction of policy debate. I truly believe in the importance of stasis in debate rounds, and while I would never mandate that any team has to read a straight-up USFG policy aff with a plan text I do believe in the importance of being somewhat connected to the topic. When I say connected to the topic I don't mean, to provide a broad and somewhat extreme example, "we said the word 'China' or 'engagement' during our 1AC" but rather a concerted and concise effort at increasing relevant education for the topic with whatever distinct mechanism you choose. Once you decide to go down that road (i.e. advocacy statement etc.) I think the discussion should then revolve around whether or not the mechanism of the aff sheds new light on the typical USFG approach and its impact on the government and whether or not the education that the aff brings to the table is relevant and can be negated based on this relevance. I find the approach of acting as if we can just completely sidestep the government and its bad practices very problematic - the government is here to stay and it unquestionably plays a large role in shaping society and oppression, and thus you can feel free to not advocate a policy action through the USFG but you'd better justify that approach.

***This is not to say that you should feel uncomfortable reading these kinds of arguments in front of me***

On the Framework side of the debate: I don't understand the disdain that now exists for Framework as an argument. The only explanation I have is that people are just bad at running Framework. If run correctly, I think Framework debate creates some of the most fruitful and beneficial debates possible for this activity. Framework is properly argued as a kritik of Methodology, not some sort of abstract Topicality argument. Any Framework extension should devote a large amount of time to a Topical version of the Aff, and your impacts and turns case analysis should be based around the aff's deviation from said topical version of the aff.