Zhang,+Grant


 * Grant Zhang**

Green Valley 2015’ New York University 2019’

Read what you are comfortable in front of me. As a critic, I don't have any ethical dispositions towards any argument. I may have specific argument preferences that I will address down below, but I will do my best to evaluate arguments objectively. Arguments and literature that I may be unfamiliar will require a higher level of explanation and comparisons to win my ballot. I’ve been a policy debater, and I’ve delved into the critique. I’ve read non-traditional affs and my main strategy against non-traditional affs was topicality. I have a good amount of experience in all types of arguments except for performance-based arguments. I think that all forms of debate whether it is theory, critiques, disadvantages, and counterplans have two elements. The first is a link and an impact. The second is something that makes the argument competitive or intrinsic.

Stylistic Things
I enjoy debates with lots of comparison and clash. The more you are able to articulate why the warrants in your piece of evidence are either better or that your evidence already answers and indicts the warrants that the evidence that your opponents read or the warrants they are making results in more speaker points and a more clear cut and easy decision. I would like to read all relevant cards that are referenced in the 2NR and the 2AR at the end of a debate. That being said, I would like to be in the e-mail chain at grantzhang97@gmail.com. However, this doesn’t give you the excuse to only let your evidence do the talking. It will be unwise for you to make me read your evidence for you and decide the nuances that I should compare and evaluate. If there is something that you want me to look at directly in your evidence, make that clear in your last speech. I might not see things in a card that you do, especially if you are reading critical literature that I am not familiar with. Clarity is the most important stylistic element. If I don’t understand you, then I probably did not flow some things you said. If I didn’t flow something because you were unclear, it makes a point of contention that you were putting forward irrelevant. It’s possible to be clear and fast. That being said, work on being clear before you amp it up to the next level. Please care about my flow. Be line by line at least until the very last two speeches. The 2NR and the 2AR I make an exception for because those speeches tend to be more about comparison, and they prioritize what they think should be the most important and deciding factors within a round. If you choose not to engage in the line by line and avoid clash, then it gives the other team more leeway to make new arguments. For example, if the block jumbles up the debate in a way that’s totally different from the 2AC order, I am more inclined to give the 1AR new arguments because 1. I pity them for having to deal with that 2. I am not sure where things would line up in the order 3. I want to see you suffer because you killed the organization of the flow. Arguments about why line-by-line debate is bad are unpersuasive to me. I will extend an impact for the 2AC without having the 2AC explicitly extend it in the speech if the 1NC fails to address the impact. However, this does not mean it is a good idea to leave me to this because it gives you the opportunity to make a comparative claim out of this. For example: “They dropped our warming impact. That’s 100% risk of extinction. Even if they may be winning internal link or solvency defense, a dropped impact means it’s try or die for the aff.” The 1AR is generally the last speech that gets new arguments for me. The 2NR and the 2AR will be allowed to make new comparisons, but the comparisons must be made between arguments that already exist on my flow form before the last two speeches. If an argument is dropped or mishandled, a clever 2NR or 2AR will make comparisons or applications of arguments they already have to make it a smaller issue.

Aff Stuff
I think you have a good aff if: 1. It is at the center of the topic with a large literature base 2. It has good warrants about why it’s specific solvency mechanism is the best way to address it’s impacts 3. It has a diverse amount of impacts that can be weighed against disadvantages. I think it’s smart to have a war impact, an environment impact, and another type of impact. (disease, terrorism, ethics) This gives you a lot of headway in debates that are big on impact calculus. The strategic utility of having an aff with multiple impacts is that certain impacts are more strategic to deploy against different types of disadvantages and critiques. 4. It has good USFG key warrants. 5. The aff has good solvency evidence specific to each advantage. 6. The internal links add up and there aren’t lapses in consistency from internal link to internal link. For example, I would dislike an advantage that would solve for terrorism in Eastern Europe, but your impact evidence is about Al Qaeda having nuclear capabilities and the ability to initiate a nuclear exchange. The more specific your impacts are to your internal links, the more coherent your advantage appears to me. 7. It is able to tackle and beat disadvantages and critiques rather than being dodgy about the aff’s mechanisms. It will be difficult to win my ballot if your aff’s purpose is to no-link as much stuff as possible. I like a consistent and coherent position. Not something that changes once during the 2AC or the 1AR.

__**If you aren’t going to defend instrumental action by the United States Federal Government**__ I’ve worked a lot with these affs my senior year in high school. Just because I may have read some of these arguments does not mean I am the best judge for them. I read a Nietzsche aff at a few tournaments for the purpose of strategy, not because I like these arguments. In fact, if the strategy of your aff is to create reasons why predictability and switch-side debate is bad, I’m not a good judge for you. If you would think of any of the arguments you read as “troll,” then I am definitely a bad judge for you.
 * Read this if you don’t have a lot of time**

1. It affirms the topic. It is unpersuasive to me when your argument is that it is unethical to affirm the topic. Debate is a place where we see an exchange of ideas and open-mindedness towards new things. If your aff doesn’t mandate a plan, it must at least be in the direction of the resolution. If it is not, I will find it very difficult to grant you any internal link defense to their topicality arguments, and you will likely lose without defense. 2. You need defense against topicality/framework. I think predictability and limits are important and that the aff should provide for a substantive debate the negative can engage them on. Impact turns to limits and predictability, IN THE CONTEXT OF DEBATE, make no sense to me. I highly doubt Nietzsche means to make everything as unpredictable as possible. When Nietzsche taught, I highly doubt that he would go on a tangent and start spouting something random. There needs to be ongoing dialogue in debate. I think debate is an important activity where an exchange of ideas needs to happen. In order for that to happen, there needs to predictability and limits for the negative. People often read cards in the context of educational institutions but not clash and dialogue focused activities like debate when they choose to impact turn predictability and limits. 3. You need a reason why debate is key for your advocacy. If your excuse for reading an untopical aff is we think messing around in debate is fun, and we should get to do whatever we want, then I will not like you. I am particularly fond of wrong forum arguments when articulated an instance as such. There are many other places where you can mess around. I think that debate has an element of contributing to self-awareness or subjectivities. If you think your aff is a way that can empower you and that debate is the specific space in which that must happen in, then that is a good justification of why debate is key for your advocacy. 4. Your aff should solve for its impact. Often times, I hear absurd methodologies that don’t have any policy relevance claim to solve for huge overarching extinction impacts and power structures. I don’t think methodologies like coalition building within debate are very reasonable or effective unless they transport that knowledge into politics. It’s more persuasive to me that we should strive to become policymakers than it is to say debaters should start protesting on the streets. 5. Policy relevance is a plus. I like practicality and concreteness. If your aff is more practical and logical, I will find it more persuasive. 6. Just like if you were to read a policy aff in front of me, give me a reason why your solvency mechanism is key. Give me a reason why it is preferred over the topical version. If your answer to topicality is the USFG is always racist, I will probably vote negative on the topical version. To beat the topical version, you need intuitive and thoughtful answers about why your methodology is key, not why an institution is bad. Give disadvantages to the topical version. I tend to view a lot of T-USFG/framework debates in offense defense. 7. Have a strong impact, multiple if possible. I think you need to weigh an impact that cannot be encapsulated by the negative’s interpretation. You need to do impact calculus about why your impact outweighs. Why is it worth sacrificing substantive clash in debate? Why are the skills we build from the Lundberg evidence not as important? If you are able to have some type of extinction impact, that is a big plus, just make sure your aff logically solves for it.

Neg Stuff
People tend to read a lot of impact defense because it is generic and applies to everything. I think the neg is at a disadvantage in many debates if the route they take is disadvantage and impact defense. If you are only pushing them on the impact level, and the aff is shooting holes in all parts of your DA, then it is easier for them to compare the 100% aff solvency that I will award them (because you didn’t pursue anything but impact defense) to a lower risk of a link. In an ideal debate, where the aff and neg are great at impact calculus, I’m probably voting aff because I think there is a higher risk that the aff solves than it links to your DA. That being said, there are many holes in an aff’s internal links that don’t require evidence to make it a problem for them. Push them on the solvency level as well; we often let affs get away with solving too much. I really like a good politics debate. I think they are very intense and have a lot going on at the same time, which makes them very entertaining. In terms of strategy, I think a good disadvantage has a specific link to the aff and is also more intrinsic to the aff than politics, but I am still a sucker for a good politics DA. If you want to win me over, good impact calculus will get you far. Compare the implications of timeframe, magnitude, probability, and horizontal/vertical escalation. Give reasons why whatever impact filter you are going for is the most important and how that implicates the aff and how it implicates the other filters. A good 2NC/1NR on politics will read cards on the impact level, and it will read cards on why the DA turns the advantages to the aff. When you read cards on the uniqueness, link, and internal link level, it’s more effective to have different warrants in each card. A wide variety of warrants on each level of the debate will give you more options and it will let you encapsulate on the 1AR’s mistakes. I like specificity. A link argument about the aff is better than 5 generic links that the aff might fall under. However, if it is a really small aff, you need to apply the aff to the generic links and give warrants as to why the aff may be perceived in those ways. Some more politics specific stuff A reason to why the politics disadvantage is good is not a reason to why it’s intrinsic. If the 2AC only says the disadvantage is not intrinsic, I don’t see a reason why you would answer that with politics is good. Winners win is much better the bigger your aff is. Another way to encapsulate on winners win is to apply it specifically to their politics DA and give reasons why your aff is different from the instances in which winners win theory is disproved. Your counterplan should be both functionally and textually competitive. By textually competitive, I don’t mean by redefining the word “should.” Normal means counterplans are pretty much always bad. I’m not a good judge for you if your strategy relies on the consult or the conditions counterplan. For the aff to deal with the giant blocks of theory that they read at you, I would suggest giving me a filter to evaluate theory arguments. For example, the aff should say “evaluate the impacts to theory in the context of debate because any of there policymaking education arguments are subject to change because the process of policymaking is always changing and the education that we get now may not be applicable in twenty years.” I think a solvency advocate is a good measure of whether not a questionable counterplan like the International Actor Counterplan, the States Counterplan, or the Courts counterplan should be allowed, but you will find that I tend to be rather lenient as to what I consider as a solvency advocate simply because I believe the Aff should be tested on why action by the USFG is key. Process counterplans are very rarely persuasive. You will need to have a pretty specific solvency advocate to make me consider it in terms of whether is theoretically legitimate as well as some way to make the counterplan competitive. The best critiques have links based off of the plan rather than the advantages, but it is clear that not everyone will have links that are specific to the plan. There I expect you to explain and contextualize links to the action of the plan and the way it solves its advantages. A link of omission will have a tough time defeating the permutation. I dread these type of arguments. I know if you are reading a link of omission, covering it up and saying you are not does not get you anywhere. Totalizing statements about why governmental action is bad or state bad arguments are unpersuasive to me. I think arguments all need to be specifically applied to the aff. Usually I think a specificity framing to determine whether or not critique links are contextualized to the aff is a very good strategy for affs debating really lazy teams. The reject the aff alts are unpersuasive to me. I like concrete alternatives that are practical and viable. I don’t think a historical materialist critique somehow radically demystifies the way people see capitalism and causes revolution. Alternatives also need to be able to solve for the links of the plan as well as overcome the status quo. I find that a lot of the time debaters weigh huge impacts that aren’t caused by their links to the aff. An effective way to articulate your impacts and persuade me is to find a way to explain how the aff could raise us over the brink of extinction. The term role of the ballot is a way I filter impacts. This also means it’s a way of saying impact calculus. I don’t think a role of the ballot is dropped if a team is beating you on impact calculus, but they don’t specifically speak to the question of the role of the ballot. I need a reason why I should prefer the role of the ballot you are advancing. You should do impact calculus. You should give me reasons why I should prefer root cause arguments. Debate the case. If at the end of the day, I think the aff solves extinction and the neg just says capitalism is bad but provides no defense or any mitigation at the impact or internal link level. I’m probably voting aff unless you can convince me that the alt solves the aff which is very rare when the critique links to the aff. Conditionality and Neg flex is good to an extent. Beyond 3 conditional advocacies is pushing it. It also makes your counterinterpretation meaningless because your counterinterpretation no way solves for the affs impacts when they get too large. I like arguments that are substantive and about the specific skills that conditionality allows us to build as well the skills we lose with conditionality. Fairness is usually an internal link to something bigger like people quitting or incentivizing research and education. Every argument other than conditionality and performative contradictions is a reason to reject the argument.
 * The Case**
 * Disadvantages**
 * Counterplans**
 * Critiques**
 * Theory**