The Legion of Doom

That's Bietz's name for the LDEP, which is every bit as appropriate as hellinahandbasket.com for its countermelody (also known herein as WTF, DMV, PCP, PCB, LSD, BVDs, Defeat Longjohns and The First Refuge of the Debate Scoundrel). Our story is interesting. To recap, this august Legion formed last year, promising a clean sweep of the augean stables of Lincoln-Douglas. When nothing happened, I started annoying them about what they planned to do, if anything, which started a general roil of commentary therefrom. To be honest, I still maintain a bit of agnosticism about the whole business; if you look back at my original posts here, I kept wondering if the problems that people were perceiving weren't simply the latest phase in the life of LD rather than the final death throes. But nonetheless the prominence of YouKnowWho.com kept burning as a self-determined beacon of progressive leadership, regardless of whether that leadership was earned or indeed real. That is, plenty of people gained apparent prominence by being featured on this site, which is the only site of note on the subject, and those people were mostly seeming to propose styles and content of LD to which people over at the Legion of Doom were, to some degree or another, opposed. Regardless of whether YouKnowWho truly was representative of the thrust of LD as a whole, it *seemed* to be speaking for LD as a whole, and setting itself up as the voice of LD. The theory would be that the average debater in Guam would want to emulate the regular celebrants noted on YouKnowWho. The lure of celebrity, so to speak. Is it true? Maybe, at least for some of the Guamians, anyhow.

In the recent thread about the Legion on WTF, there was a quick passing reference that I think is indicative of something worth thinking about, that WTF's voices represented a national circuit, juxtaposed against an unspecified set of local circuits (theoretically represented by the Legion, although that is neither here nor there at the moment). I'm interested in that idea. Is there a general widepread local circuit as opposed to the vocal albeit small national circuit? This may very well be the case. It may very well be true that, while the average Guamian debater would like very much to travel around the mainland visiting the dozen or so venues of debate recognized by the TOC and thus deemed National $ircuit, and get his or her picture posted by O'C holding the top award while hugging the soon-to-be-annihilated opponent (O'C always takes those pictures *before* the final round, so that the two gladiators will both look happy, as compared to the *after" moment, when one of them looks like the cream-licking cat and the other one looks like Bette Davis telling everyone to fasten their seatbelts because it's going to be a bumpy night), in fact, said Guamian knows perfectly well that he or she is never getting past the Agana High Memorial. And further, if my own comprehension of what is being discussed on WTF is any indication, my guess is that, while our Guamian might have some interest in the trends and techniques and styles du jour (narratives, pomos and CTs, theory), reading about it there makes it seem pretty incomprehensible. What's an avant garde Guamian to do? Try to follow up on some of the reading that's mentioned, probably, but mostly go on debating other Guamians at Agana High, and arguing the resolution in an obvious way, and being perfectly happy.

Makes me want to move to Guam.

I'm especially taken by the idea of what the burdens are on a given side. One can make much of this, and certainly many do, both at the Legion and at WTF, but this one (i.e., me) sees it fairly simply. Here's a statement: Doing figgle-figgle is good. If I affirm this statement, I will make a case that doing figgle-figgle is good. If I negate this statement, I will make a case that figgle-figgle is not good. In other words, clear logic, clear language. Anything beyond that is a lot of, well, figgle-figgle.

I've pretty much abandoned reading the WTF posts on the Legion for now. I had suggested there that action might be required, but no one seemed interested. I had said the same thing to the Legion, and they got crackin' and came up with the Guidelines. Apparently the Legion will be meeting in Texas during finals to confab. No doubt the doyens of WTF will be meeting at TOC and similarly confabbing. If the result is a continuing dialogue, or lo, a dialectic, we'll be in good shape. If the whole thing disintegrates into name-calling, we'll be right back where we started. Personally, if things don't work out, I'll blame the Legion. They're the so-called grownups. They're the ones getting paid to do this. If they take charge and move intelligently, good things will come of this (the apparently pseudonymous Daryn Paciotti makes this point well on a recent Legion post). It's all up to them.

(And yes, I had to look it up. I knew of no towns in Guam. Agana is the only one big enough to make it to my Reader's Digest Illustrated Great World Atlas. By now they've probably changed the name of the place to George W. Bushville, for all I know.)

(And, coming tomorrow: Brace yourself. It's Project X.)