In the divvying up of my social media life, there is Twitter
for Trump, since that’s where he likes to make his messes. There’s Facebook for
mostly debate friends, because that’s where they gripe about debate.
Unfortunately a lot of them also like to gripe about what is shaping up into
the Second Civil War, but I’m already saturated with that from Twitter, so I’m
just mostly posting entertainments, amusing myself more than anything, and
tiptoeing through the carnage. There’s Slack for work, because media people
think it’s the coming thing and who am I to question it? I do work for a media
company, after all, even if I am in the old-fogey corner of it. Then there’s
blogging (here) for long form (-ish) discussions of, during the season, the
tournament business, and out of the season, whatever. And that is enough social
media for any one person. I have to admit that it is Twitter that absorbs me
the most lately. I’ve become obsessed with watching our country be degraded by
an ignorant clown and his self-serving cronies, treading within the first few
weeks into remarkably dangerous territory that could literally bankrupt us
and/or bring us into a shooting war. The damage already done to the meaning and
the values of the US is inestimable, and the clown has only been in office a
couple of weeks. But, as I say, I’m not going into that here. I apologize for
bothering the VCA with these thoughts. I figure it is highly unlikely that you
don’t already have them yourself.
I’ve just sent out a cri de coeur over policy judges at
Penn. The bottom line is, we ain’t got any, and nobody wants to bring any. In a
nutshell, this means that, unless things change, there won’t be any policy
division. It is small to begin with, and I think represents more of a desire by
the Penners to be a full-service tournament than any real dedication to the art.
But when the waitlist for JVPF is twice as large as the whole Policy division,
I think the situation explains itself. I would point out that, for those who
run tournaments, PF is twice as profitable as Policy because you can squeeze in
twice the teams into the same rooms for the same amount of time, and, well, the
entries are there wanting to get it. I made that point in my presentation to
the NDCA last year. It stands today. I don’t make the facts, I just report
them. Who would have thought, back when Ted Turner Debate pulled out onto the runway, that it
would end up like this? At the time, LD was the thing, the up-and-comer, the
growing concern. Now? Not so much.
Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes…
Meanwhile, as the tide turns to qualifiers for CatNats and
NatNats, Mar-Apr LD is guaranteed housing. In the US, this certainly stretches
our rights vision, but internationally it is often considered a basic human
right. Something tells me that if this were being argued in 1997, it would be
rather interesting. In 2017, maybe occasionally interesting, maybe a mess. I do
like the subject area, in any case. Students should be thinking about what does
and does not constitute the responsibilities of government. If we presume that
government exists to protect rights, then what are those rights. Of course, I
believe that government has a responsibility to do what only a government has
the capability of doing, so I approach the question from the position, do we
live in a society where individuals may no longer be capable of securing their
own housing, making that a government responsibility? Health care would fall
under this line of thinking, i.e., is health care such today that it goes
beyond the abilities of individuals to maintain it? Of course, this line of
thinking is not what the rights-oriented resolution asks, so it’s just
bloviation on my part. Still, what should the government do? What should the US
government do? Is it doing it? Or is the US government just all a bunch of
dogmatic idiots incapable of doing much of anything?
Am I giving myself away here?
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