In which we go forward

I could probably go on at great length about you-know-what, but isn’t that what every person with an internet ID is doing today? How did this happen, why did it happen, what does it mean, what will happen the next four years? I would say that many of these people are better qualified than I to answer these questions, but then again, many of those same people were totally wrong about the election in the first place.

Sigh.

I mentioned earlier in the week my education as a result of being a part of the debate universe. Much of that education has come from people I know writing of their experiences or commenting on the experiences of others who are, in a word, different from myself. An old white guy like me has little to fear personally from an old white guy like Trump. I am not one of his demons or straw dogs or enemies. I’m just a face in his crowd. But debate has enlarged my community dramatically. The people I deal with regularly are any of the following, in no particular order, in various combinations: young and impressionable, non-White, non-Christian, transgendered, non-straight, female. I probably missed a few, but the point is that they were fearful for the protections of their rights long before this election. Now they are even more fearful.

They all will, no doubt, dedicate themselves even more firmly to the causes of freedom, driven not only by their personal jeopardy but their beliefs in freedom as a goal despite one’s personal jeopardy. As I say, I have no real jeopardy in this, at least not as palpable as many of them. But my responsibility to work for the causes of freedom and the protection of rights is not lessened by my lack of pressing personal need. Rights, and freedom, are absolutes that we may only abridge in aid of strengthening them (e.g., the classic giving up of an absolute right to our own property to pay taxes to benefit the whole). At the point where we abridge rights and freedom for other reasons, then we are we are not strengthening them but weakening them.

What can I do? Literally? Well, for one thing, I continue to believe that the education in debate results in the making of better, more moral, more informed, more fairness-minded citizens, so I will keep doing what I do there. I will continue to pay close attention to the narratives of my friends who are on the virtual front lines, and let them know that they have my support. I will contribute financially to the causes that I think will suffer in the future.

I am not a terribly political animal. I have always seen cultural change as being as important to societal benefits, and cultural change is where I’ve spent my entire life, one way or another. I have always hoped that the needle would move further than it obviously has, but I have to believe that, somehow, the needle does ultimately move in the right direction. More protection of rights and more freedom for everyone. Everyone. Period. The end. Finished.  

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In which we analyze novice and JV divisions a little bit

These Big Question tournaments are like viruses, popping up in random places after having crawled out of their mysterious birthing cave in some remote undeveloped country not yet on any map. I went to one on tabroom to see what they said, and there was virtually no information aside from the fact that you can "earn money for your school" by hosting one yourself. I'm not sure if Ebola is the right metaphor. Tupperware, maybe? I like the idea of an activity we can refer to as Debate Tupperware. Maybe there's a little burp when you shut up the last speaker. Whatever. I can't fault the NSDA for getting into the lucre business; raising money is what non-profits do, after all, in aid of their mission. But on the other hand, it doesn't restore my faith in the organization, which was never terribly strong through all those years when I was the world's worst district chair. I'm pretty sure I'm on the short end in holding this opinion, but so it goes.

A lot more interesting is the subject of non-varsity debate events at major tournaments. It's fairly common around here for major bid-ly tournaments to conduct novice LD and/or novice policy. Novice PF is a little less likely at big tournaments, probably because most tournament directors go back far enough to PF's earliest days when a lot of people saw it as a punk idea that was the ruination of all things forensical. Or maybe people are just so tied to what they're already doing that they can't see a way to do something else. In any case, there is no logic I can imagine that would support the idea of novice LD and novice policy and not support novice PF. (Again, I mean at big tournaments, not local events that, obviously, have plenty of novice divisions.) I wonder when we'll start turning things around. The Bronxwegians suggested it, perhaps a JV division or two, but they really didn't have the real estate to pull if off. They're already packed to the gills with varsity divisions of everything, including speech and congress. It's a big school but it isn't that big. I wouldn't be surprised though if they continue to explore the possibility. Some people think that if you run a JV division it siphons off V entries, but my experience is the opposite. Princeton used to have JV LD, and it was primarily (and usually won by) first-year students. That's why I urged the original change from JV to novice. They were novice already, so why not admit it?

Anyhow, if you're running a tournament (and have read every word of my toolkit) you have to ask yourself if you want novice or JV divisions, and what you want them in. I think we're seeing a shift that will ultimately result in more non-V PF divisions and fewer non-V LD and Policy divisions. As I urge in the toolkit, go where the people are. If everyone in your region is doing PF and you believe Policy is God and PF is the devil, then you should do PF and shake hands with Satan while you're pocketing his entry fees. Seriously, tournaments should serve their communities, not their TDs. (And not the TOC!) Give the people what they need.

So, curiously, Penn is offering JV LD instead of their usual novice, and a new JV PF division. I have no memory of their discussing this with me, but then again, I have no memory of what I was doing five minutes ago. The numbers are solid for all the divisions in the pre-registration. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. I'll keep you posted. I'll keep myself posted, for that matter. Has the time come for other tournaments, like the Tiggers, to move out of the two LD divisions and into two PF divisions? Should they be novice or JV?

Interesting questions. Big questions, in fact, the kind I actually like thinking about.

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In which we meditate on (ugh) politics

I know this blog is supposed to offer some sort of information on the debate universe, but the last couple of weeks, aside from letting in people to the Tiggers, and watching Penn’s waitlist fill up quite admirably (more on that another time), I don’t have much information on the debate universe to offer. I mean, you can only marvel at the idea of Big Questions for so long when it has literally no affect on you. I mean, does anyone think that BQs are suddenly going to take over the Ivy tournament landscape? Maybe if they make it BIG Big Questions, and therefore BBQs, it might have a chance, but it’s like sending kayaks to fight battleships: sort of fun to watch them try, but you’re not really betting on them. (Then again, there was the battle of Salamis… Not exactly kayaks, but close enough.)

No one expects that I will come up with any great political analysis here. It’s not my job, and I don’t try. I in no way consider myself up to the task. I am not a political animal, nor am I terribly committed one way or another, aside from some predictable tree-hugging leftist leanings. Then again, I am a student of politics as such, the idea of getting things done in the public arena. The first question is, what should be done by government, and the second question is, how do you go about getting it done. That is interesting to me. The simple idea of the less government the better has its attraction, but we live in a world where individuals, however they might band together, are incapable of doing many things that must be done, and I subscribe to my own little theory that the purpose of government is to do the things that only a government can do. Sadly, we live in a country nowadays that doesn’t even come close to this ideal. Just drive around on the roads in my county for a while if you wonder what I am talking about, vis-a-vis infrastructure. Or look at the number of people in the country who are suffering from great needs of varying sorts that they are incapable of handling themselves. Those needs have to be addressed by government, in situations where no one else can address them. The idea that this makes government too powerful is a belief that causes harm that could otherwise be prevented. In our modern world this makes me a liberal. So it goes.

I would say that virtually all of my thinking on such matters arises from reading I’ve done in the last couple of decades, all as a result of my connection to the debate universe. I’ve read canonical ethical philosophers, I’ve read modern philosophers (albeit to a lesser degree), and I have a few people who are simply engaged citizens whose postings and links and personal essays inform me about things that I would otherwise remain in ignorance of. I like being exposed to contrary ideas, but I’m even more interested in being exposed to expansive ideas that broaden my knowledge and allow me to see more than just my own experiences. I don’t think that in any way I would have the same brain if it wasn’t for debate. God knows what my brain would otherwise be. More self-centered, probably. More effete. More boring, come to think of it.

I’ll vote tomorrow, and I hope that you will too, if you’re eligible. I expect little to come of it, in aid of improving things in the direction I think government ought to go, because I question anyone’s ability, at the moment, to affect change, or more to the point, get things done, period. We need leaders with skill and knowledge and ideas and plans. We don’t really have them at the moment. Come to think of it, we usually only get them in times of great catastrophe (e.g., FDR confronting both the Depression and WWII, Churchill in WWII, the Founders creating modern democracy). I’d rather not stumble into a new time of great catastrophe to get things moving in a good direction. But I have no ideas how to make any of this happen. Neither, it would seem, does anyone else.

This is not our finest moment.

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In which we continue our coverage of Big Questions by asking some "big" questions

Who starred in the movie Big?

In The Big Lebowski, what really tied the room together?

What exactly was The Big Short?

What does BFG stand for?

What part does Burl Ives play in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof?

The actress who played Phyllis Dietrichson in Double Indemnity (“I wonder if you wonder”) starred in what 1960s TV Western?

The 121-year-old character played by Dustin Hoffman was raised by Indians in what movie?

The First Infantry Division is officially nicknamed what?

What’s another name for New Orleans?

Nia Vardalos wrote and starred in what comedy sleeper?

What kind of bang do the supporters of Big Questions possibly not believe in?

Extra credit question: Wouldn’t it be better if Donald Trump really was saying bigly?

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First person to answer all the questions correctly without resorting to Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Excite or Lycos gets to go on to our next level, which consists entirely of having the satisfaction of knowing the answers to some awfully simple questions. I mean, really now...

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In which we pooh-pooh the hoo-ha, or, what was the Big Question again?

Has anyone else noticed this whole Big Questions thing? I mean, there was all kinds of hoo-ha when Ted Turner/Controversy/PF was introduced, and while the hoo-ha was pooh-poohed by the existing debate community, much as LD was pooh-poohed by the existing debate community a couple of decades earlier, it caught on quickly and has in many regions taken over. For instance, you can’t swing a cat in Massachusetts without hitting a PF team, much to the dismay of Massachusetts debate teams, not to mention Massachusetts cats. (Of course, you, dear member of the VCA, know well that the cat in the cliché is the cat o’ nine tails, the swinging of which is way more dangerous than the swinging of Rum Tum Tugger.) Then Worlds reared is cosmopolitan little head. I have no direct experience of the event, but people who do speak highly of it, especially as a debate medium in the classroom. The NSDA is all over it, and people are always proclaiming its virtues on Facebook, and the NDCA has even added it to its annual tournament. Frankly, with three debate events already bouncing around, a fourth seems like one too many, if only from the perspective of a) running tournaments, and b) coaching teams. Most schools do not participate in policy, LD and PF simultaneously; it’s easy to imagine them now also not participating in policy, LD, PF and Worlds simultaneously. This is not a knock against Worlds, simply a presumption that four is at least one too many, since I’m pretty sure that, in the present world, three is already one too many.

And then all of sudden, the Big Question rabbit was pulled out of the hat. It’s supported by the John Templeton Foundation, which is, indeed, dedicated to studying the big questions of “human purpose and ultimate reality.” How ontological of them. The debates comprise equal times for both sides’ speeches, and a recommendation that rounds be judged by members of the general community. (Shades of Ted Turner!!!) Anyhow, this year’s annual topic is Resolved: Science leaves no room for free will. Before you say, “Say What?” let me provide you with the list of potential topics for next year:

·      WTF?

·      SRSLY?

·      Should I stay or should I go?

·      Who’s on first?

·      Do you want fries with that?

·      Are we there yet?

I mean, there’s big questions and there’s Big Questions. Right? (That’s a big, not a Big, question. “Am I right?” is a bigger question. “Am I right or am I right?” is a Big Question.) I don’t mean to make fun of anything the NSDA does, but, well, WTF, SRSLY? We need yet another debate format like we need [fill in your own humorous metaphor here—I’ve done my work for the day.]

In which tournaments are opening left and right

And the hits just keep on coming.

UPenn registration opened today. Or as they like to call it, the Liberty Bell Classic, maybe because it’s everything it’s cracked up to be. As you’ll recall, this year they have moved from Presidents’ Weekend (which, for the record, the school doesn’t celebrate—they have classes that Monday because, I guess, Ben Franklin was not a president no matter how many people think he was and no matter how many statues they have of him around every corner) to the prior weekend. The question of numbers remains. It was pretty popular on the old weekend. How will it fare on the new one? Only time will tell, as we say in blurb-writing land.

Meanwhile, the Tigger is all but filled. Not surprisingly, PF has grown and LD has shrunk. On the other hand, surprisingly Plan Colombia won the day for the December resolution. There’s probably nothing wrong with this; it’s always a good idea for people to educate themselves about things outside our borders, especially where we don’t usually pay much attention. That was why I liked the Sahel topic back in the day. If you think US people know nothing about South America, try quizzing them on Africa. One of the things that has always impressed me about policy debaters is their knowledge not only of what some might perceive as obscure world events, but how those events play out with one another. In other words, the wonkiness is impressive. This will allow PFers to get another share of that.

Anyhow, as I said, PF numbers are definitely growing in Tigger land, but they’ve acquired the school next door for Friday night, and they can simply take over previous LD territory on Saturday, so accommodations are available. The IEs also seem bigger than usual, from the way JV described it. He may be limited on real estate in the usual middle school, though, but he seems to have plans on how to cope.

Columbia (as compared to Colombia) will open in a week or two, following my advice to give Penn a little time to get settled. At which point we’ll have three colleges in play. All I have to do is remember not to confuse them as I’m working on them. You can’t let people into the Tiggers from the Gem of Harlem, if you know what I mean. Vigilance! The cost of tabbing is constant vigilance!

Semper paratus, sports fans.

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