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let me try this one more time.
1. the degradation of debate is directly tied to the possibility of anything like a democratic process. because the citizenry has actual power to influence how they are to respond to/be in the world around them in such a system, debate is fundamental to it. because (a) everyone is in the same situation, and has to work with others to figure out what to do it follows that (b) there is nothing more important than actual debate--one that presents both information and perspectives on that information.
what you have in the wider world is an attempt--from the right--to reduce debate to rehearsing arbitrary positions. matters of faith and/or committment are what matter--information can be diluted or spun away--what matters is prior committment.
that is the primary mode of gutting informed conversation we live with.
yet we talk alot about democracy. under these conditions, it obviously means nothing.
second: that the same kind of thing happens here is connected to what is going on in the wider climate--but as a voluntary association, we--here on this board---have choices about what to do. complaining about this ridiculous category of "bashing" and setting yourself up as being victimized by it is one response--one that is an exact reflection of the problem itself, that gets no-one anywhere.
the community that operates here can choose to alter how debates are carried out.
there are no rules given in advance that shape the content of debate, that define what debate is.
we could take that on as a topic.
we could discuss and agree amongst ourselves that we might try to conduct ourselves otherwise here.
or we could acquiesce here, as in everything else, to the debased standard handed us by the context we are stuck in.
we could act like a community responsible for itself and for what happens within it--or we could just watch and complain as things devolve, as person after person simply withdraws.
complaining about what victims conservatives are surely advances nothing.
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a gramophone its corrugated trumpet silver handle
spinning dog. such faithfulness it hear
it make you sick.
-kamau brathwaite
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