Thread by @JoohnChoe

Debating disinfo belief never works. Debating disinfo producers is almost always a trap. Most people seem not to even know how debate works anymore.

But there are times & places where debate actually matters. Foreign policy and Congress are two of them.

So, let me explain:
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The thread I'm referring to is this.

What I'm trying to do here is to set up #NAFOfellas for success in 2 things:

1) messaging in a simple and clear way

2) actually arguing with someone if it ever gets to that, this will blow people out of the water

Take a second to look back and sort of get used to the language if you don't know. There's no shame in it. This shit is hard.

I'm going to show you what the actual debate right now looks like if you try to track it, that'll kick this into overdrive, so, get there if you need to.

When I say "step back and take a 10k foot view on the status of aid to Ukraine" this is what I mean.

With much worse arguments, but, still, basically this is the mental structure.

It's very simple if you think about it as "a map of my answers to every point in your argument"

This is putting aside a few important aspects of policy debate, importantly, evidence.

Some arguments require evidence; extraordinary assertions require extraordinary evidence. On the other hand, some types of arguments don't require evidence ("A conflicts with B" for instance).

Both evidenced and non-evidenced assertions in a debate fit in to the same "flow" of things, when you visualize it as a set of relationships between statements like this.

What I just showed you is the basics of what debaters call "a debate flow", or a flowchart map of a debate.

There are part::whole, one::many and many::one relationships, but this is the basic flow of things.

In debate terms we're actually not that far into a debate; I'm showing you 2AC.

This is a much more complete debate than what we have in real life here so you can get the rules.

This maps out even further to the right; I'm using a "toy" debate here with issues that we're (hopefully) all somewhat familiar with to demonstrate that this is

1) infinitely extensible, because conversations are infinitely extensible

2) compliant to a set of basic conventions

This is where all that reading and, like, squinting at dinky little lines you just did pays off.

What you're seeing here is the state of the debate on aid to Ukraine as of about 131 days ago before the bundled border/foreign aid supplemental was proposed.

The reason why "HEY GUYS THE BORDER IS IN A CRISIS, SO LET'S FIX THE BORDER FIRST" is such a shitty counter-plan is because it has a really, really, really simple and obvious answer, which is

wait for it

you know it's coming

Yup, the answer this counter-plan eats is simply:

What Republicans proposed was a counter-plan that should (ideally) disprove that Ukraine aid is a good idea: they said, fix the border.

Instead, it proved that we should do both the border and Ukraine aid, which @kyrstensinema, @SenatorLankford and @ChrisMurphyCT tried.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT We're getting into decently complicated territory, so, take a sec and refresh on counterplans and permutations.

A counterplan has rhetorical burdens just like a plan plus it has to be mutually exclusive with the plan.

If a perm "works", then it's not.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT This is where stand today.

I'm being an "activist judge" here and actually giving Republicans credit for making statements as a reply when they weren't couched as such (that @RepMikeTurner space nukes thing for instance)

They still haven't argued case, which is important.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner By voting against the Lankford/Sinema/Murphy bill, Republicans have adopted an incoherent position that fails to meet their basic burdens.

And since they never denied that failing to supply aid to Ukraine was significant or harmful, they're getting hammered with that, every day.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner There's a lot of politics operating as an overlay on this, which makes things complicated.

There's also a lot of editorial license that goes into mapping out these arguments, you may think that some arguments fit into this space that I don't, or vice versa.

All fair critiques.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner The fact remains though, that although, again, yes I know and thank you for reminding me of something I've been saying since 20-freakin-17

YOU CAN'T DEBATE DISINFORMATION BELIEFS

people who need to look like they're in the right, like politicians, operate on rules like this

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner Debate doesn't determine reality; it undergirds the policy decisions and contextualizes the political stances and statements that comprise it.

And when you lose the debate, flagrantly, badly - like DROPPING CASE I mean come on, that's a rookie mistake - that has consequences.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner ...oh, also

if you actually READ and understood what I just explained, which is:

- a "stock issues" policymaking paradigm
- intentionality, or "aboutness" as a formal constraint in speech
- a directed acyclic graph as a map of human discourse with time on the X axis

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner then, congratulations

you are basically better at debate than, like

99% of the people I talk to or encounter on a daily basis

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner "really, Joohn? how many people do you think get this"

@staceyabrams, @JoaquinCastrotx & @tedCruz get this. @speakerJohnson if not his staffers get this.

A lot of what I say is admittedly editorializing.

This isn't that.

This is me dropping game.

speechanddebate.org/notable-alumni/

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner @staceyabrams @JoaquinCastrotx @tedcruz @SpeakerJohnson Think about why Avdiivka is up in the news so much today (it was on NPR's and CNN's morning news podcasts, fun fact) and why people are talking about it.

It's executing a debate strategy I just explained: "extending" significance & harms.

This wins.

@kyrstensinema @SenatorLankford @ChrisMurphyCT @RepMikeTurner @staceyabrams @JoaquinCastrotx @tedcruz @SpeakerJohnson What basic debate strategy dictates - which they're executing on - is, hammer on how bad/significant delaying aid is, that's their weak point.

It'll get to a point where the political damage is so bad (in an election year, no less) they'll be forced to find a way to a compromise