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So this is being appropriately clowned as ahistorical nonsense, but I’d like to point out that one significant use of debate by dehumanizing abusive people is forcing their targets to waste their time and energy, their entire lives, simply defending their right to exist.
Sojouner Truth and Frederick Douglass didn’t debate slave owners, of course—what nonsense. But they did spend their lives defending their basic humanity at great personal risk.
They’re heroes for doing that. They shouldn’t have had to.
They’re heroes for doing that. They shouldn’t have had to.
Even as we praise them and countless others for their moral clarity and incredible bravery, we must pause to consider what else these great minds might have done, had they not been unjustly forced into such unjust positions.
And realize we should try to break that pattern today.
And realize we should try to break that pattern today.
Coming from somebody who's arguing for The Discourse Above All, this is pretty funny. 
Someone ask Jesse where he thinks we'd be if Frederick Douglass had "blocked" slave owners.
