I
think almost everyone would agree that the term “debate” is really a misnomer
for the pre-election Presidential & VP debates a couple of months ago. Out
of the 4 people who participated in them, the only one who really succeeded in
following what I would consider traditional ideas about political debate was
the now VP-Elect Mike Pence.
I recently watched as much as I could stomach of a pre-election debate between Dinesh D’Sousa & Cenk Uygur. Uygur really did a great job of showing us how debate should not be done. Some of his more despicable methods were sarcasm, moral equivalency, mocking the messenger, deliberately misquoting (which is lying), doing what is known as “pivoting,” & generally treating his opponent like a fool. I couldn’t accept as credible what he was saying for a number of reasons. One of them was his apparent definition of what constitutes debate.
On
the other hand, D’Sousa did his best to be civil, address what he could of Uygur’s
claims, & try to keep the debate on track & focused.
One
of the really important keys to getting our country back on track is to debate
properly. The term “debate” implies that there are differences in opinion (& at the same time does not imply that all opinions are equal). But it
would be nice to hear debate that shows respect for those whose opinions
differ regardless of the validity of their opinions.
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