text/gemini
**EDITED ON 10/14/24 for style**
The spectacle of public political debate is almost never a good thing. It is, at best, a sporting event where the audience members root for their team and nobody comes away with a more nuanced understanding of the other side and, at worst, an opportunity for the holders of the least tenable position to bypass the intellectual deficiencies of said position and to leaverage the performative aspects of public debate to "convince" people to their side through charisma or stagecraft.
speaking of sports, debate is also a competetive activity, usually among students, wherein debaters are assigned positions to defend, whether it is their own or not and whether it is an actual defensible position for a reasonable person to hold. Debaters can literally argue an indefensible position by more successfully employing various techniques to "win" the debate. The contents of any given position are, in theory, immaterial to a victorious argument. thus, competetive debate is not concerned with truth, merely with technical acumen and "winning".
Of course,not all public political debates are identical to competetive debate (or "forensics" as you may have heard of it) but even a cursory viewing of any US presidential debate will quickly disabuse anyone of the idea that their is anything but pure showmanship going on.
Debate with the goal of deepening the understanding of both positions by both parties, is a different matter, even when that is occuring in full public view (without discussions on whether that is a thing which is actually possible). But when either party has a goal of "convincing" the other or of convincing an audience, it quickly devolves into parlor tricks, theatrical flourishes and forensic club chicanery in service of that goal.
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