Are debate kids ruining America?

 

I've been reading excerpts from the biography of Trump advisor Stephen Miller, and the description of his high school years seems familiar to me. He was interested in politics early, and while I don't know if he was on the debate team, he was oh so surely a debate kid.

I was a debate kid for two years in high school, and I enjoyed the hell out of it -- the only reason I quit was because my dad made me, so that I could have an after-school job that also required me to work on Saturdays, which is when debate tournaments were held. The style of debate we used in Kansas (I don't know if it still works this way) required two-person teams to show up ready to debate either side of an argument. There were a couple of ways to win -- just present so much evidence (basically, in the form of cited articles) that you'd overwhelm the other team, or to present so many arguments that the other team couldn't keep track of them all. We used "flow charts" to track the arguments, and leaving an argument un-argued against -- no matter how absurd the original argument -- risked losing the round.

With the benefit of hindsight, I see now that the format encouraged a couple of things: Fast talkers -- because the more arguments you could cram into your allotted time, the more difficult you made it to counterargue. It also encouraged absurd out-of-left-field types of arguments that had little to do with the topic at hand, because your opponent probably had prepared to respond. What it didn't encourage: Solving problems, or thoughtful, civil real-life debate. The object of the game was to create too much noise for your opponent to handle.

Debate kids are the folks who grow up to be lawyers and leaders, as well as insufferable Ben Shapiro-style "debate me" pundits. And now I wonder if the game of debate didn't encourage a few generations of Americans to decide that the best way to publicly argue over our issues was to create an extraordinary amount of sound and fury that signified nothing.

One of the biggest challenges for me in 2020...

 ...is being properly righteously angry about events while at the same time not letting the anger get away from me so that I become somebody I don't want to be.

I am trying to figure out how to talk to my pro-life friends about Trump

 

A common refrain at this week's Republican National Convention was that Donald Trump "is the most pro-life president we've ever had." No matter where you stand on the topic, I think there's a fair case to be made that's the truth. He has appointed judges who emboldened state legislatures to take a fresh run at knocking down Roe v. Wade. The right to abortion may never be entirely stricken from precedent, given how Chief Justice John Roberts likes to operate, but it seems likely to be greatly narrowed into near-oblivion over the next few years. We'll see.

I grew up in small town Kansas. I attended an evangelical Mennonite Brethren college. A number of people I care about -- and love -- are passionately anti-abortion. This makes things uneasy between us: I don't much love abortion and I think the decision carries moral weight, but I think there are substantial issues of women's freedom and autonomy involved. So I end up on the pro-choice side of the ledger. But I respect why my pro-life friends feel the way they do.

This fall, I suspect many or most of them will be voting for Trump.

I think this is a tremendous mistake. Trump's indifference to life beyond the womb is well-documented by now -- his willingness to separate migrant families at the border, his eagerness to downplay COVID-19 testing that could save lives and prevent outbreaks because he thinks the numbers make him look bad, his gleeful defense and pardon of war criminals. Given his history of infidelity and promiscuity, I feel pretty sure his pro-life position is transactional.

Some of my pro-life friends are aware of this. One told me, a couple of years ago, that he knew Donald Trump was a bad person -- "but I also think maybe I should thank him, you know?"

There is no way this friend will ever vote for Joe Biden. I don't think I could ever persuade him too. If you think abortion is murder, how could you ever vote for a candidate or party that supports keeping it legal?

And yet: I am convinced that four more years of Donald Trump will be disastrous. That democracy will be grievously injured and that Americans, particularly minority Americans, will suffer. I'm honestly not sure that's avoidable at this point, anyway, but it feels more certain to me if we have a president who -- it seems obvious to me -- is intent on sowing division for his own advantage over one who might actually cares about things beside himself.

So I want to make the case to my pro-life friends that they should not vote for Trump.

But I am not sure that I can, or that the outcome is possible. They see the same country, the same man, that we do. They will vote for him anyway, because the thing that matters most to them is saving unborn lives. I get that. But I am worried for all of us who are already here. I feel like I share at least 90 percent of my morality with my pro-life friends. But that last few percentage points, whew. Their morality tells them to vote for Trump. Mine tells me to do anything but. I am not sure there is a meeting place between those two points.

I was thinking today about the Iraq War...

...and there was a lot of discussion, back then, about whether folks in the Middle East were ready for American-style democracy.

These days, I'm not sure America is capable of American-style democracy. 

Anyway, a lot of RNC talk this week about how we're the greatest, most exceptional nation in the world -- and yeah, some good things have happened here. But the chest-thumping is straining and tedious, particularly during a deadly pandemic we can't seem to control, and a way to drown out the sound of people asking for help. I'm worn out by the constant need to assert American greatness. Would love it if we tried a little harder for American goodness. 

The best way for me to do sustained reading these days...

 

...is to deactivate my Twitter account. 

I don't mean log out. I mean deactivate it entirely. It's easy enough to reactivate, so the practical difference between logging out and deactivating probably isn't that great. But, psychologically, it slows down my tendency to check in and then keep scrolling, scrolling.

This afternoon, I deactivated my account and read two chapters of David Blight's biography of Frederick Douglass, and a few chapters of MOBY DICK. My head feels better for slowing down.

Coronavirus Diary: Too much, and not enough reading

I realized today that by trying to read every book at the same time, I'm not making a huge amount of progress at any reading. So. Back down to two books or so -- one fiction, one non-fiction -- and try to make a go of it from there.

Losing our past to the coronavirus

 

This place was once my home away from home.

I don't mean that casually. In my late 20s and early 30s, when I was still single, I would often stop by in the morning for a cup of coffee before going to work. I'd grab a quick bite to eat at lunch, then sit here with a book for 20 or 30 minutes with a second cup of coffee. And many evenings, after grabbing a quick supper, I'd sit here in the evening for more reading and another cup. (This was back before I realized that all the caffeine was messing up my sleep.)

This was my Cheers. I knew the names of all the regulars. They knew me. Some of my longest friendships were formed here -- before the pandemic set in, my family was having regular suppers with a woman who was a barista at this shop for more than a decade. When I stopped going to church in the mid-aughts, this was where I spent my Sunday mornings.

La Prima Tazza is still alive. But right now it's not the same, obviously. There is no lingering over a book in the front window, reading and watching the world go buy. You go inside, get your drink, and get outside as efficiently and expeditiously as possible.

I spent some time on the block this morning. Free State Brewery next door is where my friends and I spent a lot of evenings, grabbing a quick beer or having dinner. On the other side, Liberty Hall movie theater changed my moviegoing life. Around the block, Raven Book Store shaped the reader I've become as an adult. And a little further down the block is the old Post Office -- now a Blue Cross office building, but once upon a time the headquarters for the newspaper where I grew up professionally.

The newspaper has moved. The bookstore does delivery, but no browsing for now. Liberty Hall is only open a couple of days a week -- and, well, I'm not ready to sit in a movie theater yet.

The future is uncertain for all of us right now, but one of the things that devastates me about the pandemic is how it threatens the past -- how it threatens not just our lives, but the places and people who gave us life, that shaped who we are ... who I am. I realized this morning that I don't just miss the coffee shop and its people. I miss coffee shop music.

Isn't that weird?