One at the office on a semi-social DL and another at the social yahoogroups of Marathi friends.
First debate was fully loaded with a lot of pitfalls. It was something related to Palestine and with a Muslim employee. I was very careful not to step on any toes as the admin would have ordered the debate off the air as soon as any distant reference to personal background would have been made.
The other side did not have any such limitations. He quickly piled on the propaganda. Before we could dispute that Jews have had a continuous presence in Israel since time immemorial, he had stepped his propaganda up to (a) this is the biggest conspiracy of the western nations (b) Palestine is the biggest problem which is one of the major root causes of the militancy everywhere in the world (c) We should look at what is driving the terrorists to terrorism. Look into the hearts and minds of them.
He never had any proofs to his claims. He could not prove that Jews did not have continuous presence in their holy land. He could not point to any Palestine kingdom there. He could not prove that this is the most essential thing to world peace. But his last statement, professing understanding of the terrorists was completely uncalled for. There was a straight and unbroken line of propaganda and misinformation here. And he put it forward in such a way that he did not need to prove any of it. And one of the closely guarded DLs in MS was used to spread the propaganda.
When I pointed this out and appealed to him not to do so. He claimed harassment based on his personal background. The administrator of the DL jumped in and made us shut up. But the damage was done and message was conveyed, without having to prove anything to anyone, a debate was won by proxy. By proving that I was racially motivated and all my points were non-sense.
Another debate was going on in parallel on the Marathi DL I mentioned before. People were debating the best way to inculcate traffic sense in Indians. One of the friends, a staunch BJP supporter, suddenly raised the issue of money being wasted in wrong schemes, the example he gave was of the Jaagore campaign.
He insinuated that because it did not raise the percentage to 90%, this was a complete failure and a huge wastage of money. since the time BJP was about to loose, he has been raising this point in a lot of unrelated debates. On being confronted, he came up with an excuse that "this was just a metaphor and not related to the main point".
So here are two main ways a very good opposition to a point can be ignored/worked around:
1. Increase the rhetoric to the next level. Jump to the next point without proving the earlier one. Let it blow full steam. If you belong to some disadvantageous group, make full use of it.
This can be called frequency hopping. Or Ghoda-Chatur debate :)
2. Make the point you want to debate in the context of another debate. Upon questioning, mentioned that it was just a metaphor. Change your frequency back to the old programming. If nobody opposes it, your point is made anyways.
A good debater should have good strategies in place to evade these tactics. If you have a very good and strong point.
If you yourselves are on a flimsy ground, you should be able to use these two tools very effectively :)
3 comments:
i just happened to come across this post and realised the debate # 2 was on our mh group. Reading few things i realised u mihgt be pretty much pointing to me but later in colclusion part (n bit earlier too) there were so many other wrong assumptions and info abt me n discussion on the group that i was stunned... but no complains... this is ur blog, ur place.. u can express whatever u want..
I have not mentioned any names and took as much context that is only necessary to make my point. I hope that clarifies my intentions.
I guess I was spoiling for a good debate and was disappointed at not having one.
I am still open for it :)
We can still continue it here/on the group/individual emails.
luv ...
My only objection was for
- staunch BJP supporter : which i am not
- money being wasted in wrong schemes, the example he gave was of the Jaagore campaign : i never said we are wating money. Never even uttered anything about any scheme or not even about jaagore campaign
- this was a complete failure and a huge wastage of money : same like above point
- since the time BJP was about to loose, he has been raising this point in a lot of unrelated debates : i dont understand how it's related to defeat of BJP. secondly i never brought any BJP point in this issue, not in any other issues. Rather none of the issues. and definitely not in unrelated debates at least :)
- Upon questioning, mentioned that it was just a metaphor. If nobody opposes it, your point is made anyways : That's not the strategy to win the debate. Not mine at least. i am not kinda person who wants to win debates by hook or crook. Whoever is right is right. If no one opposes my point that's not my fault.
For these points i said that i was stunned to read that u mentioned these points on my name which i never spoke of. check the debate chain once again. :)
And no.. not u or anyone else was spoiling the good debate. we can continue it anywhere anytime and for any amount of time as long as it's a healthy debate.
cheers.. :)
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