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Brilliant, accurate, incisive.

Rogan MMA bros like these jousts because they see everything as a game. That’s how they understand capitalism, life, and truth. Kirks audience was watching a verbal wrestling match, not a deliberative debate. EK shows he’s a dilettante by admitting that he also confuses wrestling for thinking.

I was just considering mentioning Duane Gish here. He "won" many "debates" with evolutionary biologists largely by overwhelming them with a flood of falsehoods. They didn't have time to correct all these and also make their own points. The "Gish Gallop."

This was a really good article. Summarized the issues very effectively. Kudos.

One unappreciated benefit, however, of these things, is to show how superficial many partisans' understandings are of the issues. Don't tell me you haven't watched these things and cringed when someone was unable to make the obvious point that should've been made.

yes. this.

I always thought rule #1 of the internet was “don’t feed the trolls”?

State loudly "prove me wrong," then refuse to admit you were ever proven wrong, and claim that, as a result, you were proven right. An effective, if evil, strategy

Voltaire said that we owed respect to the living and to the dead we owed them truth. So at least one of us understood at one point.

well said, thank you for this.

Good piece. Debate, like Free Speech, is a word that is a term that is misused and weaponized by the Right. Debate is actually a structured, competitive process with judges, coaches etc. As you point out, what Kirk did was performative propaganda.

Very good read. At some point, hopefully more people will turn away from this type of “entertainment” that is not helping to actually improve anything.

There's a story that the Senate of the old Republic of Rome wanted to find out about this "rhetoric" of which they'd been hearing. The Athenian they brought in first argued one side of a case, and then to demonstrate his virtuosity, argued the other. The Senate had him put to death as a witch

Wasn't he usually challenging people who were not experts? Wasn't it just a spectacle to watch a uninformed person get destroyed by an aggressive debate style? Wouldn't an actual expert be able to dismantle all his arguments?

As @willmenaker.bsky.social said, there’s a reason he debated the students and not the professors.

Saying Kirk was "practicing politics the right way" because he was engaging with people with discourse is like saying a conman that swindles money from people is "practicing business the right way" because at least he doesn't use a gun.

He wasn’t interested in engaging in debates, that was his job and business - it is a grift

You should never wrestle with a pig. You'll only end up covered in shit and the pig enjoys it.

Great article. The “Deep State”, AKA a non-political civil service and the rule of law, had been a source of “facts and expert analysis”, which is why politics-as-entertainment grifters have demonized it and are now in the process of destroying it.

Trick questions, false choices and non sequiturs. That’s how they do debate.

Bingo

This is about how seriously we should treat debate bro culture.

Belligerent exploitation of a power imbalance isn’t the same as “persuasion.”

Kirk was a combination of a Carnival Barker and a three card monte street hustler.

Thanks for authoring the best explanation of Charlie Kirk's grift I have read.

A past associate was proud of his "debate" skills... His objective was to "win" even if, in his case, he played devils advocate. I was having a discussion. He was debating. I was conversing "with" him. He was reciting "to" me. We don't talk much anymore.

"Talking *at*" seems a more apt description.