Judges are People Too.

Judges are People Too.

Supposing that one was acquainted, how ever peripherally, with a judge that was assigned to one’s round. Leaving the round, and with in ear-shot of the opponents, you said: I have heard so much about you as an instructor.

Later, a team-mate approaches you and says: You should never do that. It looks like you are trying to suck up to the judge.

You explain your affront. How dare your team-member even SUGGEST that a single word you said with in that class room was not from the pit of your own heart?

Your interlocutor explains: It just looks really bad. And you would not want to give your self an unfair advantage over your opponents?

And of course this is a cruel manipulative technique: To use your higher motives and to try to pass judgement on your sensitive soul as to sub-vert those motives to the insensitive whole and to group control.

You would say: I don’t give a *damn* if it gives me a competitive advantage! If it reflects well up on my character that I express my gratitude for the institution of education, attributing credit where credit is due, then I deserve the advantage. Were my opponents of lesser character this would have been apparent all ready, and were it not, I do not regret that this last gesture was the arbiter. Were they of comparable character a fair judge would not allow the gesture an undue bias; he would note its extra-curricular implications. How am I to be suspected of inviting judge inter-vention? The very ACT and INSTITUTION of a judge is a form of intervention. It is insane to lend the instructor the authority of Judge if one did not trust his JUDG*-ement. One would much rather throw a-round than to allow a person of weak character that authority. It would be an Example not to lend such a person that.

So who are YOU to judge me? YOUR only contention is that it might put me at a DIS-advantage. But I don’t give a damn about either. For one thing: The very nature of your claim en-sures that the risks are the same (in a zero-sum game). If YOU could conceive of my acts as reprehensible, so might the judge, so it is theoretically just as likely that the gesture will afford me a DIS-advantage as an advantage. That clears my conscience a bit. So what remains of your indictment? You only want me to have an advantage. But I don’t give a damn about what that ballot says. I don’t *care* if I gain leverage in the community by virtue of my connections. How absurdly silly. Bureaucracy all ways struck me that way. If the judge deserves credit, I OWE it to him, and I deserve credit for knowing people that know him and have given him his due as well. If you know that it’s him, and you know it’s not whim, then the poet with in you will know it: You owe it to him.

Supposing he suffered from some strange depression.

Would it be not buffered by my kind trans-gression?

Would you rather win a round fair and square

than to be so profoundly aware?

Or would you not care?

Academics are hard

on their selves and are scarred

and their students are all so self –

serving imprudent

so if I won ballots by brightening days

then what kind of person would be so de-praved

as to crave a mere ballot when there are lives to be saved?

Would they worsen this hell that impersonal

People made?

Do not tell me how I ought to be-have.

Debate is not a game. If the point were to win then there would be no loser. We would not run “Net Benefits”, a Utilitarian attitude, in a game that hinges on Ethical Egoism. We would be more honest to run Elitism!

So fuck the ballot. If I deserve to win it is only because my opponents are of lesser character or intelligence. If not, then it GENUINELY DOES NOT MATTER. Let’s throw the masks off. If you are going to gripe be-cause you lost a round that you DESERVED to win, then you deserve to lose. I am more ashamed of the rounds I won unjustly than any of the rounds I lost unfairly.

And if Debate has any value what so ever then it is in teaching us to love the institution of education, and that means loving our teachers, and not as mere bureaucratic machines and means to ends.

*we see “judge” abbreviated this way at times, as in “judgmental.” To remain aesthetically consistent with my moral position I shall honor this despite the presence of the first “e”.

Dm.A.A.