"debate" gamifies politic conversation and replaces the actual stakes of the subject being debated with interpersonal stakes of clout and such. the demand for the version of civility that features in these conversations amounts to trying to water down even the interpersonal stakes

my issue was that we weren't taught anything about the history of the field, or even much about competing theoretical models outside the one being taught to us. i was never assigned chomsky!

Do you condemn Metacomet?

i have yet to see anyone compellingly argue against the idea of settler colonialism on historical grounds. "it's mean to describe countries i like as settler colonies" is a bad argument. "believing in settler colonialism requires me to draw political conclusions that i don't like" is even worse