Rant unto the joy fantastic

Capitalism manages to perform frequent, infuriating cultural inversions. Remember when to reform meant to make something better? Now it means to make something worse, scarce, nasty and so on. One word, representing a noble concept inverted is debate.

The trouble with debate, as it is taught, is it's robbed of value and invested with cynicism. If you are introduced to the idea of debate at school, sixth-form or university, it is usually in the form (however informal) of the debating society. Not everything is generally up for discussion. Students aren't asked to debate the merits of murder or the upside of slavery. They will be asked to debate something reasonably abstract, say, renact the trial of Charles the 1st. Crucially the class will be split into two on an arbitrary basis. King Charles's trial was not arbitrary for its participants not to mention the country at large, which was in the process of revolution at the time. Presenting 'debate' in such a way suggests real arguments are nothing more than personal decisions, almost a matter of taste (rather than, say, a matter of life and death).

Debate is such a debased concept nowadays. I have little doubt it was in the past, but I want to look at two modern perversions of this idea. First is when debate is sustained beyond any reasonable meaning. A standard piece of rhetoric for climate change deniers is to assert their antagonists are trying to shut down debate. Debate is good, shutting down debate is bad, therefore people who insist on the reality of climate change and the neccessity of doing something about it (as opposed to discussing it) are bad.

But there is not equality between the George Monbiots and Bjorn Lomborgs of this world. One has an overwhelming mass of scientific and anecdotal evidence, the other does not. For democracy to have any meaning debate must have an endpoint, and that point has been reached over whether or not climate change is really happening. You might want to argue over how climate change may be tackled. I'd say, given the obviousness and urgency of the solutions to climate change, that debate should probably be brought to a close too.

There is no common ground between Monbiot and Lomborg. There is common ground between the majority of school, sixth-form and university students over the issues of EMA, coursecuts and tuition fee hikes. There is cause to debate how the government's attacks on students may be averted and/or overturned. Such a debate is not infighting, as Aaron Porter likes to suggest. Said gentleman is, of course, trying to curtail debate in order to cover his baldly exposed arse, having not only done everything to demobilise the student movement (what NUS president doesn't do this) but, when he could not longer do so, slander and condemn the people he represents.

Debate, as it is presented to us, is a sickening sham.