Debating Star Wars, or, Leia is in the 1%
Dec. 19th, 2012 10:55 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schneefinkToday was our debate club's last regular debate meeting before Christmas, so traditionally we did a fun motion. Last year's was "This House Believes That Batman is better than Superman", I'm so sorry I missed it! But last year we didn't have a chocolate fountain and fruit :)
This year the motion was "This House Would demand retribution from the Rebels for the destruction of the Death Star." L. and I were first government because we were the biggest geeks in the room.
It was a lot of fun! We decided to talk about the destruction of the second Death Star, not the first one, which removed much of the opposition's "self defense" argument. And their faces when L., who did the first speech, defined it thus were funny to see: "Wait, there was a second Death Star? Shit." Hehehe.
We concentrated on proving that the Empire was a legitimate government and the Rebels were terrorists, that their activities were immoral, that there had been damage to civilians, and that the Empire had the right to demand monetary retribution to prevent lasting economic damage to the whole society. Second government tackled the "who is evil" question, which was tangential to the debate but very interesting, and it was a prop sweep.
We could also have chosen the crackier route of "we are evil, therefore we demand retribution because we can", but I don't think it would have been as interesting.
Some interesting/funny things that came up:
L. had a nice argument where he claimed that the whole conflict came down to paying taxes (starting with the trade embargo of which nobody can ever remember the details), and he portrayed Leia as "the 1%." Opposition came with "no taxation without representation", only Leia had actually been a Senate member and was a member of the Rebellion even before the Senate was disbanded.
Opposition tried to portray the Empire as evil, but couldn't prove why. First opp tried "they restrict freedom", but in a way that left anarchy as the only alternative, which made that easy. Then they tried "they killed people", but the Rebels did that too. They also tried "they demanded too high taxes," hehe. They came with the "they killed the Jedi" argument, but C. from second government did a beautiful explanation of why the Jedi are actually the evil ones: they are outside the law, they manipulate helpless people to get their way, they believe they are better than anyone else, they attack a democratically elected Chancellor just because he follows a different philosophy etc.
Then there was the question of whether or not the Empire was a legitimate government, but unfortunately it wasn't argued well from either side. Government said that the way they came into power was legitimate (elected!), opposition said they aren't legitimate because they're evil, but nobody really got into "under which circumstances does a government become illegitimate?" We had some of "Just because you don't like what the government does or a member of government commits a crime (e.g. Alderaan) doesn't justify becoming a terrorist and committing terrorist attacks", but it wasn't engaged on enough. A pity, because that was actually one of the key questions, or should have been in my opinion. Admittedly he few thoughts that went in that direction didn't go very far because we don't actually see much of the Empire in the movies, so it would have been hard to do.
Second opp, who completely missed the point of the debate ("the Rebels don't have to pay because they won!" *sigh*), tried to argue that obviously the Empire was evil because Luke was the hero of the story, which gave me a nice opportunity to talk about George Lucas, traitorous rebel sympathizer, and how we have to look past the propaganda and understand what really happened. That was fun.
Other things that came up were the justification for having WMDs, whether or not there were construction crews on the Death Star, and who was the real hero of the Star Wars movies (Darth Vader, obviously.)
Afterwards, L. wrote to me "I think the debate today slightly ruined Star Wars for me because I don't think anything we said was actually wrong." I certainly think several things we said were exaggerated, but unfortunately I have to agree at least partly :(
Whatever, Star Wars never made any sense anyway, especially not the prequels, just don't think about it or pick the parts of the Extended Universe that support your view of things.
This year the motion was "This House Would demand retribution from the Rebels for the destruction of the Death Star." L. and I were first government because we were the biggest geeks in the room.
It was a lot of fun! We decided to talk about the destruction of the second Death Star, not the first one, which removed much of the opposition's "self defense" argument. And their faces when L., who did the first speech, defined it thus were funny to see: "Wait, there was a second Death Star? Shit." Hehehe.
We concentrated on proving that the Empire was a legitimate government and the Rebels were terrorists, that their activities were immoral, that there had been damage to civilians, and that the Empire had the right to demand monetary retribution to prevent lasting economic damage to the whole society. Second government tackled the "who is evil" question, which was tangential to the debate but very interesting, and it was a prop sweep.
We could also have chosen the crackier route of "we are evil, therefore we demand retribution because we can", but I don't think it would have been as interesting.
Some interesting/funny things that came up:
L. had a nice argument where he claimed that the whole conflict came down to paying taxes (starting with the trade embargo of which nobody can ever remember the details), and he portrayed Leia as "the 1%." Opposition came with "no taxation without representation", only Leia had actually been a Senate member and was a member of the Rebellion even before the Senate was disbanded.
Opposition tried to portray the Empire as evil, but couldn't prove why. First opp tried "they restrict freedom", but in a way that left anarchy as the only alternative, which made that easy. Then they tried "they killed people", but the Rebels did that too. They also tried "they demanded too high taxes," hehe. They came with the "they killed the Jedi" argument, but C. from second government did a beautiful explanation of why the Jedi are actually the evil ones: they are outside the law, they manipulate helpless people to get their way, they believe they are better than anyone else, they attack a democratically elected Chancellor just because he follows a different philosophy etc.
Then there was the question of whether or not the Empire was a legitimate government, but unfortunately it wasn't argued well from either side. Government said that the way they came into power was legitimate (elected!), opposition said they aren't legitimate because they're evil, but nobody really got into "under which circumstances does a government become illegitimate?" We had some of "Just because you don't like what the government does or a member of government commits a crime (e.g. Alderaan) doesn't justify becoming a terrorist and committing terrorist attacks", but it wasn't engaged on enough. A pity, because that was actually one of the key questions, or should have been in my opinion. Admittedly he few thoughts that went in that direction didn't go very far because we don't actually see much of the Empire in the movies, so it would have been hard to do.
Second opp, who completely missed the point of the debate ("the Rebels don't have to pay because they won!" *sigh*), tried to argue that obviously the Empire was evil because Luke was the hero of the story, which gave me a nice opportunity to talk about George Lucas, traitorous rebel sympathizer, and how we have to look past the propaganda and understand what really happened. That was fun.
Other things that came up were the justification for having WMDs, whether or not there were construction crews on the Death Star, and who was the real hero of the Star Wars movies (Darth Vader, obviously.)
Afterwards, L. wrote to me "I think the debate today slightly ruined Star Wars for me because I don't think anything we said was actually wrong." I certainly think several things we said were exaggerated, but unfortunately I have to agree at least partly :(
Whatever, Star Wars never made any sense anyway, especially not the prequels, just don't think about it or pick the parts of the Extended Universe that support your view of things.
no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 11:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-19 11:32 pm (UTC)Yeah, and the prequels and what I know of the Extended Universe didn't make them less dubious at all, quite the opposite.
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Date: 2012-12-19 11:20 pm (UTC)(And my favourite part of the Star Wars canon will always be the Jedi Apprentice books. Qui-Gon 4evr! I AM SO UNCOOL.)
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Date: 2012-12-19 11:36 pm (UTC)First they wanted to do a Harry Potter motion, but we had a team that claimed to be unfamiliar with the books/movies, I'm sure it was just an excuse. "This House, as the International Wizarding Council, would abolish the Statute of Secrecy", if I remember correctly - that would also have been very cool!
And then four of us came up with increasingly obtuse Doctor Who motions while everyone else watched us and didn't understand a word *g* ("THW vote for Harriet Jones!")
I read only one of the Jedi Apprentice books years ago, that's all they had in the library, I was very sad about that :(
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Date: 2012-12-19 11:52 pm (UTC)However, I have more recently... aquired... the complete JA set in ebook format. Which I can email you if you like! They are awesomesauce. (And clearly the woman who wrote them was being constrained by the set page number, because they start becoming rather long stories rather arbitarily divided into individual books :D)
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Date: 2012-12-20 12:07 am (UTC)That would be much appreciated! :D I'll send you my email address if you don't still have it.
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Date: 2012-12-19 11:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-20 12:05 am (UTC)Finding out that there are several huge geeks in my debate club was fantastic.
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Date: 2012-12-21 10:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-12-21 11:54 pm (UTC)