Round 1 BF: Grapevine v. Vestavia

Aff: Grapevine

RFD: Case outweighs capitalism.

The 2NR really stakes this round on the quality of your ethics evidence and analysis. Absent a strong ethics argument, it’s a very clear affirmative ballot, as the negative concedes the truth of multiple scenarios for extinction. Asteroids is one of several, but it’s the clearest example of something that’s just not particularly susceptible to any sort of social constructionist analysis; the aff claims to stop an empirically verifiable extinction level event that doesn’t much care about our justice concerns.

Ethics remains poorly developed, however; the negative relies on repeated assertions instead of the detailed macro explanation that they desperately need. I need a really good reason to reject the plan in the face of extinction. The Zizek 4 and Zizek and Daly 4 cards don’t get you there; they posit ethical problems with capitalism. They also posit some ways that capitalism tends to misrepresent markets as neutral when instead they tend toward social exclusion. These authors would really need to advocate a strong rule-based, or deontological, morality to justify a negative ballot that recklessly disregards the primacy of survival.

Were I to attempt to justify a negative ballot, I guess I’d have to resort to the idea that ethics transforms the role of the ballot; perhaps I should consider the ballot an expression of my ethical alignment with a particular system instead of an examination of the consequences of enacting a particular policy. I can’t interject such an argument, however. The 2NR never says that, and the affirmative consistently extends their conceded framework arguments.

2NR comparative risk analysis can’t put the negative over the top without a decisive win on the nexus question of deontology. Your discussion of risk suffers from two macro problems. First, it isn’t actually a comparison; you recite some features of your critique’s risk without actually placing these factoids in the context of the affirmative advantages. You don’t say why the K’s better – you just say why you think it’s pretty nice. Secondly, it’s scripted, so any existing nuance is blurred by incomprehensible delivery.

On the micro level, the aff’s ahead on risk because they win several uncontested scenarios while at least contesting both alternative solvency (Rorty) and impact uniqueness (Eichenwald). The 2NR is long on ethics reiteration but short on any detailed explanation of how the alternative actually transitions away from capitalism.

1ac: Good pacing and delivery. I really appreciate the way in which you segment the cards by pausing slightly between them – you are very easy to flow and understand.

I don’t understand the internal link to asteroids at all. I understand that the air force has operational authority over preventing collisions, but how does the strength of the air force really affect an interception? There may well be an internal link story here, but I don’t think that’s transparent based on the tag or text of the evidence.

1nc: Good delivery, but I think there are some conceptual problems here.

As a general rule, I feel that running a single T violation contributes to T’s viability as a 2NR option. Multiple violations create too many possibilities for entirely justifiable 1AR cross-applications.

Capitalism contradicts many of your other arguments. Spiking food prices are likely a product of a market economy, not simply diversion to corn ethanol. Maintaining civil military relations to preserve stability would certainly only be a priority to fans of the current distribution of military and economic power.

I rarely vote aff on conditionality, but I’m increasingly willing to vote aff on “contradictions bad”. If the negative could hypothetically concede link turns on a disad in order to reinforce their links to the criticism, I think the neg’s creating a fairly unusual strategy skew. Also, while negative strategies should not, perhaps, be single seamless advocacy statements, there seems to be some education value to upholding some minimal standard of coherence. Almost any logical system starts with the principle of non-contradiction.

This advice applies more to Grapevine than Vestavia. I’m flexible enough that your 1NC is certainly an option, but Grapevine should make a theory argument that’s slightly more nuanced than either conditionality or conditional PICs bad.

I don’t think your politics disad makes sense. Why does Obama’s political capital affect his policies on Gaza or Israel? Doesn’t he make those diplomatic decisions free from Congressional oversight or control? Perhaps I misunderstand the disad since it’s not discussed much past the 1NC.

1NC CX: Farhad, I appreciate your graciousness on principle – you consistently describe your opponent’s RFDarguments as fair or sensical. I think you’re giving away too much perceptually, however. It’s good to be polite, but you still want to prove that their arguments are bad.

2ac:
Good overall. I think you’re weak on the counterplan. You might want to flush out the theory on the perms more thoroughly, make more defensive arguments about the net benefit, and at least start to resolve the potentially dispositive questions of PRESUMPTION and MARGIN OF ERROR. I think it’s likely that they could win a non-zero risk of this net benefit, despite some obvious flaws in their net benefit. The round might then revolve around the following nexus questions:
1. When is a fractional risk equivalent to zero risk?
2. If there’s no net benefit to the CP but it solves the aff, who wins?

2NC: These scripted overviews are way too long. They largely reiterate the position. You are too overview dependent and need to clash more directly with their responses.

Ethics is a great example of this – it’s eventually the real nexus question, but I don’t have any useful information other than a couple of cards and an explanation of past future present present past that would be difficult to filter and absorb at 100 WPM, let alone 250.

2NC C-x:

You ask the 2NC, essentially, if he dropped asteroids (he did) and if his ethics explanation made any sense (not really.) Accurate diagnosis of neg flaws, but those are genuinely the worst possible CX question in this scenario, because there’s a 1NR. He could hypothetically instruct her to shore up these weaknesses.

NEVER EVER give them a chance to make up for their errors (did you drop asteroids)

NEVER just give them a chance to explain where they are crucially weak (ethics)

Undermine them CONCEPTUALLY instead of going after TECHNICAL WEAKNESS, because there’s a 1NR.