life is too short and love is too long

FIRST LAW: This character must be a woman.

SECOND LAW: This character must be a loser, but not in a way that can be pinned on her gender. Misogynistic response from the audience does not disqualify the character.

THIRD LAW: If the audience does not enjoy this character, then it becomes impossible to enjoy the show/film/book/game altogether. It is not possible to ignore this character, for better or for worse.

So first of all the title is a bit misleading. There are actually two different kinds of political debates, and I can only help you with the second one. This is NOT advice on how to settle arguments with your friends; these are hostile tactics, meant to be used only on enemies, and if whoever u use it on wasn't your enemy before then they sure as hell will be when you're done. Anyway.

First off, you have to know ahead of time what kind of debate you're in. The two kinds of political debate are internal and public, and they have to be approached very differently because they're very different animals. The internal debate is a dialectical fact-finding process wherein some people resolve contradictions within their group by discussing the relative strengths and weaknesses of various positions; the internal debate should be respected, and the only way to win one of those is to have a good and well-presented argument. Good luck w/ that one.

Then there's the public debate. The public debate--and this remains true whether it takes place on a fancy stage or in the comments section of a youtube video--is a circus. More to the point, it's your circus, and you are the ringmaster.

The true target of a public debate is not the opponent, but the audience. You are not acting as a political worker educating a potential contact, but rather as a performer putting on a show for the audience. The object is not to win over your opponent; the object is to leave any observers with the impression that your side is reasonable and intellectual while their side is silly and histrionic. Always keep this in mind.

Try to avoid addressing your opponent's points directly, except to ridicule them. Instead, use phrases like "But what about--" and "Oh, so you're just going to ignore--" in order to keep bringing up additional points of your own, thereby monopolizing the conversation for your point of view and preventing your opponent from organizing a coherent counterargument.

Take any opportunity to imply that your opponent's arguments are foolish without saying so overtly. Keep an ear out for any lines of argument or turns of phrase that might sound peculiar to the general public, such as cumbersome academic jargon or obscure subcultural metaphors, and roll your eyes while repeating them back to your opponent in a condescending tone.

If you find yourself unprepared or otherwise caught out by a question, just refuse to answer it. Or refuse to elaborate. Imply that your opponent is being foolish by even bothering to ask such a question. "It's not my fault you don't already know about XYZ, someone who'd done any research on the topic would already know about XYZ and wouldn't need me to explain it to them. Anyway, have you considered--" You're never ever refusing to answer or elaborate because you don't have an answer, no, you simply refuse to embarrass yourself by condescending to answer such silly questions. Come on.

If at all possible, try to bait your opponent into getting angry or otherwise distraught. How to accomplish this will vary from person to person, but your pretentiousness and aloof indifference should get you about halfway there on its own. Remember, however, to try not to resort to overt personal attacks unless you're absolutely sure they're going to land; you're meant to look like the voice of reason dispensing sage wisdom while they're meant to look like an angry, blathering jackass. If you can so get under your opponent's skin, it's pretty much over. You can aloofly (and infuriatingly) dismiss whatever else they have to say as a baseless appeal to emotion and proceed to "Anyway, have you considered--" your way into using the debate floor as a soapbox from which to preach to the audience.

Keep these tips and tricks in your back pocket and you'll never, ever lose, as long as you define "winning" as your opponent giving up and storming out of the venue.

And now you're one step further on your journey to becoming a rat fuck! More to come. Quote to think on:

'fragging' is the colloquialism for troops attacking their superiors in the vietnam war (not just officers, but just as often NCOs or even just peers they disliked). it was called that because it would typically be done with fragmentation grenade, but not usually during a battle or anything. that wasn't exactly very reliable, plus it didn't exactly leave you with an isolated target

rather, it was the use of fragmentation grenades *on base*; your classic fragging consisted of rolling a fragmentation grenade under the door into the latrines at night after your target went in. this was enabled by the fact that firebases (the typical field base used by americans in the vietnam war) would have crates of fragmentation grenades easily accessible, as the response to hearing something rattle against the barbed wire at night was to simply throw a grenade at it and wait until morning to see if you got anything rather than risk being lured out. so it was a very good anonymous tool for assassinations.

the scale and fear of fragging had an enormous cultural effect on the united states. in the military, it contributed to degrading morale and a variety of programs to counter it, including the first-ever anonymous tip phone line for soldiers to complain about officers. the realization that soldiers would simply kill their superiors if pushed seriously degraded effectiveness in a war where the primary tactic was to go out into the bush and deliberately pick fights. its a huge part of why the US military switched to a volunteer model.

when stories of fragging made it home, it was an immense culture shock for midcentury america, and cemented itself into the news and media. through the 70s and 80s, there was a *lot* of US media about the Vietnam War. the stuff in the 70s was largely extremely critical and extremely cynical, largely made by people who opposed the war, but in the reagan era you saw an uptick in war action movies which... while not typically set in the Vietnam War, were largely concerned with refighting and 'winning' it in the narrative, creating big, stupid action movies like the rambo sequels

this sort of dumbass action movies, along with heavy metal and the satanic panic, heavily influence early first person shooter games. Kevin Cloud, one of the artists on the original Doom, used 'frag' as a term to distinguish killing players from killing Doom's monsters. Doom was built as a single player game first, a cooperative game second, and a multiplayer versus game third, so the language of 'you fragged X' was ported from the cooperative game (where it was used to indicate you'd killed a friendly, idiot) into the multiplayer deathmatch.

from there, it made it to Quake and Unreal, the big arena shooters of the late 90s, and remained the term pretty much until all First Person Shooters were subsumed into the increasingly military-propaganda-y Call of Duty games post Modern Warfare. i have no proof of this, but i suspect it was a term that CoD wanted nothing to do with as they became increasingly reliant on connections to the military-industrial complex, so the term was carefully kept out of marketing and slowly killed it among gamers.

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