[livueta]

> By being able to argue for/against Kritiques, you gain the ability to quickly call out the fucking bullshit and go straight to the meat.

This! I actually laughed out loud at the following line from tfa:

> A Public Forum debater who reached Semifinals at the Tournament of Champions told me: “I had to know critical theory to win... you have to be prepared in case you have to run it or go against it.”

Literally what? That's the entire fucking point. This is like people complaining about squirrels in debate or cheese in an RTS: if it worked, you suck, so maybe try not to suck instead of whining about it? I mean, I, personally, find arguments and worldviews rooted in appeals to authority to be quite gross, but I don't pretend that I can bury my head in the sand and cry unfair if someone deploys an argument like that against me and I can't deal with it due to lack of familiarity. Not really seeing how this scenario is any different.

Even in the extreme case of an outright biased judge, that's still in the game: inverting the K to demonstrate that, actually, the side that raised it are arguing for structural racism or whatever is both a ton of fun and really good experience.

Bias disclaimer: ran/defended against Ks in PF to great success long ago