Evazon Allegory of The Squirrel

Evazon 2012-2013 Allegory of the Squirrel
Murray 1
***ALLEGORY OF THE SQUIRREL***

The allegories all represent unifying themes for your off-case positions.
The squirrel is an argument about apocalyptic predictions: if we let our problems seem
overwhelming, we likely won’t do anything at all about them. We have to break our problems
down into little pieces to deal with them effectively and efficiently (and with detailed scrutiny).
The scorpion and the frog is useful for Nihilism – no matter our goal and trepidations, we
always encounter the scorpion who can only kill. But does that make the scorpion evil? If it is
truly in the scorpions nature, we cannot blame it for its violence. So too, we cannot blame the
world for its evil and violence , and instead we have to accept the inevitability of the Earth’s
violence. Basically, the only good response to the chaos of the world is to enjoy a brief respite
from the existential dread which accompanies the end of the universe.
Fox and Grapes is about desire – we always hate on what we cannot have. This is useful
for nihilism to prove the ressentiment argument (slave morality is formed from desiring what is
our of our reach – we define the strong as evil and define the self is good by comparison, making
life always reactionary)
The Cat and the Bell is about fiat. We can come up with all the plans we want, but if
someone doesn’t take the plunge and go for it, we’re all going to get eaten.
Nihilism is first and foremost just a Nietzsche argument about the futility of fighting
against death while being obsessed with it. There are all sorts of ways you could die (Bison
relocation, the entropy of the universe, the sun exploding), so instead of being worried about that
all the time, we should enjoy the intricate beauty of life at our fingertips. There are some more
general critiques of K affs in here: any aff that focuses on things like human rights or inclusion
can be beaten within the rather large link wall. For the most part this is just a Nietzsche
argument, so if the evidence is confusing, go find a Nietzsche debate on debatevision.com or
some more sources for explanation.
The fiat double bind is just that – a double bind. If everything they have said in their
1AC is true, then we will all die within a year or two from nuclear war. Remember that they are
NOT the federal government, so there is no way to actualize the education gained from debate
quick enough to change federal government policy. All of their education arguments have no
uniqueness given our inevitable demise, so the only thing we can do is orient ourselves towards
the last few months of life we have left on this planet. I suggest the “alt” being either the
Nietzsche position or the Comic Frame (Satire).
Apocalyptic predictions should be explained well in the overview. The thing to note for
this argument is 1) people will mostly go for framework so you have to keep up on that end by
reading the framework cards in the block, pressing with the fiat double bind, and reading a
“representations matter” argument, and 2) keep the floating PIK alive in the block to put a lot of
pressure on the 1AR. If they do an effective job covering it, then don’t feel afraid to just go for
the framework component of the position alongside some “turns case” analysis.
Satire Good:
The Onion evidence is to be played with, not to be taken literally. Just because you say
“heg high, USA! USA! USA!” and they drop it doesn’t mean you take out their advantage by
proving it non-unique. The purpose of the onion evidence is to satirize through mirror.
Sometimes adopting the absurdity of your opponent and bringing it full circle is necessary to
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effectively critique. Other times the onion evidence is a criticism through negation – using satire
to make a legitimate point about the affirmative (being downers about the economy means they
are economic doomsaying, and that may be net worse for the economy than doing nothing at all).
When you are going through this evidence, there will often be some brief 2NC explanations for
how to utilize the cards: do not hold these on an altar. You should feel free to reinterpret the
evidence however you see fit.
Reading the onion evidence is NOT the Comic Frame. The Comic Frame is a way of
viewing narratives about the world. This is a communication term, but that does not make the
1NC’s reading of onion cards a “performance” by any means. The comic frame calls into
question the way the aff perceives international politics (or for critical affs, the enemy of the
state/capitalism/whatever). The comic frame asks us to do away with the concepts of hero and
villain, and instead have antagonists who may be misinformed or unlucky. This is juxtaposed to
the Tragic Frame, which you will claim is indicative of the 1AC. The tragic frame requires a
nemesis, and enemy, who intentionally wants to cause harm. Historically, this type of
scapegoating leads to material violence (e.g. the jews after economic downturn in Germany).
The role of the ballot is to evaluate the discursive act of the 1AC. We should consider
and interrogate the rhetorical tools and communication techniques utilized by the 1AC, and judge
its outcome beginning with the affs framing and rhetoric. The plan is not relevant – obviously
we will never be able to access the USFG before the affs harms come true (fiat double bind), so
it’s more important to consider what we are learning in debate and how that shapes us to become
people outside of the round.
The evidence speaks for itself and I think it is rather clear. All of the articles this
evidence is cut from is fairly easy to find, and using the key terms “comic frame”, “tragic
frame”, and “deterministic frame” will get you very far in cutting additional evidence.
Murray 3
***ALLEGORY OF THE SQUIRREL***.............................................................................................................................................................1
***Allegories............................................................................................................................................................................................................6
The Squirrel..............................................................................................................................................................................................................7
Scorpion and Frog....................................................................................................................................................................................................8
Fox and Grapes.........................................................................................................................................................................................................9
The Cat and the Bell...............................................................................................................................................................................................10
***1NC Nihilism....................................................................................................................................................................................................11
2NC Fable...............................................................................................................................................................................................................14
2NC Everything is Falling Apart............................................................................................................................................................................15
2NC Eternal Return................................................................................................................................................................................................17
Link: Ought.............................................................................................................................................................................................................19
Link: Democracy (Generic)....................................................................................................................................................................................20
Link: Human Rights (Include the Other)................................................................................................................................................................21
Link: Human Rights (Transcendent Value)............................................................................................................................................................22
Link: Human Rights (Cred Bad)............................................................................................................................................................................23
Link: Human Rights (Protect the Weak)................................................................................................................................................................24
Link: Community...................................................................................................................................................................................................25
Link: Hospitality.....................................................................................................................................................................................................26
Link: Accepting Islam/ Tolerance..........................................................................................................................................................................27
Link: Emergency Politics.......................................................................................................................................................................................28
Link: Timeframe.....................................................................................................................................................................................................29
Link: Status Quo/ Timeliness.................................................................................................................................................................................30
Link: Suffering Bad................................................................................................................................................................................................31
Link: Engage the State............................................................................................................................................................................................32
Link: Morality
...................................................................................................................................................................................................................33
Link: Ascetic Ideal..................................................................................................................................................................................................34
Alt Solves Democracy............................................................................................................................................................................................35
Alt Solves Ethics....................................................................................................................................................................................................37
A/T “Make State Anti-Statal”.................................................................................................................................................................................38
***2NC Blocks***.................................................................................................................................................................................................39
A/T: Caused the Holocaust.....................................................................................................................................................................................40
A/T: Empiricism.....................................................................................................................................................................................................41
A/T: Nietzsche = Domination.................................................................................................................................................................................42
A/T: Ethics of the Other.........................................................................................................................................................................................43
A/T: Alt = Violence................................................................................................................................................................................................44
A/T: Gotta Include Group X...................................................................................................................................................................................45
***1NC Fiat Double Bind......................................................................................................................................................................................46
2NC Information Dissuasive..................................................................................................................................................................................47
2NC Cannot Engage the Political...........................................................................................................................................................................48
2NC Individual  State.........................................................................................................................................................................................50
2NC Link – Plan.....................................................................................................................................................................................................51
2NC Normative Fiat Bad........................................................................................................................................................................................52
2NC No Levers of Power.......................................................................................................................................................................................53
***1NC Apocalyptic Predictions Bad....................................................................................................................................................................54
2NC Overview........................................................................................................................................................................................................56
A/T: Case Outweighs..............................................................................................................................................................................................57
A/T: Perm do the Alt..............................................................................................................................................................................................59
A/T: Other Instances...............................................................................................................................................................................................60
A/T: Do Both..........................................................................................................................................................................................................61
2NC Predictions Overview.....................................................................................................................................................................................62
2NC Framework.....................................................................................................................................................................................................64
A/T Aff Choice.......................................................................................................................................................................................................66
A/T Predictability...................................................................................................................................................................................................67
A/T Moots the 1AC................................................................................................................................................................................................68
A/T Policy Education.............................................................................................................................................................................................69
Link/Impact – Research Method............................................................................................................................................................................70
Link – Sovereign War.............................................................................................................................................................................................71
Impact – Turns Liberalism.....................................................................................................................................................................................72
**A/T: Fear Good (MUST READ)........................................................................................................................................................................73
A/T: Fear key to VTL.............................................................................................................................................................................................77
A/T:VTL Inevitable/ Can’t Measure......................................................................................................................................................................78
A/T: Discourse Irrelevant.......................................................................................................................................................................................79
A/T: Util Good........................................................................................................................................................................................................80
***SATIRE GOOD***..........................................................................................................................................................................................83
1NC – Critical Affs.................................................................................................................................................................................................83
***Policy Links......................................................................................................................................................................................................86
Link – Oil Wells.....................................................................................................................................................................................................87
Link – War on Terror..............................................................................................................................................................................................88
Link – Senate bad...................................................................................................................................................................................................89
Link – Economic Doomsaying...............................................................................................................................................................................90
2NC Economic Doomsaying..................................................................................................................................................................................91
Link – Fixing Things..............................................................................................................................................................................................92
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Link – Hegemony...................................................................................................................................................................................................93
Link – Libya...........................................................................................................................................................................................................94
Link - Security........................................................................................................................................................................................................95
Link – Apocalypse Reps.........................................................................................................................................................................................96
Link – Prolif............................................................................................................................................................................................................97
Link – Iran..............................................................................................................................................................................................................98
A/T: Bioweapons..................................................................................................................................................................................................100
China to Overtake the US.....................................................................................................................................................................................101
The American Flag...............................................................................................................................................................................................102
Extinction Inevitable - Palin.................................................................................................................................................................................103
***Critical Links..................................................................................................................................................................................................104
1NC Framework...................................................................................................................................................................................................104
Link – Mastubating...............................................................................................................................................................................................105
Link – Engage the State........................................................................................................................................................................................106
Link – The Rev.....................................................................................................................................................................................................107
2NC The Rev........................................................................................................................................................................................................108
Link – Criticizing the Masses...............................................................................................................................................................................109
Link – Aesthetics/Art............................................................................................................................................................................................110
2NC Aesthetics/Art...............................................................................................................................................................................................111
Link – The Other/Love.........................................................................................................................................................................................112
2NC The Other/Love............................................................................................................................................................................................113
Link – Talking about stuff....................................................................................................................................................................................114
Link – Intellectualism...........................................................................................................................................................................................115
Link – Intellectualism...........................................................................................................................................................................................116
Link – “Racism Bad”............................................................................................................................................................................................117
Link – Educated Bigots........................................................................................................................................................................................118
Link – Micropolitics.............................................................................................................................................................................................119
Link – Ironic Man.................................................................................................................................................................................................120
Link – Looking Cool............................................................................................................................................................................................121
Link – Movements Bad........................................................................................................................................................................................122
Link – Evolution...................................................................................................................................................................................................123
Link – Wanting to be Happy................................................................................................................................................................................124
***Impacts............................................................................................................................................................................................................125
Wasting Your Life................................................................................................................................................................................................126
***Alternatives.....................................................................................................................................................................................................127
Humor Good.........................................................................................................................................................................................................127
FREE TASTY ICE CREAM................................................................................................................................................................................128
Do the Plan with Michael Keaton.........................................................................................................................................................................129
A/T: Dirty Word Ks..............................................................................................................................................................................................130
A/T: Perm - every other instance..........................................................................................................................................................................131
Value to Life Subjective.......................................................................................................................................................................................132
***The Substance.................................................................................................................................................................................................133
2NC Overview/Explanation.................................................................................................................................................................................133
A/T: No Alt...........................................................................................................................................................................................................135
Epistemology........................................................................................................................................................................................................136
A/T: Permutation Do Both...................................................................................................................................................................................137
***Framework......................................................................................................................................................................................................139
2NC Framework...................................................................................................................................................................................................140
Engage PTX Uniqueness – Masses......................................................................................................................................................................143
Engage PTX Uniqueness - Hypperreal.................................................................................................................................................................144
A/T: Traditional engagement good.......................................................................................................................................................................145
A/T: Training for the Political..............................................................................................................................................................................146
Framework – Heroic vs. Humor...........................................................................................................................................................................147
K2 Democracy......................................................................................................................................................................................................148
Critical thinking > predictability..........................................................................................................................................................................149
Debate is key........................................................................................................................................................................................................150
Demystify.............................................................................................................................................................................................................151
Culture Jamming Good.........................................................................................................................................................................................152
***Links...............................................................................................................................................................................................................153
Link – 1AC as Character (Then Who am I?)........................................................................................................................................................153
Link - Threats.......................................................................................................................................................................................................154
Link – Threat Con Emthymeme...........................................................................................................................................................................155
Comic perspective good.......................................................................................................................................................................................156
A/T: Nihilism........................................................................................................................................................................................................157
A/T: Humor Bad...................................................................................................................................................................................................158
Satire Good – New Possibility..............................................................................................................................................................................159
Clash of Contexts..................................................................................................................................................................................................160
A/T: Onion isn’t Qualified...................................................................................................................................................................................161
A/T: Wrong Forum...............................................................................................................................................................................................162
A/T: Not Funny....................................................................................................................................................................................................163
Humor > Telling People Things...........................................................................................................................................................................164
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Murray 6
***Allegories
Murray 7
The Squirrel
When problems overwhelm, us and sadness smothers us, where do we find the will and the
courage to continue? Well, the answer may come in the caring voice of a friend, a chance
encounter with a book, or from a personal faith. For Janet help came from her faith, but it
also from a squirrel. Shortly after her divorce, Janet lost her father, then she lost her job.
She had mounting money problems. But Janet not only survived, she worked her way out
of despondency and now she says, life is good again. How could this happen? She told me
that late one Autumn day when she was at her lowest she watched a squirrel storing up
nuts for the winter, one at a time he would take them to the nest. And she thought, if that
squirrel can take care of himself with the harsh winter coming along, then so can I. Once I
broke my problems into small pieces I was able to carry them, just like those acorns, one at
a time. – That was in a White Stripes song (Little Acorns)
Murray 8
Scorpion and Frog

A scorpion comes across a frog and asks the frog to help carry the scorpion across the
river. The frog is afraid of being stung during the trip, but the scorpion argues that if it
stung the frog, the frog would sink and the scorpion would drown. The frog agrees and
begins carrying the scorpion, but midway across the river the scorpion stings the frog,
dooming them both. When asked why, the scorpion says it is in his nature, and it is better
that they both shall die than an enemy shall live.
Murray 9
Fox and Grapes
Driven by hunger, a fox tried to reach some grapes hanging high on the vine but was
unable to, although he leaped with all his strength. As he went away, the fox remarked,
'Oh, you aren't even ripe yet! I don't need any sour grapes.'
Murray 10
The Cat and the Bell

A group of mice hold a meeting to find a solution to a troublesome cat. The mice agree to
the idea to place a bell on the cat so they can be forewarned of its arrival. The plan is
applauded by the others, until one mouse asks who will volunteer to place the bell on the
cat. Each mouse makes excuses in turn, and ultimately nothing is accomplished.
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***1NC Nihilism
The Universe is expanding, but we do not know what it is expanding into. This makes the
universe simultaneously all-encompassing and incomplete. The universe is therefore both
all and none. This makes life itself an unanswerable paradox, and you should default to the
only logical explanation: the universe does not even exist. Vote negative on presumption
because the expansion of the universe is the foremost metaphysical question and until that
question is answered there is no value to the 1AC.
Recent Bison relocation makes extinction inevitable
Krayton Kerns, Montana State Representative, has this to say:
(http://www.kraytonkerns.org/postings/the_patriot_jump.html)
This winter, under the cloak of darkness and against Montana Code, 60 bison were relocated from the
quarantine facilities of Yellowstone National Park (YNP) to the Fort Peck Reservation along the Missouri
Breaks. This is the second of a four step process to crush the republic and bring our populace into perfect
dependence on big government—just as Karl Marx dreamed. If you missed steps one and two, you will likely refuse to
acknowledge steps three and four, but I will explain them anyway. Step One: Whether Walt Disney was a cause or an effect is
uncertain, but his personification of animals allowed activists to gift Bambi rights equal to those endowed us by
our Creator. Simultaneously and incrementally, government schools began promoting the religion of
environmentalism until eventually state sponsored worship of the earth and creation surpassed worship of our
Creator. (If that last sentence made you wince, you see how deeply idolatry has infected the American soul.) Step Two: Fully
indoctrinated Americans have deemed YNP bison as a genetically pure mascot worthy of worship as the
golden calf. This May, our US Senate discussed legislation to designate the bison as our national mammal, while activists quietly
acquired conservation easements and commandeered Montana water rights through the Clean Water Act. The noose of federal
control quietly tightened around massive tracts of Montana’s Missouri Breaks, and just as planned, 60 YNP
bison appeared on the Fort Peck Reservation. Step Three (Prediction): Like clockwork, YNP bison will
overpopulate and escape their temporary home and within a decade, there will be thousands of bison
ravaging The Breaks. Once Montanans discover the problem, it will be too late—just as it was with the introduction
of the invasive species of the gray wolf. Step Four (Prediction): The world’s economy will grind to a halt due to
instability in the Middle East driving the price of gasoline over $25 per gallon. In desperation, America will
attempt to develop the massive Bakken oil reserves of Montana and North Dakota only to learn a future
leftist president has issued a moratorium on all oil exploration to protect the habitat of our national mammal,
the noble, YNP-origin, American Bison. Think about it. Our great American experiment in freedom is stampeding off a cliff.
Surrounded by bison, there are American patriots in the leads hollering about this being a trap, but their screams are ignored as they
disappear from view and ear shot over the horizon. Slaughter on the western plains has come full circle .
Everything is falling apart

The Onion 2008 ("Everything Falling Apart, Reports Institute For Somehow Managing To Hold It All Together"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/everything-falling-apart-reports-institute-for-som,2450/)
WASHINGTON—Officials from the Institute for Somehow Managing to Hold It All Together warned that ,
despite their best efforts, everything appears to be falling completely apart and "getting way out of hand," according
to a strongly worded report characterized by panic, frustration, and numerous typographical errors that was released to the American
public Monday. "The country today faces a number of pressing issues, including potential economic collapse,
the continued threat of global warming, and the decaying national infrastructure," ISMHIAT chairman Kenneth
Branowicz said during a press conference to announce the study's findings. "And we just can't keep it together anymore."
"Furthermore, we just found out that my fucking hot water is being turned off," Branowicz added. The report
outlines a number of disturbing trends, such as a steadily weakening dollar, skyrocketing national debt, the
car still being in the shop after three whole weeks, a polarized electorate that remains divided across
ideological lines, and the fact that the wife is staying at her sister's and for all they know may not ever be coming back. "In
summary, we have no choice but to accept that managing these complex and varied crises may be untenable at
this time," the report concludes. "We're in way over our heads here, people. Oh God. God. What are we going to do?" The institute, a
nonpartisan Washington think tank formed in 1933 by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as part of his Depression-era For God's Sake,
Somebody Do Something Initiative, has issued similarly dramatic warnings in the past. In 1953, ISMHIAT released the now-historic
findings on how they had talked and talked until they were blue in the face but they'd had it with these damn teenagers today. And
historians still cite its famous 1968 report, a rambling, semi-coherent study titled "The Hell If We Know,"
recommending the immediate nationwide throwing up of hands. This latest warning, however, could be the most
alarming and desperate to date. "Among the new challenges America faces is a deteriorating public education system, a vast healthcare
Murray 12
crisis, new and frightening bioethics quandaries related to the privatization of human genetics, and, of course, the whole fossil fuels
thing," the 5,000-page study, which was due in November 2007, notes. "While much has been done to alleviate immediate effects, the
situation has become OH FOR CHRIST'S SAKE—I just spilled coffee all over my pants—wait, don't type that—damn it, we're out of
paper towels AGAIN—Gwen, don't put any of that last part in the report—why are you still typing?"
None of the 1AC matters in the grand scheme of geological time. Instead you should seek a
brief respite from the existential dread of the universe.
Justin Bieber 2011 (The Onion, "Your Obsessive Love Or Hatred Of Me Means Nothing In The Grand Scheme Of Geological Time"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/your-obsessive-love-or-hatred-of-me-means-nothing,19707/)
As the undisputed No. 1 teen pop sensation in the world, I have become something of a fulcrum upon which
the extremes of human emotion pivot. On one side, you have people who have vaunted me to such lofty
heights it is tantamount to deification; on the other, my high-spirited song-and-dance routines elicit an almost
murderous rage. But, I ask, when viewed within the context of the geologic timescale, wherein chronological
development is measured by evolutionary and stratigraphic events over countless eons rather than transitory
human experience, what does any of it truly matter? Quite simply put, it doesn't. Your adoration or loathing of me,
a 17-year-old entertainer from Canada, is no more significant than a grain of sand on a beach, disappearing
when Earth's mighty oceans rise and then retreat—as they will hundreds of thousands of millions of times
until the sun is extinguished and the pyramids, the Taj Mahal, Rick Ross, the Great Wall of China, and everything else even
remotely related to our feeble, fleeting species are but forgotten whispers in one planet's geochronology. Ask yourself: What then will
all your hyperbolic reverence or vitriolic bile even mean? To what do your hours spent online fawning over or vilifying me because of
my Grammy performance amount when compared to a recent scientific finding that, as the Pacific and North American tectonic plates
collide, the mountains north of Los Angeles will, over the next 100 million years, grow to peaks higher than the Himalayas, only to be
eroded down to pebbles by millennia of wind and rain? Forgive me. But please don't think that because of my fame I place myself
above the futile scrabbling of mankind and its ephemeral perception of me as being either "adorable" or "the worst"; quite the contrary.
In fact, it is because of my celebrity that I know I matter no more or less than any other human being among
the many billions living or dead. When I tweet about the fact that I have cut my iconic hair and it is re-tweeted 300,000 times in
a day, there is no better juxtaposition than to place that trifling 24 hours against the 10,000 years it will take Byrd Glacier to move across
Antarctica's vast expanses of silent white. In many ways, grasping the infinitesimal speck humanity constitutes is a source of great
comfort. Even while I am in the midst of recording vocals in the studio or appearing on a daytime television
program, it is admittedly seductive to stop for a moment and stare unblinking into the void and consider that,
in terms of the ever-widening parabola made by the imperceptible slowing of Earth's axis, soon everything—
this planet, the moon, myself, the Milky Way galaxy, Usher, and all of your pointless mooning and disdain—
will be forever silenced by the unstoppable spiral into total entropy . Even the faintest memory of my dear, sweet friend
Ellen DeGeneres will be swallowed by the cataclysmic crush of all matter collapsing in on itself. I suppose we've come to the point
where we should just plainly state the ugly truth of all this: If you expend any energy at all either obsessively doting on
me or hating me with the very fiber of your being, then I'm sad to say you are squandering your brief window
as a cognizant being in this universe. Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how better to use your comically tiny
duration of sentience. Perhaps tell your family you love them; ponder the intricate beauty of a dew-flecked
spiderweb; listen to Nicki Minaj's very good studio debut Pink Friday. In the end, however, none of these
things will matter all that much either, not in the great and widening chasm of geological time—let alone
when one considers the age of the cosmos from which it has sprung. But maybe in these ways you can draw a
brief moment of respite from the existential dread. Ultimately, I believe that this is all one can reasonably
hope for. There is no God.
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Your life is leaving you 10 minutes at a time. Instead of listening to their arguments you
should do any of the millions of things you’ve always wanted to do but never had time for.
The Onion 2011 ("Open-Minded Man Grimly Realizes How Much Life He's Wasted Listening To Bullshit"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/openminded-man-grimly-realizes-how-much-life-hes-w,19273/?utm_source=recentnews)
CLEVELAND—During an unexpected moment of clarity Tuesday, open-minded man Blake Richman was suddenly
struck by the grim realization that he's squandered a significant portion of his life listening to everyone's
bullshit, the 38-year-old told reporters. A visibly stunned and solemn Richman, who until this point regarded his
willingness to hear out the opinions of others as a worthwhile quality, estimated that he's wasted nearly three
and a half years of his existence being open to people's half-formed thoughts, asinine suggestions, and
pointless, dumbfuck stories. "Jesus Christ," said Richman, taking in the overwhelming volume of useless crap he's actively
listened to over the years. "My whole life I've made a concerted effort to give people a fair shake and understand
different points of view because I felt that everyone had something valuable to offer, but it turns out most of
what they had to offer was complete bullshit." "Seriously," Richman added, "what have I gained from treating everyone's
opinion with respect? Nothing. Absolutely nothing." According to Richman, it was just now hitting him how many hours of his life he's
pissed away listening intently to nonsense about celebrity couples, how good or bad certain pens are, and why a particular sports team
might have a chance this year. The husband and father of two said that every time he's felt at all
put out or bored by a bullshit conversation—especially a speculative one about how
bad allergy season was going to be—he should have just turned around, walked away,
and gone rafting or rappelling or done any of the millions of other things he's always
wanted to do but never thought he had time for. At various points throughout the day, Richman could be
heard muttering to himself that he couldn't believe he was almost 40 years old. "Twenty minutes here, 10 minutes
there. It all starts to add up," said Richman, who sat down and figured out that between stupid discussions about
favorite baby names and reviews of restaurants in cities he'll never visit, he'd wasted 390 hours of his life. "And you know
what the worst part is? It's my fault. Here I thought being considerate to others by
always listening patiently to what they had to say was the right thing to do. Well, fuck
me, right?" According to Richman, he started thinking about how much time he's flushed down the toilet being
an approachable person after a work meeting in which he let a coworker, David Martin, ramble on and on
with an idea everyone knew was "total shit" the moment the man opened his mouth. Richman said that a single
glance at the clock made him realize he had just spent 14 minutes of his finite time on earth not playing with
his kids or being with his wife, but listening to garbage. "It was like I stepped out of my body and
saw myself actually listening to this man's worthless drivel—but it wasn't him who
looked like a moron, it was me," Richman said. "I was nodding my head like an asshole and
saying ridiculous things like, 'Right,' and, 'I see your point, Dave,' when I should have
just said, 'Dave, your idea isn't good and you are wasting our time and you need to
shut up right now.'" By his estimates, Richman's receptiveness has resulted in 160 irreplaceable hours of
listening to grossly uninformed political opinions, 300 hours of carefully hearing out both sides of pointless
arguments, and at least a month of listening to his parents' bullshit about how important it is to be open-
minded. Eighty days have been wasted on the inane blather of his college friend Brian alone. "All those hours I could have
been relaxing, or reading all these great books, or getting into shape, or working on side projects that I'm
really excited about," Richman said. "But instead I've been listening to overrated albums recommended to me
by my asshole friends." "Did you know that in my life I've listened to five days' worth of people talking about their furniture?" he
added. "It's true. That's a trip to Europe right there."
Murray 14
2NC Fable
Friedrich Nietzsche in On Truth and Lies in an Extra-Moral Sense (accessible online at
www.geocities.com/thenietzscehchannel )
In some remote corner of the universe, poured out and glittering in innumerable solar systems, there once was a star on
which clever animals invented knowledge. That was the highest and most mendacious minute of "world
history"—yet only a minute. After nature had drawn a few breaths the star grew cold, and the clever animals had
to die. One might invent such a fable and still not have illustrated sufficiently how wretched, how shadowy and
flighty, how aimless and arbitrary, the human intellect appears in nature. There have been eternities
when it did not exist; and when it is done for again, nothing will have happened . For this
intellect has no further mission that would lead beyond human life. It is human, rather, and only its owner and
producer gives it such importance, as if the world pivoted around it.
Murray 15
2NC Everything is Falling Apart

2NC: Life is chaos and will always poop on everything you love. There is an
insurmountable negative entropy to the universe that forces everything to always fall apart.
Your girlfriend will leave you for a Sexy Italian, your soda will make you fat, and
everything you love will die.
Stop waiting for life to get better and just embrace this moment
Scott 1990 (Charles E., professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, “The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault,
Heidegger,” Ed. John Sallis, p. 173-174)
One pathogenic aspect of our Western ethos that we have followed is the ascetic ideal. It is characterized by many
types of refusal and denial regarding the manner in which human life occurs, and on Nietzsche's account the ascetic
ideal reinforces this denial with a habitual insistence on the continuous presence of meaning in all dimensions of life
and being. In our ascetic withdrawal from life we join forces with hopelessness, suffering, death, and helplessness
by giving them meaning, in our appropriation of them, that far exceeds their occurrence and that subordinates them within a
scheme of meaning and hope. The rule governing the ascetic ideal is found in its incorporation and blind expression of the hopelessness and
meaninglessness that it is designed to overcome. This incorporation of what it is constitutes the ideal's nihilism for Nietzsche:
the affirmations within the ascetic ideal project their opposites and produce a spiral of unwitting and inevitable
violence in the spirituality that they create. The denial of life within the boundaries of the ascetic ideal continuously
reestablishes the power of the ideal. But when this movement is broken by a self-overcoming like that in Nietzsche's
genealogy of the ascetic ideal, the rule of the ascetic ideal is interrupted and a possibility is opened for life-affirmations that do not
suppress the most fearful occurrences involved in being alive. The joyousness of life without the illusion of continuous meaning, the joyousness that
Nietzsche found in early Greek culture, was lost, according to his reading, in the course of the increasing cultural dominance of those whose nerve has failed before the disheartening flow of life.
The ascetic ideal expresses this failure in its insistence on meaning and in its persistent manufacture of hope out of illusions bred of the failure. Heidegger is perhaps at his most non-Nietzschean
point when in his Rector's address he turns to the Greek division between the everyday and the question of being. This is an ironic moment in Heidegger's thought: he traces the origins of his own
move to separate the future of the German university from the German Volkstum, (that is, from dominant popular culture) to the emergence of the separation of thought from everyday life in
Greek culture. But this move is not associated with the joyousness that Nietzsche uses as his reference in delimiting the ascetic ideal. According to Nietzsche's genealogy we have lost an earthly
affirmation of life in the midst of the specific suffering of everyday existence. Nietzsche countenances fully the brutality, the fateful shattering of hope, the disappointments that break people's
lives, the individual and social tragedies. The debilitation of minds and bodies is juxtaposed to people's savoring food and drink, enjoying sexual pleasure. It is juxtaposed to friendship, the
Nietzsche's move is toward affirmation
energy of ambition, the struggle between competitors, the mixture of desperation and exhilaration in efforts of accomplishment .
in the midst of chaotic living when he speaks of what is lost in the blind and self-deceived chaos of asceticism that is
ordered by the illusion of continuous meaning. In this affirmation one has an awareness, presumably a full awareness, of
the otherness to human interest that radically distresses us. People's attention is delimited by it. Rather than escape or turn
away from it, people are delimited by it in their relations with things. Rather than appropriate the suffering of life in ascetic self-
denial, human beings stand over against its otherness, its unthinkableness, its density. They need not attempt to embody it in forms that seem to
shape it to human and thinkable dimensions. They live in the inappropriable, meaningless dark vacuity , with it and other to it, out
of it and in it. They are angel and animal, Nietzsche said. Not to be lost, not to be redeemed, not to be overcome, it is
juxtaposed to a will to live, an affirmation with, and not in spite of, the chaos .
All of this breeds ressentiment, a hatred of the inability of the self to reach an imaginary
threshold which symbolizes greatness and perfection.
Nietzsche 1887
(German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, pg89-90, KV)
If we leave aside the ascetic ideal, then man, the animal man, has had no meaning up to this point.
His existence on earth has had no purpose. "Why man at all?" was a question without an answer. The will for man and
earth was missing. Behind every great human destiny echoes as refrain an even greater "in vain!" That's just what the ascetic
ideal means: that something is missing, that a huge hole surrounds man. He did not know how to justify himself to himself,
to explain, to affirm. He suffered from the problem of his being. He also suffered in other ways: he was for the most part
a sick animal. The suffering itself was not his problem, but rather the fact that he lacked an
answer to the question he screamed out, "Why this suffering?" Man, the bravest animal, the one most
accustomed to suffering, does not deny suffering in itself. He desires it, he seeks it out in person, provided that people
show him a meaning for it, the purpose of suffering. The curse that earlier spread itself over men was not suffering,
but the senselessness of suffering—and the ascetic ideal offered him a meaning!
The ascetic ideal was the only reason offered up to that point. Any meaning is better than no meaning at all. However you look at it, the ascetic
ideal has so far been a "faute de mieux" [for lack of something better] par excellence. In it suffering was interpreted, the
Murray 16
huge hole appeared filled in, the door shut against all suicidal nihilism . The interpretation
undoubtedly brought new suffering with it—more profound, more inner, more poisonous,
and more life-gnawing suffering. It brought all suffering under the perspective of guilt . . . But
nevertheless, with it man was saved. He had a meaning. From that point on he was no longer a leaf in the wind, a toy ball of nonsense, of
"without sense." He could now will something—at first it didn't matter where, why, or how he willed: the will itself was saved.
We simply cannot conceal from ourselves what's really expressed by that total will which received its direction
from the ascetic ideal: this hate against what is human, and even more against animality, even more against material
things—this abhorrence of the senses, even of reason, this fear of happiness and beauty, this longing for the
beyond away from all appearance, change, becoming, death, desire, even longing itself—all
this means, let's have the courage to understand this, a will to nothingness, an aversion to
life, a revolt against the most fundamental preconditions of life—but it is and remains a will! . . . And to repeat at the conclusion what I said at
the start: man will sooner will nothingness than not will . . .
Murray 17
2NC Eternal Return
Deleuze, 1962 [Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy]

As an ethical thought the eternal return is the new formulation of the practical synthesis: whatever you will, will it in
such a way that you also will its eternal return. “If, in all that you will you begin by asking yourself: is it certain that
I will to do it an infinite number of times? This should be your most solid center of gravity” (VP IV 242). One thing in the
world disheartens Nietzsche: the little compensations, the little pleasures, the little joys and everything that one is granted
once, only once. Everything that can be done again the next day only on the condition that it be said the day before:
tomorrow I will give it up – the whole ceremonial of the obsessed. And we are like those old women who permit themselves an
excess only once, we act and think like them. “Oh, that you would put from you all half willing, and decide upon lethargy as
you do upon action. Oh that you understood my saying: ‘Always do what you will – but first be such as can will!’ “.
Laziness, stupidity, baseness, cowardice or spitefulness that would will its own eternal return would no longer be the
same laziness, stupidity etc. How does the eternal return perform the selection here? It is the thought of the eternal return that
selects. It makes willing something whole. The thought of the eternal return eliminates willing everything which
falls outside the eternal return, it makes willing a creation, it brings about the equation “willing=creation”.
We believe in the endless beauty of the Eternal Return. We must imagine life will repeat
itself infinitely. We recognize the suffering of the world and its inevitability. But when
suffering is intrinsic to life, and we can recognize that, it becomes possible to overthrow the
guilt and pain of suffering. When suffering is life, we can use it to be stronger. And in that
strength, we can learn to reject those who try to alleviate our suffering.
Kain 7 (Phillip J., Professor of Philosophy at Santa Clara University "Nietzsche and the Horror
of Existence", The Journal of Nietzsche Studies, Issue 33, Spring 2007) MZ
We have seen that in Nietzsche’s opinion we cannot bear meaningless suffering and so we give it a meaning.
Christianity, for example, explains it as punishment for sin. Eternal recurrence, however, would certainly seem to
plunge us back into meaningless suffering (WP 55). It implies that suffering just happens, it repeats eternally, it is fated. There
is no plan, no purpose, no reason for it. Eternal recurrence would seem to rub our noses in meaningless suffering. In one sense this
is perfectly correct. And Nietzsche does want to accept as much meaninglessness and suffering as he can
bear (BGE 39, 225; WP 585a). Nevertheless, we must see that there is meaning here—it is just that it lies pre-
cisely in the meaninglessness. Embracing eternal recurrence means imposing suffering on oneself,
meaningless suffering, suffering that just happens, suffering for no reason at all. But at the very same time,
this creates the innocence of existence. The meaninglessness of suffering means the innocence of suffering.
That is the new meaning that suffering is given. Suffering no longer has its old meaning. Suffering no longer
has the meaning Christianity gave to it. Suffering can no longer be seen as punishment. There is no longer any
guilt. There is no longer any sin. One is no longer accountable (TI “Errors” 8; HH 99). If suffering just returns eternally, if
even the slightest change is impossible, how can one be to blame for it? How can one be responsible? It can be none of
our doing. We are innocent. This itself could explain why one would be able to embrace eternal recurrence, love
every detail of one’s life, not wish to change a single moment of suffering. One would be embracing one’s
own innocence. One would be loving one’s own redemption from guilt. Eternal recurrence brings the Übermensch as
close as possible to the truth, meaninglessness, the void, but it does not go all the way or it would crush even the Übermensch. Eternal
recurrence gives the Übermensch meaning. It eliminates emptiness. It fills the void. With what? It fills it with something
totally familiar and completely known; with something that is in no way new, different, or strange; with
something that is not at all frightening. It fills the void with one’s own life—repeated eternally. It is true that
this life is a life of suffering, but (given the horror of existence) suffering cannot be avoided anyway, and at
least suffering has been stripped of any surplus suffering brought about by concepts of sin, punishment, or
guilt. It has been reduced to a life of innocence. Moreover, as Nietzsche has said, it is only meaningless suffering that is the
problem. If given a meaning, even suffering becomes something we can seek (GM III:28). Eternal recurrence,
the fatedness of suffering, its meaningless repetition, makes our suffering innocent. That might well be reason
enough to embrace it. Or, although we may not be able to embrace it ourselves, I think we can at least see why Nietzsche might—and
even why it might make sense for him to do so. Eternal recurrence also gives suffering another meaning. If one is able
to embrace eternal recurrence, if one is able to turn all “it was” into a “thus I willed it,” then one not only
reduces suffering to physical suffering, breaks its psychological stranglehold, and eliminates surplus
Murray 18
suffering related to guilt, but one may even in a sense reduce suffering below the level of physical suffering.
One does not do this as the liberal, socialist, or Christian would, by changing the world to reduce suffering. In
Nietzsche’s opinion that is impossible, and, indeed, eternal recurrence of the same rules it out —at least as any
sort of final achievement.23 Rather, physical suffering is reduced by treating it as a test, a discipline, a
training, which brings one greater power. One might think of an athlete who engages in more and more
strenuous activity, accepts greater and greater pain, handles it better and better, and sees this as a sign of
greater strength, as a sign of increased ability. Pain and suffering are turned into empowerment. Indeed, it is
possible to love such suffering as a sign of increased power. One craves pain—“more pain! more pain!” (GM III:20). And the more
suffering one can bear, the stronger one becomes. If suffering is self-imposed, if the point is to break the
psychological stranglehold it has over us, if the point is to turn suffering into empowerment, use it as a
discipline to gain greater strength, then it would be entirely inappropriate for us to feel sorry for the sufferer.
To take pity on the sufferer either would demonstrate an ignorance of the process the sufferer is engaged in, what the sufferer is
attempting to accomplish through suffering, or would show a lack of respect for the sufferer’s suffering (GS 338; D 135). To pity
the
sufferer, to wish the sufferer did not have to go through such suffering, would demean the sufferer and the
whole process of attempting to gain greater strength through such suffering . Let us try again to put ourselves in
Nietzsche’s place. He has suffered for years. He has suffered intensely for years. He has come to realize that he cannot end this
suffering. He cannot even reduce it significantly. But he has finally been able to break the psychological stranglehold it has had over
him. He is able to accept it. He wills it. He would not change the slightest detail. He is able to love it. And this
increases his strength. How, then, would he respond to our pity? Very likely, he would be offended. He
would think we were patronizing him. He would not want us around. He would perceive us as trying to rob
him of the strength he had achieved, subjugate him again to his suffering, strip him of his dignity . He would
be disgusted with our attempt to be do-gooders, our attempt to impose our own meaning on his suffering
(treating it as something to pity and to lessen) in opposition to the meaning he has succeeded in imposing on it.
Murray 19
Link: Ought
Affirming the “ought” is a fancy way of negating the present. Instead of affirming the
imaginary world of the future, affirm the will to create in the now.
Turnali, 03 (The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 26 (2003) 55-63, Nietzsche and the Later Wittgenstein: An Offense to the Quest for Another
World, Aydan Turanli, Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Istanbul Technical
University).
The craving for absolutely general specifications results in doing metaphysics. Unlike Wittgenstein, Nietzsche provides an account of
how this craving arises. The creation of the two worlds such as apparent and real world, conditioned and
unconditioned world, being and becoming is the creation of the ressentiment of metaphysicians. Nietzsche
says, "to imagine another, more valuable world is an expression of hatred for a world that makes one suffer :
the ressentiment of metaphysicians against actuality is here creative" (WP III 579). Escaping from this world because there is
grief in it results in asceticism. Paying respect to the ascetic ideal is longing for the world that is pure and
denaturalized. Craving for frictionless surfaces, for a transcendental, pure, true, ideal, perfect world, is the
result of the ressentiment of metaphysicans who suffer in this world . Metaphysicians do not affirm this world as it is,
and this paves the way for many explanatory theories in philosophy. In criticizing a philosopher who pays homage to the ascetic ideal,
Nietzsche says, "he wants to escape from torture" (GM III 6). The traditional philosopher or the ascetic priest continues to repeat, "'My
kingdom is not of this world'" (GM III 10). This is a longing for another world in which one does not suffer. It is to
escape from this world; to create another illusory, fictitious, false world. This longing for "the truth" of a
world in which one does not suffer is the desire for a world of constancy. It is supposed that contradiction, change, and
deception are the causes of suffering; in other words, the senses deceive; it is from the senses that all misfortunes come; reason corrects
the errors; therefore reason is the road to the constant. In sum, this world is an error; the world as it ought to be exists. This will to
truth, this quest for another world, this desire for the world as it ought to be, is the result of unproductive
thinking. It is unproductive because it is the result of avoiding the creation of the world as it ought to be.
According to Nietzsche, the will to truth is "the impotence of the will to create " (WP III 585). Metaphysicians
end up with the creation of the "true" world in contrast to the actual, changeable, deceptive, self-
contradictory world. They try to discover the true, transcendental world that is already there rather than
creating a world for themselves. For Nietzsche, on the other hand, the transcendental world is the "denaturalized world" (WP III
586). The way out of the circle created by the ressentiment of metaphysicians is the will to life rather than the will to truth. The will to
truth can be overcome only through a Dionysian relationship to existence. This is the way to a new philosophy, which in Wittgenstein's
terms aims "to show the fly the way out of the fly-bottle" (PI §309).
Murray 20
Link: Democracy (Generic)

Democracy is rooted in ressentiment which acts only in reaction to hatred of strength – this
requires hatred of otherness and is a denial of life
Newman, 2000 (Saul, Postdoctoral Fellow at Macquarie University, “Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment,” Theory and Event,
Volume 4, Issue 3)
Political values also grew from this poisonous root . For Nietzsche, values of equality and democracy, which form the
cornerstone of radical political theory, arose out of the slave revolt in morality. They are generated by the same spirit of
revenge and hatred of the powerful. Nietzsche therefore condemns political movements like liberal democracy,
socialism, and indeed anarchism. He sees the democratic movement as an expression of the herd-animal morality
derived from the Judeo-Christian revaluation of values.[6] Anarchism is for Nietzsche the most extreme heir to democratic
values -- the most rabid expression of the herd instinct. It seeks to level the differences between individuals, to abolish class distinctions,
to raze hierarchies to the ground, and to equalize the powerful and the powerless, the rich and the poor, the master and the slave. To
Nietzsche this is bringing everything down to level of the lowest common denominator -- to erase the pathos of
distance between the master and slave, the sense of difference and superiority through which great values are
created. Nietzsche sees this as the worst excess of European nihilism -- the death of values and creativity. Slave morality is
characterized by the attitude of ressentiment -- the resentment and hatred of the powerless for the powerful. Nietzsche sees
ressentiment as an entirely negative sentiment -- the attitude of denying what is life-affirming, saying 'no' to what is
different, what is 'outside' or 'other'. Ressentiment is characterized by an orientation to the outside, rather than the focus of noble
morality, which is on the self.[7] While the master says 'I am good' and adds as an afterthought, 'therefore he is bad'; the slave says the
opposite -- 'He (the master) is bad, therefore I am good'. Thus the invention of values comes from a comparison or
opposition to that which is outside, other, different. Nietzsche says: "... in order to come about, slave morality
first has to have an opposing, external world, it needs, psychologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act all,
-- its action is basically a reaction."[8] This reactive stance, this inability to define anything except in
opposition to something else, is the attitude of ressentiment. It is the reactive stance of the weak who define
themselves in opposition to the strong. The weak need the existence of this external enemy to identify
themselves as 'good'. Thus the slave takes 'imaginary revenge' upon the master, as he cannot act without the
existence of the master to oppose. The man of ressentiment hates the noble with an intense spite, a deep-seated, seething hatred
and jealousy. It is this ressentiment, according to Nietzsche, that has poisoned the modern consciousness, and finds its
expression in ideas of equality and democracy , and in radical political philosophies, like anarchism, that advocate it.
Murray 21
Link: Human Rights (Include the Other)

Including the other is a means of converting them to sameness. We don’t even respect
them enough to hate them. Everything we hold sacred is tinted by a liberal shade that
generates intrinsic value to arbitrary democratic values. The problem is not in a contact
with the other but the way we seek them and search them out to assimilate.
Rasch, 03 (Cultural Critique 54 (2003) 120-147, William Rasch is the Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana University,
Human Rights as Geopolitics Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy).
In the past, we/they, neighbor/foreigner, friend/enemy polarities were inside/outside distinctions that produced a
plurality of worlds, separated by physical and cultural borders. When these worlds collided, it was not always a
pretty picture, but it was often possible to maintain the integrity of the we/they distinction, even to regulate it by
distinguishing between domestic and foreign affairs. If "they" differed, "we" did not always feel ourselves obliged to
make "them" into miniature versions of "us," to Christianize them, to civilize them, to make of them good liberals. Things
have changed. With a single-power global hegemony that is guided by a universalist ideology, all relations have
become, or threaten to become, domestic. The inner/outer distinction has been transformed into a morally and legally determined
acceptable/unacceptable one, and the power exists (or is thought to exist), both spiritually and physically, to eliminate the unacceptable once and
for all and make believers of everyone. The new imperative states: the other shall be included. Delivered as a promise, it can
only be received, by some, as an ominous threat. In his The Conquest of America, Tzvetan Todorov approaches our relationship to
the "other" by way of three interlocking distinctions, namely, self/other, same/different, and equal/unequal. A simple superposition of all three
distinctions makes of the other someone who is different and therefore unequal. The problem we have been discussing, however, comes to
light when we make of the other someone who is equal because he is essentially the same. This form of the
universalist ideology is assimilationist. It denies the other by embracing him . Of the famous sixteenth-century defender of the Indians,
Bartolomé de Las Casas, Todorov writes, [his] declaration of the equality of men is made in the name of a specific religion, Christianity.... Hence, there is a potential danger of seeing not only the
Indians' human nature asserted but also their Christian "nature." "The natural laws and rules and rights of men," Las Casas said; but who decides what is natural with regard to laws and rights? Is
it not specifically the Christian religion? Since Christianity is universalist, it implies an essential non-difference on the part of all men. We see the danger of the identiWcation in this text of Saint
John Chrysostrom, quoted and defended at Valladolid: "Just as there is no natural difference in the creation of man, so there is no difference in the call to salvation of all men, barbarous or wise,
since God's grace can correct the minds of barbarians, so that they have a reasonable understanding." Once again we see that the term "human" is not descriptive, but evaluative. To be truly
human, one needs to be corrected. Regarding the relationship of difference and equality, Todorov concludes, "If it is [End Page 139] incontestable that the prejudice of superiority is an obstacle
in the road to knowledge, we must also admit that the prejudice of equality is a still greater one, for it consists in identifying the other purely and simply with one's own 'ego ideal' (or with
Such identification is not only the essence of Christianity, but also of the doctrine of human rights preached
oneself)" (1984, 165).
by enthusiasts like Habermas and Rawls. And such identification means that the other is stripped of his otherness
and made to conform to the universal ideal of what it means to be human. And yet, despite—indeed, because of—
the all-encompassing embrace, the detested other is never allowed to leave the stage altogether. Even as we seem on
the verge of actualizing Kant's dream, as Habermas puts it, of "a cosmopolitan order" that unites all peoples and abolishes
war under the auspices of "the states of the First World" who "can afford to harmonize their national interests to a certain extent with the norms that define the halfhearted cosmopolitan
aspirations of the UN" (1998, 165, 184), it is still fascinating to see how the barbarians make their functionally necessary presence felt. John Rawls, in his The Law of Peoples (1999),
conveniently divides the world into well-ordered peoples and those who are not well ordered. Among the former are the "reasonable liberal peoples" and the "decent hierarchical peoples" (4).
Liberal peoples, who, by virtue of their history, possess
Opposed to them are the "outlaw states" and other "burdened" peoples who are not worthy of respect.
superior institutions, culture, and moral character (23-25), have not only the right to deny non-well-ordered peoples
respect, but the duty to extend what Vitoria called "brotherly correction" and Habermas [called] "gentle compulsion"
(Habermas 1997, 133). That is, Rawls believes that the "refusal to tolerate" those states deemed to be outlaw states "is a
consequence of liberalism and decency." Why? Because outlaw states violate human rights. What are human rights? "What
I call human rights," Rawls states, "are ... a proper subset of the rights possessed by citizens in a liberal constitutional democratic regime, or of
the rights of the members of a decent hierarchical society" (Rawls 1999, 81). Because of their violation of these liberal rights,
nonliberal, nondecent societies do not even have the right "to protest their condemnation by the world society" (38),
and decent peoples have the right, if necessary, to wage just wars against them. Thus, liberal societies are not merely
contingently established and historically conditioned forms of organization; they become the universal standard against which other societies are
judged. Those found wanting are banished, as outlaws, from the civilized world. Ironically, one of the signs of their outlaw status
is their insistence on autonomy, on sovereignty.
Murray 22
Link: Human Rights (Transcendent Value)
Treating human rights as an unquestionable justification ends in a forced conversion to

sameness in which the barbarian must be transformed into the civilized. Their call for
human rights necessitates a war on difference
Rasch, 03 (Cultural Critique 54 (2003) 120-147, William Rasch is the Henry H. H. Remak Professor of Germanic Studies at Indiana
University, Human Rights as Geopolitics Carl Schmitt and the Legal Form of American Supremacy).
As Schmitt says: Only

with the concept of the human in the sense of absolute humanity does there appear as the other
side of this concept a specically new enemy, the inhuman. In the history of the nineteenth century, setting off the inhuman from the
human is followed by an even deeper split, the one between the superhuman and the subhuman. In the same way that the human creates the
inhuman, so in the history of humanity the superhuman brings about with a dialectical necessity the subhuman as its enemy twin. This "two-
sided aspect of the ideal of humanity" (Schmitt 1988, Der Nomos der Erde, 72) is a theme Schmitt had already developed in his The Concept of
the Political (1976) and his critiques of liberal pluralism (e.g., 1988, Positionen und Begriffe, 151-65). His complaint there is that liberal
pluralism is in fact not in the least pluralist but reveals itself to be an overriding monism, the monism of humanity.
Thus, despite the claims that pluralism allows for the individual's freedom from illegitimate constraint, Schmitt presses the
point home that political opposition to liberalism is itself deemed illegitimate. Indeed, liberal pluralism, in Schmitt's eyes,
reduces the political to the social and economic and thereby nullifies all truly political opposition by simply
excommunicating its opponents from the High Church of Humanity. After all, only an unregenerate barbarian could
fail to recognize the irrefutable benefits of the liberal order. Though he favorably opposes sixteenth-century Christianity to the eighteenth-century
Enlightenment, Schmitt has no interest in reestablishing the hegemony of the Roman Church. Rather, he is in search of conceptual weapons with which to fight the contemporary enemy. But it is
a failed search just as it is a failed contrast; for in Christianity, Schmitt finds not the other of humanism, but humanism's roots. In truth, what Schmitt calls humanism is but an intensification of
the aspirations of the Roman Church. Unlike the Judaism from which it sprang, Christianity is not a tribal or national religion, but a religion of universal pretensions. The distinction between
believer and nonbeliever is not a distinction between tribe and tribe or nation and nation; it is not a distinction between neighbor and foreigner or even one between finite and localizable friends
and enemies. Rather, ideally, in the Christian world, the negative pole of the distinction is to be fully and finally consumed without remainder. The differences between families, tribes, nations,
In the final analysis there is no room for opposition, neither within the City of God nor
friends, and enemies are meant to disappear.
against it, and the polis—call it Rome, call it Jerusalem—will encompass the entire world . That is precisely the purpose of
its civilizing power. What Schmitt calls humanism is but a more complete universalization of the same dynamic. Christianity and humanism are
both civilizing missions. In neither case can there be barbarians left outside the gates because eventually there will be no outside of the gates and,
thus, no more gates. To live in the city, the barbarians must thoroughly give up their barbarian ways—their customs,
their religion, their language. In the discourse that equates the polis with humanity, to remain a barbarian is not to
remain outside the city, but to be included in the city as a moral and legal outlaw and thus to come under the city's
moral and legal jurisdiction. That liberal America's civilizing mission is an extension of Christian Europe's was clearly seen and approved of by James Brown Scott who
during his life (1866-1943) had been professor of international law and foreign relations at Georgetown; both director and secretary of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace; president
of three American and European societies of international law; editor and interpreter of Vitoria, Suarez, and Grotius; active propagandist for the Allied cause during and after World War I; and
loyal servant to President Woodrow Wilson. Scott recognized the link between the conquest of the New World and the splintering of the old. The "discovery of America," he wrote in a volume
devoted to Vitoria and Suarez, "gave birth to a modern law of nations, Spanish in origin, lay in form, but Catholic in fact and capable of continued development under the control of that Christian
morality of which all peoples, and [End Page 137] therefore all nations, are beneficiaries" (Spanish Conception of International Law, 1934, 2). This birth of a new law out of the spirit of
Christianity coincides with that religion's fragmentation, "broken by the Reformation," as Scott puts it, and "replaced by an international community, today [1934] universal and embracing all
peoples of all continents; the law applicable to members of the Christian community was found to be applicable to non-Christians; and the law of nations, once confined to Christendom, has
become international. Without ceasing to be Christian in fact, the law of nations became laicized in form" (Spanish Origin of International Law, 1934, 1-2). In this way, Christianity survives its
own secularization and the Greco-Christian West rises from its ashes, rechristened simply as the entire world. The "international community," Scott writes, "is coextensive with humanity—no
the international
longer merely with Christianity;" it has become "the representative of the common humanity rather than of the common religion binding the States." Therefore ,
community "possesses the inherent right to impose its will ... and to punish its violation, not because of a treaty, or a
pact or a covenant, but because of an international need" (283). If in the sixteenth century it was the Christian
Church that determined the content of this international need, in the twentieth century and beyond it must be the
secularized "church" of "common humanity" that performs this all-important service. "Vitoria's idea," Scott reminds us,
"was to treat the Indians as brothers and as equals, to help them in their worldly affairs, to instruct them in spiritual matters and lead them to the
altar by the persuasion of Christian life on the part of the missionary" (Spanish Conception of International Law, 1934, 2). Thus, with the
secularization of the Christian mission comes also the secularization of the Christian missionary, who still shows his
brotherly love by exerting brotherly correction.
Murray 23
Link: Human Rights (Cred Bad)

Increasing United States human rights credibility justifies more overt acts of violence
elsewhere, war on terror proves
Brown, 04 (The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2/3 (2004) 451-463 "The Most We Can Hope For . . .": Human Rights and the Politics of
Fatalism, Wendy Brown).
We return to the question with which we began: If human rights activism is an antipolitical politics of suffering reduction that
configures a particular kind of subject and limns a particular political future, is the yield of this international justice project the
"most we can hope for"? Especially given the extent to which a recently renewed vigor in American imperialism has
been the agent of such suffering (from its Guantánamo Bay gulag to its invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan to its
continued support for increasingly brutal Israeli practices of occupation) while draping itself in the mantle of human
rights, one wonders whether the project of more directly challenging such imperialism and supporting indigenous efforts to transform
authoritarian, despotic, and corrupt postcolonial regimes might be at least as critical. When Donald Rumsfeld declares that "the War
on Terrorism is a war for human rights," as he did in spring 2002, preparing Americans for war on Iraq while turning their
attention away from both the postwar chaos in Afghanistan and the steady dismantling of their own civil liberties,
we are reminded of the difficulty of trying to engage in both kinds of projects simultaneously.9 It is not only that Rumsfeld has co-
opted the language of human rights for imperialist aims abroad and antidemocratic ones at home, but that insofar as the "liberation" of Afghanistan and Iraq promised to deliver human rights to
those oppressed populations it is hard both to parse cynical from sincere deployments of human rights discourse and to separate human rights campaigns from legitimating liberal imperialism.10
Here, the disingenuousness of Ignatieff's insistence, that human rights campaigns are not equivalent to installing liberalism and the conditions of free trade for the regimes they aim at,
Moreover, since international human rights are not designed as a form of
materializes as more than a problem of intellectual dishonesty.
collective power or vehicle of popular governance, but rather as individual shields against power, it is hard to see
how one can move simultaneously toward individualism and withdrawal on the one hand, and efforts at
collaborative self-governance and power sharing on the other.
Murray 24
Link: Human Rights (Protect the Weak)

Human rights as a means to protect the weak merely replace one form of oppression with
another. The weak become unable to throw off the blanket of helplessness, becoming
subjected to a worse form of power which a priori assumes the weak can never become
strong, ushering in slave morality and guaranteeing domination
Brown, 04 (The South Atlantic Quarterly 103.2/3 (2004) 451-463 "The Most We Can Hope For . . .": Human Rights and the Politics of
Fatalism, Wendy Brown).
But in addition to Ignatieff's own transgressions of the boundaries he sets, there is this: it
is in the nature of every significant political
project to ripple beyond the project's avowed target and action, for the simple reason that all such projects are
situated in political, historical, social, and economic contexts with which they dynamically engage. No effective
project produces only the consequences it aims to produce. Whatever their avowed purpose, then, do human rights only reduce suffering? Do they
(promise to) reduce it in a particular way that precludes or negates other possible ways? And if they reduce suffering, what kinds of subjects and political (or antipolitical) cultures do they bring
into being as they do so, what kinds do they transform or erode, and what kinds do they aver? What are the implications of human rights assuming center stage as an international justice project,
or as the progressive international justice project? Human rights activism is a moral-political project and if it displaces, competes with, refuses, or rejects other political projects, including those
also aimed at producing justice, then it is not merely a tactic but a particular form of political power carrying a particular image of justice, and it will behoove us to inspect, evaluate, and judge it
as such. Such considerations require us to depart both the terms of pragmatist minimalism and the terms of morality for a more complex encounter with the powers of political context and
human rights activism refuses the political mantle on which I am insisting.
political discourse than either set of terms can accommodate. For the most part ,
Rather, it generally presents itself as something of an antipolitics—a pure defense of the innocent and the powerless
against power, a pure defense of the individual against immense and potentially cruel or despotic machineries of culture, state, war, ethnic conflict, tribalism, patriarchy, and other
mobilizations or instantiations of collective power against individuals. More precisely, human rights take their shape as a moral discourse centered on pain and suffering rather than political
discourse of comprehensive justice. Even as Ignatieff titles his first lecture "Human Rights as Politics" and recognizes that "human rights must accept that it is a fighting creed and that its
universal claims will be resisted" by whatever authority is its particular target, the politics he identifies are in the pragmatic effects of what he forthrightly identifies as a moral order of things:
"Human rights is the language that systematically embodies [the] intuition [that each individual is entitled to equal moral consideration], and to the degree that this intuition gains influence over
the conduct of individuals and states, we can say that we are making moral progress" (4). In addition to the explicit claim about moral equality, international human rights are also premised on
the immorality of politically induced suffering. Unlike constitutionally derived and nationally enforced highly specified rights in liberal democratic orders, international human rights are cast in
terms of the moral inviolability of "human dignity" and the deprivation or degradation of this dignity that they are understood to protect against. Human rights, in Ignatieff's understanding, do not
prescribe what is good or right but rather depend on agreement "about what is insufferably, inarguably wrong" (56): The universal commitments implied by human rights can be compatible with
a wide variety of ways of living only if the universalism implied is self-consciously minimalist. Human rights can command universal assent only as a decidedly "thin" theory of what is right, a
definition of the minimum conditions for any kind of life at all. Human rights is only a systematic agenda of "negative liberty," a tool kit against oppression, a tool kit that individual agents must
be free to use as they see fit within the broader frame of cultural and religious beliefs that they live by. (56, 57) But if human rights are tendered as an antipolitical and expressly moral antidote
to abusive political power, a defense against power and a protection against pain, deprivation, or suffering, we may still ask what kind of politicization they set in motion against the powers they
oppose. Do they stand for a different formulation of justice or do they stand in opposition to collective justice projects? Whether they aim either to weaken national political sovereignty as they
strengthen the moral standing of the individual or, to the contrary as Ignatieff argues, they underline the "necessity of state order as a guarantee of rights," and hence ought actually to strengthen
"overburdened states," what kind of justice project is this? Put another way, if human rights are proffered as a defense against political power's ability to inflict pain, indignity, cruelty, and death,
if they stand for political power's moral limit regardless of its internal organization or legitimacy, what is their political positioning and effect in this work? As it turns out, Ignatieff does not,
indeed cannot, limit his brief for human rights to their attenuation of suffering. Rather, he understands them as opening up progressive political possibility that exceeds their purview. He claims,
first, that "human rights matter because they help people to help themselves" and thus instantiate or develop agency where it did not exist before (57). He claims, second, that rights as "civil and
political freedoms are the necessary condition for the eventual attainment of social and economic security" (90). Third, he claims that rights language creates the basis for [End Page 454]
"conflict, deliberation, argument and contention," as it provides a "shared vocabulary from which our arguments can begin, and the bare human minimum from which differing ideas of human
flourishing can take root" (95). The first claim concerns the ontological logic of human rights; the second claim concerns the historical logic of human rights; and the third claim concerns the
political logic of human rights. Let us consider each briefly. "Human rights is a language of individual empowerment," Ignatieff argues, and "when individuals have agency, they can protect
themselves against injustice. Equally, when individuals have agency, they can define themselves what they wish to live and die for" (57). In other words, human rights configure subjects as either
able or entitled (it's not clear which for Ignatieff) to protect themselves from what they consider unjust and define for themselves what their individual aims and ends are. As Ignatieff argues
elsewhere, "Rights language has been central not simply to the protection, but also to the production of modern individuals," a production that he specifies as the process of becoming an
But it is not at all clear that human rights discourse actually
individual—"the most universal aspiration behind all the forms of modernity on offer."3
secures the autonomy and agency Ignatieff promises; rather, this discourse offers a form of protection for individuals that
may trade one form of subjection for another, an intervention by an external agent or set of institutions that promises
to protect individuals from abusive state power in part by replacing that power. (A recent and very literal case of such an exchange was, of
course, the intervention in Iraq by the United States and Britain, commencing in spring 2003 and continuing through the present, which carried the flag of human rights and which Ignatieff, in
several major press venues, has at times defended as a human rights effort.4) While the replacement may or may not be a positive one from the standpoint of reducing suffering, it does not follow
Moreover, to the extent that human rights are understood as the ability to protect
that it necessarily produces agency or "helps people to help themselves. "
oneself against injustice and define one's own ends in life, this
is a form of "empowerment" that fully equates empowerment
with liberal individualism. As such, the promise of rights to enable the individual's capacity to choose what one
wishes to live and die for does not address the historical, political, and economic constraints in which this choice
occurs—agency is defined as choice within these constraints and thus largely codifies these constraints. Finally, if rights promise a shield
around individuals, the "right [End Page 455] to choose the life they see fit to lead" (57), this shield constitutes a juridical limit on
regimes without empowering individuals as political actors; rather, it is an instance of what Isaiah Berlin called and Ignatieff
endorses as "negative liberty," the right to be let alone to do as one wishes (57).
Murray 25
Link: Community
The creation of community necessitates an outside which must be vanquished, making
violent lash out inevitable
Der Derian, 98 - Director of Watson Institute Global Security program – 1998 (James, former Rhodes Scholar, On Security, “The
Value of Security: Hobbes, Marx, Nietzsche, and Baudrillard,” ed. Ronnie Lipschutz. ciaonet)
The establishment of the community is dependent upon, indeed it feeds upon, this fear of being left outside. As the
castle wall is replaced by written treaty, however, and distant gods by temporal sovereigns, the martial skills and spiritual virtues of the noble
warrior are slowly debased and dissimulated. The subject of the individual will to power becomes the object of a collective
resentment. The result? The fear of the external other is transvalued into the "love of the neighbor" quoted in the opening
of this section, and the perpetuation of community is assured through the internalization and legitimation of a fear that
lost its original source long ago. This powerful nexus of fear, of external and internal otherness, generates the values
which uphold the security imperative. Indeed, Nietzsche locates the genealogy of even individual rights, such as freedom, in the calculus of maintaining security: - My
rights - are that part of my power which others not merely conceded me, but which they wish me to preserve. How do these others arrive at that? First: through their prudence and fear and
caution: whether in that they expect something similar from us in return (protection of their rights); or in that they consider that a struggle with us would be perilous or to no purpose; or in that
they see in any diminution of our force a disadvantage to themselves, since we would then be unsuited to forming an alliance with them in opposition to a hostile third power. Then : by donation
and cession. 45 The point of Nietzsche's critical genealogy is to show that the perilous conditions that created the security imperative--and the western metaphysics that perpetuate it--have
diminished if not disappeared; yet, the fear of life persists: "Our century denies this perilousness, and does so with a good conscience: and yet it continues to drag along with it the old habits of
46 Nietzsche's worry is that the collective reaction against older, more
Christian security, Christian enjoyment, recreation and evaluation."
primal fears has created an even worse danger: the tyranny of the herd, the lowering of man, the apathy of the last man which
controls through conformity and rules through passivity. The security of the sovereign, rational self and state comes at the cost
of ambiguity, uncertainty, paradox--all that makes a free life worthwhile. Nietzsche's lament for this lost life is
captured at the end of Daybreak in a series of rhetorical questions: Of future virtues--How comes it that the more
comprehensible the world has grown the more solemnities of every kind have decreased? Is it that fear was so much the basic element
of that reverence which overcame us in the presence of everything unknown and mysterious and taught us to fall
down before the incomprehensible and plead for mercy? And has the world not lost some of its charm for us because
we have grown less fearful? With the diminution of our fearfulness has our own dignity and solemnity, our own fearsomeness , not also diminished? 47 It is of course in
Nietzsche's lament, in his deepest pessimism for the last man, that one finds the celebration of the overman as both symptom and harbinger of a more free-spirited yet fearsome age. Dismissive of
utopian engineering, Nietzsche never suggests how he would restructure society; he looks forward only so far as to sight the emergence of "new philosophers" (such as himself?) who would
restore a reverence for fear and reevaluate the security imperative. Nietzsche does, however, go back to a pre-Christian, pre-Socratic era to find the exemplars for a new kind of security. In The
Genealogy of Morals , he holds up Pericles as an example, for lauding the Athenians for their "rhathymia "--a term that incorporates the notion of "indifference to and contempt for security." 48
It is perhaps too much to expect Nietzsche's message to resonate in late modern times, to expect, at the very time when conditions seem most uncertain and unpredictable, that people would treat
Yet Nietzsche would clearly see these as opportune times, when fear
fear as a stimulus for improvement rather than cause for retrenchment .
could be willfully asserted as a force for the affirmation of difference, rather than canalized into a cautious identity
constructed from the calculation of risks and benefits.
Murray 26
Link: Hospitality
Their use of the law dooms their attempt at “hospitality”—including others within the law
re-enforces the superiority of the host.
Yegenoglu, 03 - professor of sociology at Middle East Technical University, Ankara – 2003 (Meyda, “Liberal Multiculturalism and the
Ethics of Hospitality in the Age of Globalization,” PMC 13.2, Muse)
The question of hospitality in Kant's writings pulls us into the domain of law, citizenship and the relation the state has with its subjects.
Universal hospitality here is only juridical and political. Cosmopolitan law is about international agreement and
refers to the condition of justice and law that is to be decided by nations. Hospitality is treated as a question of rights, justice and
obligation that is to be regulated by law.4 Resting on a juridical and political definition, the Kantian formulation is based not on granting the right
of residence but only the right of temporary sojourn. As a juridical regulation, it concerns the rights of citizens of states that are
to be regulated and deliberated by a cosmopolitical constitution. As such, it suspends and conditions the immediate,
infinite, and unconditional welcoming of the other (87). Derrida directs our attention to the fact that conditional hospitality is
offered at the owner's place, home, nation, state, or city--that is, at a place where one is defined as the master and where
unconditional hospitality or unconditional trespassing of the door is not possible. The host, the non-guest, the one who
accepts, the one who offers hospitality, the one who welcomes, is the owner of a home and therefore is the master of the home. 5 As I mentioned
above, Derrida directs our attention to the fact that in Kant's essay, hospitality is framed as a question of law, an obligation, a
duty, and a right: it refers to the welcoming of an alien/stranger other as a non-enemy. The formulation of hospitality
as a question of law weaves it with contradiction because the welcoming of the other within the limits of law is
possible on the condition that the host, the owner of the home, the one who accepts, remains the master of the home
and thereby retains his/her authority in that place.
Murray 27
Link: Accepting Islam/ Tolerance

The affirmatives tolerance and acceptance of the other is the defining characteristic of a
larger system of power which regulates what deserves to be tolerated. Their inclusion of
the Islamic state solidifies the imperial power to choose what is inside and what is outside,
making violence and war inevitable.
Brown, 06 (Wendy, Prof Poli Sci, UC Berkeley, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in an Age of Identity and Empire).
The original project, then, was to be a consideration of the constructive and regulatory effects of tolerance as a discourse of justice, citizenship, and community in late modern, multicultural
Islam, nationalism, fundamentalism,
liberal democracies, with a focus on the United States. However, in the aftermath of September 11, political rhetorics of
culture, and civilization have reframed even domestic discourses of tolerance-the enemy of tolerance is now the
weaponized radical Islamicist state or terror cell rather than the neighborhood bigot-and have certainly changed the cultural pitch of
tolerance in the international sphere. While some of these changes have simply brought to the surface long-present
subterranean norms in liberal tolerance discourse, others have articulated tolerance for genuinely new purposes.
These include the legitimation of a new form of imperial state action in the twenty-first century, a legitimation
tethered to a constructed opposition between a cosmopolitan West and its putatively fundamentalist Other .
Tolerance thus emerges as part of a civilizational discourse that identifies both tolerance and the tolerable with the
West, marking nonliberal societies and practices as candidates for an intolerable barbarism that is itself signaled by
the putative intolerance ruling these societies. In the mid-nineteenth through midtwentieth centuries , the West
imagined itself as standing for civilization against primitivism, and in the cold war years for freedom against
tyranny; now these two recent histories are merged in the warring figures of the free, the tolerant, and the civilized
on one side, and the fundamentalist, the intolerant, and the barbaric on the other. As it altered certain emphases in liberal discourse itself, so,
too, did the post-September 11 era alter the originally intended course of this study. The new era demanded that questions about tolerance as a domestic governmentality producing and regulating
ethnic, religious, racial, and sexual subjects be supplemented with questions about the operation of tolerance in and as a civilizational discourse distinguishing Occident from Orient, liberal from
nonliberal regimes, "free" from "unfree" peoples. Such questions include the following: If tolerance is a political principle used to mark an opposition between liberal and fundamentalist orders,
how might liberal tolerance discourse function not only to anoint Western superiority but also to legitimate Western cultural and political imperialism? That is, how might this discourse actually
promote Western supremacy and aggression even as it veils them in the modest dress of tolerance? How might tolerance, the very virtue that Samuel Huntington advocates for preempting a
worldwide clash of civilizations, operate as a key element in a civilizational discourse that codifies the superiority and legitimates the superordination of the West? What is the work of tolerance
discourse in a contemporary imperial liberal governmentality? What kind of subject is thought to be capable of tolerance? What sort of rationality and sociality is tolerance imagined to require
and what sorts are thought to inhibit it-in other words, what anthropological presuppositions does liberal tolerance entail and circulate? In the end, the effort to understand tolerance as a domestic
discourse of ethnic, racial, and sexual regulation, on the one hand, and as an international discourse of Western supremacy and imperialism on the other, did not have to remain permanently
forked. Contemporary domestic and global discourses of tolerance, while appearing at first blush to have relatively distinct objects and aims, are increasingly melded in encomiums to tolerance,
The conceit of secularism under
such as those featured in the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance discussed in chapter 4, and are also analytically interlinked .
girding the promulgation of tolerance within multicultural liberal democracies not only legitimates their intolerance
of and aggression toward nonliberal states or transnational formations but also glosses the ways in which certain
cultures and religions are marked in advance as ineligible for tolerance while others are so hegemonic as to not even register as
cultures or religions; they are instead labeled "mainstream" or simply "American." In this way, tolerance discourse in the United States,
while posing as both a universal value and an impartial practice, designates certain beliefs and practices as civilized
and others as barbaric, both at home and abroad; it operates from a conceit of neutrality that is actually thick with bourgeois Protestant
norms. The moral autonomy of the individual at the heart of liberal tolerance discourse is also critical in drawing the line between the tolerable and the intolerable, both domestically and globally,
and thereby serves to sneak liberalism into a civilizational discourse that claims to be respectful of all cultures and religions, many of which it would actually undermine by "liberalizing," and,
conversely, to sneak civilizational discourse into liberalism. This is not to say that tolerance in civilizational discourse is reducible to liberalism; in fact, it is strongly shaped by the legacy of the
colonial settler native encounter as well as the postcolonial encounter between white and indigenous, colonized, or expropriated peoples. This strain in the lexicon and ethos of tolerance, while
not reducible to a liberal grammar and analytics, is nonetheless mediated by them and also constitutes an element in the constitutive outside of liberalism over the past three centuries
Tolerance is thus a crucial analytic hinge between the constitution of abject domestic subjects and barbarous global
ones, between liberalism and the justification of its imperial and colonial adventures. Put slightly differently,
tolerance as a mode of late modern governmentality that iterates the normalcy of the powerful and the deviance of
the marginal responds to, links, and tames both unruly domestic identities or affinities and nonliberal transnational
forces that tacitly or explicitly challenge the universal standing of liberal precepts. Tolerance regulates the presence
of the Other both inside and outside the liberal democratic nation-state, and often it forms a circuit between them
that legitimates the most illiberal actions of the state by means of a term consummately associated with liberalism.
Murray 28
Link: Emergency Politics

When it comes to humanitarian emergencies there is no such thing as certainty. The harms
of the 1AC are constructed by a system designed to produce threats as a means of
lubricating the extension of power
Dillon & Reid, 2000 (Michael and Julian, Lecturer at the University of Lancaster and Lecturer on International Politics at University
of London, Alternatives: Social Transformation and Humane Governance, Vol. 25 Ish. 1, January-March).
No political formulation is therefore innocent. None refers to a truth about the world that preexists that truth's entry
into the world through discourse. Every formula is instead a clue to a truth. Each is crafted in the context of a wider
discursive economy of meaning. Tug at the formula, the pull in the fabric begins to disclose the way in which it has been woven. The
artefactual design of the truth it proclaims then emerges. We are therefore dealing with something much more than a mere
matter of geopolitical fact when encountering the vocabulary of complex emergency in the discourse of global
governance and liberal peace. We are not talking about a discrete class of unproblematic actions. Neither are we discussing certain forms
of intractable conflicts. The formula complex emergency does of course address certain kinds of violent disorder. That disorder is not our direct
concern. Recall with Foucault and many other thinkers that an economy of meaning is no mere idealist speculation. It is a
material political production integral to a specific political economy of power . We do not therefore subscribe to the view
championed, for example, by Adam Roberts that the formula complex emergency is merely a way of giving a new name to an old problem.[12]
We are talking instead about a particular understanding of (inter)national politics that leads to such disorder being
bracketed and addressed in terms of complex emergency. For it is only in the context of a certain political
rationality, in this instance the global governance of liberal peace, that the formula occurs at all.[13] It is in relation to that
political rationality and its hybrid practices of power that the formula not only makes sense but also does certain kinds of work. So-called
humanitarian emergencies are always therefore profoundly political events concerned above all with the responses
to the advent of violent change induced by the constant interplay between the local and the global.
Murray 29
Link: Timeframe
The call to immediacy is the call to ignorance – reject their demand for exigency in order to
rethink politics
Brown, 05 (Edgework: Critical Essays on Knowledge and Politics, Wendy, Professor of Poli Sci, UC Berkeley).
On the one hand, critical theory cannot let itself be bound by political exigency; indeed, it has something of an
obligation to refuse such exigency. While there are always decisive choices to be made in the political realm (whom to
vote for, what policies to support or oppose, what action to take or defer), these very delimitations of choice are often themselves
the material of critical theory. Here we might remind ourselves that prying apart immediate political constraints
from intellectual ones is one path to being "governed a little less" in Foucault's sense. Yet allowing thinking its wildness
beyond the immediate in order to reset the possibilities of the immediate is also how this degoverning rearticulates
critical theory and politics after disarticulating them; critical theory comes back to politics offering a different sense
of the times and a different sense of time. It is also important to remember that the "immediate choices" are just that and often last no
longer than a political season (exemplified by the fact that the political conundrums with which this essay opened will be dated if not forgotten by
the time this book is published). Nor is the argument convincing that critical theory threatens the possibility of holding
back the political dark. It is difficult to name a single instance in which critical theory has killed off a progressive
political project. Critical theory is not what makes progressive political projects fail ; at worst it might give them bad
conscience, at best it renews their imaginative reach and vigor.
Murray 30
Link: Status Quo/ Timeliness

There is no status quo – time is constantly changing. To assert the hegemony of the present
ignores the potential of the future. Affirm our critical theory for its ability to escape the
confines of temporal imprisonment
The rebuff of critical theory as untimely provides the core matter of the affirmative case for it. Critical theory is
essential in dark times not for the sake of sustaining utopian hopes, making flamboyant interventions, or staging irreverent
protests, but rather to contest the very senses of time invoked to declare critique untimely. If the charge of
untimeliness inevitably also fixes time, then disrupting this fixity is crucial to keeping the times from closing in on
us. It is a way of reclaiming the present from the conservative hold on it that is borne by the charge of untimeliness.
To insist on the value of untimely political critique is not, then, to refuse the problem of time or timing in politics but
rather to contest settled accounts of what time it is, what the times are, and what political tempo and temporality we
should hew to in political life. Untimeliness deployed as an effective intellectual and political strategy, far from
being a gesture of indifference to time, is a bid to reset time. Intellectual and political strategies of successful untimeliness
therefore depend on a close engagement with time in every sense of the word. They are concerned with timing and tempo. They involve efforts to
grasp the times by thinking against the times. They attempt, as Nietzsche put it, to "overcome the present" by puncturing the
present's "overvaluation of itself," an overcoming whose aim is to breathe new possibility into the age. If our times are
dark, what could be more important?
Murray 31
Link: Suffering Bad

Suffering is inevitable. The horrors and pains of the world are inescapable. The choice is
whether to regard this suffering with sorrow or embrace it with joy. You should affirm
suffering as the building block to strength
Groff 04 – Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Bucknell University – 2004 (Peter S, Journal of Nietzsche Studies, “Al-Kindi and Nietzsche
on the Stoic Art of Banishing Sorrow,” Issue 28, Autumn 2004, pg. 139-173)
Nietzsche goes on to reflect on the lies and "deadly silence" with which the advocates of extirpation have tried to hide the "over-rich happiness"
[überreiche Glück] of passionate people, and concludes: "Is our life really painful and burdensome enough to make it advantageous to exchange it
for a Stoic way of life and petrification? We are not so badly off that we have to be as badly off as Stoics" (GS 326). But Nietzsche is merely
scratching the surface here, for the more fundamental question is whether suffering is something that necessarily ought to
be ameliorated. In an earlier aphorism from the same book, Nietzsche ostensibly accepts the Stoics' doctrine of the inextricable bond between pleasure and pain, while at the same time
drawing a radically different conclusion: [W]hat if pleasure [Lust] and displeasure [Unlust] were so tied together that whoever wanted to have as much as possible of one must also have as much
as possible of the other—that whoever wanted to learn to "jubilate up to the heavens" would also have to be prepared for "depression unto death"? And that is how things may well be. At least
the Stoics believed that this was how things were, and they were consistent when they also desired as little pleasure as possible, in order to get as little displeasure as possible out of life.... To this
day you have a choice: either as little displeasure as possible, painlessness in brief ... or as much displeasure as
possible as the price for the growth of an abundance of subtle pleasures [Lüsten] and joys [Freuden] that have rarely been
relished yet. If you decide for the former and desire to diminish and lower the level of human pain [Schmerzhaftigkeit], you
also have to diminish and lower the level of their capacity for joy. Nietzsche concludes this aphorism with a rumination on the power of science to
promote either goal: it can make us "colder, more like a statue, more Stoic," but it also has the "immense capacity for making new galaxies of joy flare up" (GS 12). To some extent, the Stoics
function in this passage as a foil for Nietzsche's imperative to experiment—or "live dangerously," as he famously puts it (GS 283)—and one is reminded of Nietzsche's reflections on the health of
the soul, where he poses the troubling question of the potential value of illness (GS 120). However, in spite of this we can already begin to see a more fundamental agreement between Nietzsche
and the Stoics that underlies their internecine dispute and indeed makes it possible in the first place. Nietzsche's claim that "much displeasure" is a prerequisite for our capacity to experience great
joy recalls his claim that suffering is a condition for the possibility of human greatness.Yet this assertion is not necessarily at odds with Stoic ethics, for whenever Nietzsche extols the virtues of
suffering (insofar as it makes us profound and contributes to the growth and intensification of power), his primary target is the morality of pity. And Nietzsche and the Stoics are actually in
accordance in their low estimation of the value of pity [Mitleid] (D 139).75 Thus in order to understand Nietzsche's Stoicism, it is crucial to distinguish between eliminating suffering and
banishing sorrow. Nietzsche explicitly rejects the former program, inasmuch as it makes us small, mediocre, and ignoble. However, while Nietzsche valorizes suffering, he by no means
The essential Nietzschean orientation toward the world is not one of recoiling, sadness, or regret, but
advocates sorrow.
rather one of affirmation, gaiety, cheerfulness, and joy. In order to make sense of this apparent tension in his
thought, we might provisionally think of suffering as a brute, inescapable fact of embodied existence , and sorrow as
one optional interpretation of that experience. In other words, sorrow and joy both have to do with one's
interpretation and evaluation of the meaning and value of suffering. The Stoic can no more eliminate suffering than he can
eliminate loss. As became clear in al-Kindī's epistle, loss is necessary and inevitable, but sorrow is not. In a similar way, the
Nietzschean "ideal" is to become strong and healthy enough joyfully to affirm the entirety of existence—even its
"accursed and loathsome aspects," including suffering (KSA 13.16[32], cf. EH P3). To attain this standpoint, I suggest, is to banish
sorrow.
Murray 32
Link: Engage the State

Reject the temptation to equate the political with the state. The individual is strong enough
– embracing the will to order through organized political resistance results in mastery and
violence
Saurette, 96 (Millennium: Journal of International Studies, Volume 25, Number 1, 1 March 1996 , pp. 1-28(28), Paul, Professor of
Political Studies, University of Ottawa, “I Mistrust All Systematizers And Avoid Them': Nietzsche, Arendt And The Crisis Of The Will To Order
In International Relations Theory”).
It has always been a great temptation, for men of action no less than for men of thought, to find a substitute for action in the
hope that the realm of human affairs may escape the haphazardness and moral irresponsibility inherent in a plurality
of agents.25 This exasperation almost invariably led to attempts to abolish the plurality of the public realm by
replacing human interaction with the absolute control of rulership. This conversion, however, fundamentally
transforms the understanding of politics by replacing the notion that to be human is to exist within a plurality and act
'freely', with the idea that 'men can lawfully and politically live together only when some are entitled to command
and others forced to obey'. Arendt contends that this rule-based conception of political action assumed a hegemonic and 'natural' status only
when the philosophical transformation of Western civilisation created an intellectual framework which necessitated interpreting politics as
rulership. From this perspective, the importance of Arendt's thought is that she reveals the way in which the Will to Order/Truth has
created the parameters of the modern understanding of politics. According to Arendt, our modern notion of politics is an
inevitable consequence of the Platonic Will to Truth/Order. After Plato's Republic, politics could no longer be conceived of as
the freedom to act with equals, but could be conceptuaIised only as the ordering of society according to the world of forms.
With this paradigmatic substitution of making for acting, homo faber becomes the model political actor, and the realm of human affairs can be
interpreted only in terms of work. Further, through this transformation, the concepts of mastery, control, and violence are
inextricably imposed onto the realm of politics.
Murray 33
Link: Morality
There is no inherent, a-priori morality in the world. There are no transcendent values. To
affirm a moral sense because one simply ought to is the ultimate form of tautology. The
unquestioning acceptance of morality in the 1AC allows arbitrary values to become divine
and negates the beauty in deciding morality for the self
Turnali, 03 (The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 26 (2003) 55-63, Nietzsche and the Later Wittgenstein: An Offense to the Quest for Another
World, Aydan Turanli, Professor, Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Istanbul Technical
University).
Nietzsche questions idealization in ethics: On

the Genealogy of Morals is designed to show that concepts regarding moral
issues cannot be analyzed in a vacuum and this attitude is actually the product of thinking that there can be an external standpoint in analyzing concepts. Nietzsche
criticizes Plato's attempt to define the perfect man through concepts such as "good," "wise," "just," and "dialectician." According to him, this is to define "individuum in itself." It is the
Moral values are naturalized through Nietzsche's conceptual
"denaturalization of moral values" (WP II 430) and to remove a plant from all soil.
analysis: he gives the genealogy of the concepts "good" and "evil" to show that there are no moral values such as
good-in-itself and morality-in-itself over and above the actual uses of "good" and "evil." "Good" and "bad" are not
defined by our a priori knowledge of them. In order to show this he appeals to descriptions of historical processes in which these
concepts have been used. The origin of evil does not lie behind this world. Rather than searching for the origin behind this world, we should, Nietzsche
suggests, ask "under what conditions did man invent the value judgements good and evil" (GM III Preface). Nietzsche's depiction of the master-slave morality presumes that the relation between
the concepts "good" and "bad" depends on a class relation, the relation between the ruling class and the lower class. "Good" was imposed upon the lower class by the upper or ruling class (GM I
2). "Good" was always associated with the upper class, with Aryans, fair-haired, noble, spiritually distinct, and pure. "Bad" was identified with working class, common, inferior, and poor.
Historically, they were correlated with race and class. While previously concepts or values such as "good," "noble," "happy," and "powerful" were under the monopoly of aristocrats, with the
influence of the Slave Revolt of Jews and Christians this changed. "Good" became associated with the poor, powerless, sick, ugly, and truly blessed (GM I 6). Hence, in almost all nations, the
Nietzsche's analyses of moral values
values "good," and "bad" were inculcated, or imposed upon the lower class by the ruling class, the class that possesses power.
show that there is no a priori necessity for associating the word "good" with unegoistic actions (GM I 2). There is no
meaning-in-itself determining the meaning of the concepts "good" and "bad" once and for all. Other concepts
concerning moral values such as "guilt," "obligation," or "justice" are also analyzed in historical perspective in the
Genealogy. They too, like other moral concepts, are seen within the perspective of class relationships, power
relationships, purchase and sale relationships, and exchange relationships of creditor and debtor. Nietzsche's
conviction that there is no one characteristic defining moral values stems from his complete rejection of the
traditional Platonic understanding. For him, the whole history of a thing, or a custom, is a chain of reinterpretations
rather than progress toward a goal (GM II 12). With this step Nietzsche rejects traditional teleological explanations and this paves the way for accepting the fluidity of meanings. The concept of
"punishment," for example, has many meanings (GM II 13). The conclusions Nietzsche draws from the analysis of the concept "punishment" show the great similarities between his views and
those of Wittgenstein. Nietzsche says, "the history of punishment up to now in general, the history of its use for a variety of purposes, finally crystallizes in a kind of unity which is difficult to
dissolve back into its elements, difficult to analyse and, this has to be stressed, is absolutely undefinable" (ibid.). He says further that "all concepts in which an entire process is semiotically
concentrated defy definition; only something which has no history can be defined" (ibid.). He also stresses that there cannot be one element defining a concept, because although in some cases
one element becomes predominant, in other cases other elements may become important. So the definition of "punishment" per se cannot be given because it is totally dependent on history,
context, and uses in actual cases. This is very similar to Wittgenstein's concept of "family resemblance." Wittgenstein too points out that concepts have meaning only in the flux of life and most
concepts of daily life cannot be defined by a single characteristic. There is no quality of [End Page 59] a concept corresponding to the actual features of the world in our immediate environment.
Hence, the intrinsic definition of concepts cannot be given. Despite this, Wittgenstein and Nietzsche differ with respect to the methodology of conceptual analysis. Nietzsche goes to the origins
of concepts. He gives the genealogy of concepts. According to him, concepts can only have meaning when seen from a historical perspective. He appeals to history, and shows in what ways
concepts were used under different circumstances. Wittgenstein, on the other hand, by showing connections between concepts, tries to get us to see that most of our concepts elude clear-cut
definition. While criticizing Frege's view that a concept should have definite boundaries, he says, "Stand roughly there" is also enough to describe a concept (PI §71). To define the concept
"game," we give examples and we intend them to be taken in a particular way. There is nothing common to all types of games. There is rather "a complicated network of similarities overlapping
and criss-crossing: sometimes overall similarities, sometimes similarities of detail" (PI §66). Wittgenstein does not appeal to history; he does not give us the origin of concepts. He suggests that
we look and see how concepts are used in daily life, and what relation they have to other concepts in order to show us that there is no uniformity in their usage. The point of similarity, on the
other hand, is that both Nietzsche and Wittgenstein reject categories and a prioricity. According to Nietzsche, the-meaning-in-itself, like other concepts of traditional metaphysics such as
"unity," "truth," "purpose," "totality," "permanence," "doer," "atom," and "the thing-in-itself," is "only the seduction of language (and the fundamental errors of reason petrified within it)" (GM I
13).Nothing in the world actually corresponds to these concepts. They are, for Nietzsche, subjective categories of the
human mind having no objective existence. … Nietzsche's rejection of traditional metaphysics finds its culmination in his remark "God
is dead." For Nietzsche, "God is dead" can be interpreted as saying that there is no realm of transcendent reality, no
supersensible world, no absolute values. Presupposing that there are two different realms, one an immutable,
absolute realm of universal essences, is to degrade the world in which we live into a world of illusion. It is to deny
reality, the world of senses, of change, and opposition. With the devaluation of the highest values , Nietzsche abandons
the idea that there are two worlds having an unequal ontological rank: the true and transcendent world of ideas and the inferior world of senses .
The only world we have is the world of sensations, change, and contradiction.
Murray 34
Link: Ascetic Ideal
Human life is painful chaos. Instead of seeking meaning in the world, instead of trying to
order what surrounds us into a painless existence, we should walk in the dark – lost and
overcome by the chaos of life, but affirming it nonetheless
Scott 1990 (Charles E., professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, “The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault,
Heidegger,” Ed. John Sallis, p. 173-174)
One pathogenic aspect of our Western ethos that we have followed is the ascetic ideal. It is characterized by many
types of refusal and denial regarding the manner in which human life occurs, and on Nietzsche's account the ascetic
ideal reinforces this denial with a habitual insistence on the continuous presence of meaning in all dimensions of life
and being. In our ascetic withdrawal from life we join forces with hopelessness, suffering, death, and helplessness
by giving them meaning, in our appropriation of them, that far exceeds their occurrence and that subordinates them within a
scheme of meaning and hope. The rule governing the ascetic ideal is found in its incorporation and blind expression of the hopelessness and
meaninglessness that it is designed to overcome. This incorporation of what it is constitutes the ideal's nihilism for Nietzsche:
the affirmations within the ascetic ideal project their opposites and produce a spiral of unwitting and inevitable
violence in the spirituality that they create. The denial of life within the boundaries of the ascetic ideal continuously
reestablishes the power of the ideal. But when this movement is broken by a self-overcoming like that in Nietzsche's
genealogy of the ascetic ideal, the rule of the ascetic ideal is interrupted and a possibility is opened for life-affirmations that do not
suppress the most fearful occurrences involved in being alive. The joyousness of life without the illusion of continuous meaning, the joyousness that
Nietzsche found in early Greek culture, was lost, according to his reading, in the course of the increasing cultural dominance of those whose nerve has failed before the disheartening flow of life.
The ascetic ideal expresses this failure in its insistence on meaning and in its persistent manufacture of hope out of illusions bred of the failure. Heidegger is perhaps at his most non-Nietzschean
point when in his Rector's address he turns to the Greek division between the everyday and the question of being. This is an ironic moment in Heidegger's thought: he traces the origins of his own
move to separate the future of the German university from the German Volkstum, (that is, from dominant popular culture) to the emergence of the separation of thought from everyday life in
Greek culture. But this move is not associated with the joyousness that Nietzsche uses as his reference in delimiting the ascetic ideal. According to Nietzsche's genealogy we have lost an earthly
affirmation of life in the midst of the specific suffering of everyday existence. Nietzsche countenances fully the brutality, the fateful shattering of hope, the disappointments that break people's
lives, the individual and social tragedies. The debilitation of minds and bodies is juxtaposed to people's savoring food and drink, enjoying sexual pleasure. It is juxtaposed to friendship, the
Nietzsche's move is toward affirmation
energy of ambition, the struggle between competitors, the mixture of desperation and exhilaration in efforts of accomplishment .
in the midst of chaotic living when he speaks of what is lost in the blind and self-deceived chaos of asceticism that is
ordered by the illusion of continuous meaning. In this affirmation one has an awareness, presumably a full awareness, of
the otherness to human interest that radically distresses us. People's attention is delimited by it. Rather than escape or turn
away from it, people are delimited by it in their relations with things. Rather than appropriate the suffering of life in ascetic self-
denial, human beings stand over against its otherness, its unthinkableness, its density. They need not attempt to embody it in forms that seem to
shape it to human and thinkable dimensions. They live in the inappropriable, meaningless dark vacuity , with it and other to it, out
of it and in it. They are angel and animal, Nietzsche said. Not to be lost, not to be redeemed, not to be overcome, it is
juxtaposed to a will to live, an affirmation with, and not in spite of, the chaos .
Murray 35
Alt Solves Democracy

The alternative sees all truths as contingent – not only the truths of others but our own will
to truth as well. This is the key to a new form of agonistic democracy which recognizes the
inevitability of conflict in the political but uses that conflict to strengthen political will.
Democracy founded on respect for difference and otherness is key to solve the aff
Hatab, 02 (Lawrence J. Professor of Philosophy at Old Dominion University 2002 Prospects for a Democratic Agon Why We can still be
Nietzscheans: The Journal of Nietzsche p.MUSE)
In fact, Nietzschean conceptions of agonistics and nonfoundational

openness can go a long way toward articulating and
defending democratic practices without the problems attaching to traditional principles of equality . If political respect implies
inclusiveness and an open regard for the rightful participation of others, an agonistic model of politics can underwrite respect without the need for substantive conceptions of equality or even
something like "equal regard." I have already mentioned that agonistics can be seen as a fundamentally social phenomenon. Since the self is formed in and through tensional relations with others,
then any annulment of my Other would be an annulment of myself. Radical agonistics, then, discounts the idea of sheer autonomy and self-constitution. Such a tensional sociality can much more
readily affirm the place of the Other in social relations than can modern models of subject-based freedom. Moreover, the structure of an agon conceived as a contest can readily underwrite
political principles of fairness. Not only do I need an Other to prompt my own achievement, but the significance of any "victory" I might achieve demands an able opponent. As in athletics,
defeating an incapable or incapacitated competitor winds up being meaningless. So I should not only will the presence of others in an agon, I should also want that they be able adversaries, that
they have opportunities and capacities to succeed in the contest. And I should be able to honor the winner of a fair contest. Such is the logic of competition that contains a host of normative
features, which might even include active provisions for helping people in political contests become more able participants. 25 In addition, agonistic respect need not be associated with
something like positive regard or equal worth, a dissociation that can go further in facing up to actual political conditions and problematic connotations that can attach to liberal dispositions.
respect for the Other as other can avoid a vapid
Again allow me to quote my previous work. Democratic respect forbids exclusion, it demands inclusion; bu t
sense of "tolerance," a sloppy "relativism," or a misplaced spirit of "neutrality." Agonistic respect allows us to
simultaneously affirm our beliefs and affirm our opponents as worthy competitors in public discourse. Here we can
speak of respect without ignoring the fact that politics involves perpetual disagreement , and we have an adequate answer to
the question "Why should I respect a view that I do not agree with?" In this way beliefs about what is best (aristos) can be coordinated with an
openness to other beliefs and a willingness to accept the outcome of an open competition among the full citizenry (demos). Democratic
respect, therefore, is a dialogical mixture of affirmation and negation, a political bearing that entails giving all beliefs a
hearing, refusing any belief an ultimate warrant, and perceiving one's own viewpoint as agonistically implicated
with opposing viewpoints. In sum, we can combine 1) the historical tendency of democratic movements to promote free expression,
pluralism, and liberation from traditional constraints, and 2) a Nietzschean perspectivism and agonistic respect, to arrive at a postmodern model
of democracy that provides both a nonfoundational openness and an atmosphere of civil political discourse. 26 An agonistic politics construed
as competitive fairness can sustain a robust conception of political rights, not as something "natural" possessed by an original self, but as an
epiphenomenal, procedural notion conferred upon citizens in order to sustain viable political practice. Constraints on speech, association, access,
and so on, simply insure lopsided political contests. We can avoid metaphysical models of rights and construe them as simply social and political
phenomena: social in the sense of entailing reciprocal recognition and obligation; political in the sense of being guaranteed and enforced by the
state. We can even defend so-called positive rights, such as a right to an adequate education, as requisite for fair competition in political
discourse. Rights themselves can be understood as agonistic in that a right-holder has a claim against some treatment by others or for some
provision that might be denied by others. In this way rights can be construed as balancing power relations in social milieus, as a partial recession
of one's own power on behalf of the power of others—which in fact is precisely how Nietzsche in an early work described fairness and rights (D
112). And, as is well known, the array of rights often issues conflicts of different and differing rights, and political life must engage in the
ongoing balancing act of negotiating these tensions, a negotiation facilitated by precisely not defining rights as discrete entities inviolably
possessed by an originating self. Beyond political rights, a broader conception of rights, often designated as human rights as distinct from
political practice, can also be defended by way of the kind of nonfoundational, negative sense of selfhood inspired by Nietzsche. For Nietzsche,
the self is a temporal openness infused with tragic limits, rather than some metaphysical essence, stable substance, or eternal entity. A via
negativa can be utilized to account for rights as stemming not from what we are but from what we are not. So much of abusive or exclusionary
treatment is animated by confident designations and reductions as to "natures" having to do with race, gender, class, role, character, and so on.
[End Page 143] Nonfoundational challenges to "identity" may seem unsettling, but if we consider how identities figure in injustices, a good deal
of work can be done to reconfigure rights as based in resistance. It is difficult to find some positive condition that
can justify rights and do so without excluding or suppressing some other conditions. But a look at human history and
experience can more readily understand rights and freedom as emerging out of the irrepressible tendency of human
beings to resist and deny the adequacy of external attributions as to what or who they "are." It may be sufficient to
defend rights simply in terms of the human capacity to say No.
Murray 36
The first step to a truly open democracy is to allow hear the voices which critique
democracy itself. The alternative creates a new form of respect for the Other which makes
democracy possible
Hatab, 02 (Prospects For A Democratic Agon: Why We Can Still Be Nietzscheans, Lawrence J. Hatab, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies 24
(2002) 132-147, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University).
Many democratic theorists insist that politics must be grounded in secure principles , which themselves are
incontestable, so as to rule out anti-democratic voices from having their day and possibly undermining democratic procedures
or results. A radically agonistic, open conception of democracy that simply invites any and all parties to compete for
favor seems utterly decisionist, with no justification beyond its contingent enactment. But from a historical
perspective, despite metaphysical pretenses in some quarters, democratic foundings have in fact emerged out of the "abyss" of
conventions and decisional moments. 28 And with the prospect of a constitutional convention in our system, it is evident from a performative standpoint that any results
are actually possible in a democracy, even anti-democratic outcomes (not likely, but surely possible). The "tragedy" is that democracy could die at its own hands. Foundationalists would call such
an outcome contradictory, but a tragic conception would see it as a possibility intrinsic to the openness of democratic practice. Can there be more than a simply negative register in such a tragic
a tragic politics could
conception? I think so. Just as, for Nietzsche, the tragic allows us to be sensitized and energized for the fragile meanings of existence, thus enhancing life ,
wean us from false comforts in foundations and open us to the urgent finite conditions of political life in an
enhanced way. And even if one conceded the existence of foundational self-evident political principles, would the
force of such principles by themselves necessarily be able to prevent non-democratic outcomes ? If not, the force of such
principles [End Page 144] would be restricted to the solace of intellectual rectitude that can comfort theorists while the walls are coming down.
The nonexistence of foundational guarantees surely does not prevent one from living and fighting for democratic
ideals. What is to be said of someone who, in the absence of a guarantee, would hesitate to act or be obstructed from acting or see action as
tainted or less than authentic? Nietzsche would take this as weakness. The most profound element in Nietzsche's conceptions of
will to power, agonistics, and eternal recurrence, in my view, can be put in the following way. For Nietzsche, to act
in the world is always to act in the midst of otherness, of resistances or obstacles. Hence to dream of action without
otherness is to annul action. To affirm one's Other as necessarily constitutive of oneself is not only to affirm the full
field of action (which is the sense of eternal recurrence), but also to affirm action as action, that is to say, a real move in life amidst
real resistances, as opposed to the fantasy of self-sufficient, fully free, uncontested occurrences born in Western conceptions of divine perfection and continued in various philosophical
models of demonstrative certainty and theoretical governance. The irony of a tragically open, agonistic politics is that it need not "infect" political life but in fact spur it toward the existential
environment of it enactment. And as radically open, an agonistic politics has the virtue of precluding the silencing of any voice ,
something especially important when even purportedly democratic dispositions are comfortable with exclusions (frustrated by citizens who will
not come around to being impartial enough, rational enough, secular enough, deliberative enough, communal enough, virtuous enough, and so
on), thereby becoming susceptible to the most ironic and insidious form of tyranny done in democracy's name .
Murray 37
Alt Solves Ethics

Self-overcoming is key to a form of ethics which problematizes transcendent moralism
Scott 1990(Charles E., professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, “The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger,”
Ed. John Sallis, p. 6)
The self-overcoming recoil in these readings of our tradition defines also the movement of my own discourse regarding them. The question
of ethical thinking takes place in this process. It is a process that maintains the question rather than the values that have
governed our traditional senses of rightness. In this process the violence and oppressive anxieties that are
constitutive of the values by which we have organized our thought and lives become apparent . As ethical thinking
recoils with the oppositions and resistances that constitute it, different ways of thinking emerge and different thoughts
develop in which our ethical, pathogenic violence and anxiety are more difficult to overlook. The anxiety that
accompanies the transformation of thinking confronts the suppressive anxiety in our ethical heritage that has resisted transformation. The
consequent lightness of mind that develops in the discourse that we shall consider, while giving less customary satisfaction, produces
questions, criticism, and uncertainty in those regions of conviction that harbor those inevitabilities of suffering that are closely
connected to the ways we go about maximizing our well-being. The continual deferral of ethical certainty allows a
decomposition to take place in the aggregates of value and sensibility that are opposed to a self-overcoming
genealogical investigation of the heritage.
The alternative does not require an affirmation of a particular ethical system – questioning
the ethical grounding of the 1AC opens space for new forms of being which are capable of
challenging dogma
Scott 1990(Charles E., professor of Philosophy at Pennsylvania State University, “The Question of Ethics: Nietzsche, Foucault, Heidegger,”
Ed. John Sallis, p. 7-8)
In the question of ethics, the emphasis falls on a continuing process of thinking that diagnoses, criticizes; clarifies by
means of questions, destructures the components of meaning and power that silently shape our lives together , and
also questions the values and concepts that have rule-governing and axiomatic power in our culture. The emphasis
does not fall on the possible complete systematic accounts that prescribe definitive solutions to problems , 'right'
structures of value, originary or utopian visions of preferred types of personal identity. Thinking and writing, rather, take place in the
questionableness and the problems that arise in the constellations of belief, knowledge, and evaluation that constitute us and set the parameters
for what we may legitimately desire and the manners in which we normally relate to people and things. The question of ethics does not arise
outside of ethics, but from within it. Its thought is disciplined by efforts to maintain questionableness, by learning how to
ask questions in given settings, and by finding its own heritage and its problems. Learning to name things anew, to
become alert to exclusions and to forgotten aspects in a people's history, to overhear what is usually drowned out by the
predominant values, to rethink what is ordinarily taken for granted, to find out how to hold itself in question: these are
aspects of the thought of the question of ethics. There is a subversiveness in such processes vis-à-vis the normal and ordinary, a
subversiveness not unlike that of poets and philosophers who are routinely excluded or silenced by totalitarian regimes. But subversiveness is
neither a goal nor an ideal for the question of ethics. Its goal is to rethink, rework, rewrite, to listen again to the cultural
inevitabilities that make us who we are and to affirm the transformative process without sense of origin or teleology.
Murray 38
A/T “Make State Anti-Statal”

The particular form of state structure is irrelevant – the state is manifestly despotic no
matter how your movement tries to stop it (This card is against OU KT’s stupid
communism aff from last year, dunno if anyone will read it again)
Newman, 2000 (Saul, Postdoctoral Fellow at Macquarie University, “Anarchism and the Politics of Ressentiment,” Theory and Event,
Volume 4, Issue 3)
Anarchists like Bakunin and Kropotkin disagreed with Marx precisely on this point. For anarchists, the
State is much more than
an expression of class and economic power. Rather the State has its own logic of domination and self-
perpetuation, and is autonomous from class interests. Rather than working from the society to the State, as Marx did, and
seeing the State as the derivative of economic relations of capitalism and the rise of the bourgeoisie, anarchists work from the State to
society. The State constitutes the fundamental oppression in society, and economic exploitation is derived from
this political oppression. In other words, it is political oppression that makes economic oppression possible .[12]
Moreover for anarchists, bourgeois relations are actually a reflection of the State, rather than the State being a
reflection of bourgeois relations. The ruling class, argues Bakunin, is the State's real material representative. Behind every ruling
class of every epoch there looms the State. Because the State has its own autonomous logic it can never be trusted as
an instrument of revolution. To do this would be to ignore its logic of domination. If the State is not destroyed
immediately, if it is used as a revolutionary tool as Marxists suggest, then its power will be perpetuated in
infinitely more tyrannical ways. It would operate, as Bakunin argues, through a new ruling class -- a bureaucratic
class that will oppress and exploit workers in the same manner as the bourgeois class oppressed and exploited
them.[13] So the State, for anarchists, is a priori oppression, no matter what form it takes. Indeed Bakunin argues that Marxism
pays too much attention to the forms of State power while not taking enough account of the way in which State power operates: "They
(Marxists) do not know that despotism resides not so much in the form of the State but in the very principle
of the State and political power."[14] Oppression and despotism exist in the very structure and symbolism of the State -- it is not
merely a derivative of class power. The State has its own impersonal logic, its own momentum, its own priorities: these are
often beyond the control of the ruling class and do not necessarily reflect economic relations at all. So
anarchism locates the fundamental oppression and power in society in the very structure and operations of
the State. As an abstract machine of domination, the State haunts different class actualizations -- not just the bourgeoisie State, but the
worker's State too. Through its economic reductionism, Marxism neglected the autonomy and pre-eminence of State -- a mistake that
would lead to its reaffirmation in a socialist revolution. Therefore the anarchist critique unmasked the hidden forms of domination
associated with political power, and exposed Marxism's theoretical inadequacy for dealing with this problem. This conception of
the State ironically strikes a familiar note with Nietzsche. Nietzsche, like the anarchists, sees modern man as
'tamed', fettered and made impotent by the State.[15] He also sees the State as an abstract machine of
domination, which precedes capitalism, and looms above class and economic concerns. The State is a mode
of domination that imposes a regulated 'interiorization' upon the populace. According to Nietzsche the State emerged
as a "terrible tyranny, as a repressive and ruthless machinery," which subjugated, made compliant, and shaped the population.[16]
Moreover the origins of this State are violent. It is imposed forcefully from without and has nothing to with
'contracts'.[17] Nietzsche demolishes the "fantasy" of the social contract -- the theory that the State was
formed by people voluntarily relinquishing their power in return for the safety and security that would be
provided by the State. This idea of the social contract has been central to conservative and liberal political theory, from Hobbes to
Locke. Anarchists also reject this theory of the social contract. They too argue that the origins of the State are
violent, and that it is absurd to argue that people voluntarily gave up their power. It is a dangerous myth that
legitimizes and perpetuates State domination.
Murray 39
***2NC Blocks***
Murray 40
A/T: Caused the Holocaust
Wrong
Cracked.com 2010 (6 Books Everyone (Including Your English Teacher) Got Wrong | Cracked.com
http://www.cracked.com/article_18787_6-books-everyone-including-your-english-teacher-got-wrong_p2.html#ixzz1W5jxwtVm, SRM)
And as for the "superman" thing, rather

than referring to some genetically pure German dictator, Nietzsche was just
making a generic statement about people who believe in the subjectivity of morals and seek to find their own values
in the world -- a concept wholly incompatible with just following the whim of some guy with a hate-boner for some
specific race. Interpreting Zarathustra's message as a call to raise an army and purge the world of undesirables is
something akin to believing that Animal Farm was really a warning about farm animals taking over the world .
They should lose the debate for saying this – equating Nietzsche to Nazism is the same
propaganda used by the National Socialist party to silence his critique of anti-Semitism
Millen, 97 – Professor of Religion at Wittenberg University – 1997 (Rochelle L. Millen,
http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/modern_judaism/v017/17.1br_santaniello.html Review: Nietzsche, God, and The Jews: His
Critique of Judeo-Christianity in Relation to the Nazi Myth).
From 1891 onward, Elisabeth, Nietzsche's sister, compiled (and then published) what she claimed were the previously
unpublished notes of her famous brother. In fact, until her death in 1935, Elisabeth was responsible for feeding to
the leading ideologues of what became National Socialism--including Houston Stewart Chamberlain, Dietrich Eckhart, Joseph
Goebbels, Alfred Rosenberg, and Hitler himself--presumed statements of Nietzsche's professed love of Christianity ,
allegiance to Aryan racial supremacy, and (after 1923) loyalty to the Nazi Party. These are clearly antithetical to
Nietzsche's critiques of Christianity, anti-Semitism, and Wagnerism . Under Elisabeth's control, the Nietzsche Archive in Weimar
became a propaganda tool for fascist politics and National Socialism. As Santaniello confirms, Nietzsche never wrote a book entitled
The Will to Power; it was, rather, a compilation of distorted statements of Nietzsche's put together by Elisabeth herself in 1901, a year after
Nietzsche's death. One might speculate that Elisabeth needed to justify her own powerful anti-Semitic leanings, and in true Freudian style, could not do it in a better fashion than by deliberately
twisting her brother's thought. Thus she could cover up Nietzsche's violent break with her mentor, Richard Wagner, in 1876 and with herself in 1884; she could appropriate his genius for her
In truth, Elisabeth's false representations of Nietzsche's philosophy
purposes, camouflaging her own shallowness, complacency, and racism .
represent the very aspects of Christianity and German culture that Nietzsche so deeply despised. This is especially evident in her
skewed two-volume biography of her brother,The Life of Nietzsche (much of which was written between 1895-1904) and its later popular adaptations,The Young Nietzsche andThe Lonely
Nietzsche (1912-1915). By the time of Elisabeth's death in 1925, Nietzsche's appropriation by the Nazis was complete, and he was continually depicted as a well known anti-Semite of long
standing. In the light of her meticulous biographical and psychological analysis in Part 1 and textual analyses in Part 2, Santaniello is concerned to emphasize the "crucial fact that Nietzsche was
a staunch opponent of antisemitism and that his extremely rare position during his time did not win for him many popularity contests" (p. 150). This is significant in that Santaniello
the Nazis' deliberate manipulations of the Nietzsche corpus were based not on their
unequivocally demonstrates that
misunderstanding but rather on their astute comprehension of his work. They understood only too well that
Nietzsche defended the Jews and defied many of the precursors of National Socialism: the Wagners, Ernest Renan,
Chamberlain, Gobineau, Stöcker, and the Forsters, his own sister and brother-in-law. By adapting and distorting Nietzsche's works,
the Nazis effectively silenced his voice.
Murray 41
A/T: Empiricism
Empiricism misses the point – theory is not about what is around us, but rather an opening
of the world to new meanings and interpretations that open space for rethinking being
Theory is not simply different from description; rather, it is incommensurate with description. Theory is not simply the opposite of application
but carries the impossibility of application. As a meaning-making enterprise, theory depicts a world that does not quite exist,
that is not quite the world we inhabit. But this is theory's incomparable value, not its failure. Theory does not simply
decipher the meanings of the world but recodes and rearranges them in order to reveal something about the
meanings and incoherencies that we live with. To do this revelatory and speculative work, theory must work to one side of direct
referents, or at least it must disregard the conventional meanings and locations of those referents. Theory violates the self representation of things
in order to represent those things and their relation-the world--differently. Thus, theory is never "accurate" or "wrong"; it is only
more or less illuminating, more or less provocative, more or less of an incitement to thought, imagination, desire, possibilities for
renewal. There is another reason that theory cannot be brought to the bar of truth or applicability. Insofar as theory
imbues contingent or unconscious events, phenomena, or formations with meaning and with location in a world of
theoretical meaning, theory is a sense-making enterprise of that which often makes no sense, of that which may be
inchoate, unsystematized, inarticulate. It gives presence to what may have a liminal, evanescent, or ghostly
existence. Thus theory has no kinship with the project of "accurate representation"; its value lies instead in the
production of a new representation, in the production of coherence and meaning that it does not find lying on the
ground but which, rather, it forthrightly fashions. Similarly theory does not simply articulate needs or desires but argues for their
existence and thus literally brings them into being. As theory interprets the world, it fabricates that world (pace Marx! especially
Marx!); as it names desire, it gives reason and voice to desire, and thus fashions a new order of desire; as it codifies meaning, it composes
meaning. Theory's most important political offering is this opening of a breathing space between the world of common
meanings and the world of alternative ones, a space of potential renewal for thought, desire, and action.
Murray 42
A/T: Nietzsche = Domination
Our alternative is not the domination of the weak by the strong but rather the removal of
the façade of weakness to open interplay of power
The seven chapters of Appel's book provide a vivid and fair reading of Nietzsche's texts that exhibit a forceful call for aristocraticism based on
rank, domination, and exploitation, which should be an embarrassing obstacle to embracing Nietzsche in the service of egalitarian political
movements. Appel's position, however, depends upon an unnuanced reading of Nietzsche's motifs of domination and
power, which is at least a risky proposition with a thinker as elusive and complicated as Nietzsche. The genealogical
narrative of master and slave morality need not be read as a call for domination of the weak by the strong, but as an
unmasking of the power plays of the weak and as an ambiguous blending of master and slave forces in cultural
production, taken as a "spiritualization" of erstwhile natural forces of power . While we might never be sure of the meaning of
Nietzsche's rich and elusive texts, this should not blind us to the seeming aristocraticism in much of Nietzsche's writings. We should admit that
such elitism is alive in the texts, and in this respect Appel is right. Yet the complexity of the texts should alert us against both easy
dismissals and selective embraces of Nietzsche when it comes to the question of democracy . My take has been that
Nietzsche indeed is anti-egalitarian but that egalitarianism may not be the sine qua non of democratic politics, and that many elements of
democratic practice and performance are more Nietzschean than he suspected (or we have suspected). More on this shortly.
Murray 43
A/T: Ethics of the Other

Nietzschean ethics affirms the other as an equal opponent. We respect the other as an
oppositional force not to be eliminated, but to be treated as a sharpening stone to improve
the self. Only the alternative can solve a acceptance of alterity which neither converts the
other to sameness nor violently obliterates the other
How can we begin to apply the notion of agonistics to politics in general and democracy in particular? First of all,
contestation and competition can be seen as fundamental to self-development and as an intrinsically social
phenomenon. Agonistics helps us articulate the social and political ramifications of Nietzsche's concept of will to power. As Nietzsche put
it in an 1887 note, "will to power can manifest itself only against resistances ; it seeks that which resists it" (KSA 12, p.424).
Power, therefore, is not simply an individual possession or a goal of action; it is more a global, interactive
conception. For Nietzsche, every advance in life is an overcoming of some obstacle or counterforce, so that conflict
is a mutual co-constitution of contending forces. Opposition generates development. The human self is not formed in some internal
sphere and then secondarily exposed to external relations and conflicts. The self is constituted in and through what it opposes and
what opposes it; in other words, the self is formed through agonistic relations. Therefore, any annulment of one's
Other would be an annulment of one's self in this sense. Competition can be understood as a shared activity for the
sake of fostering high achievement and self-development, and therefore as an intrinsically social activity .
Murray 44
A/T: Alt = Violence

Violence is weakness taking the form of eliminating the opponent. Agonism requires a
respect for the Other but does not preclude struggle between ideals
In the light of Nietzsche's appropriation of the two forms of Eris, it

is necessary to distinguish between agonistic conflict and
sheer violence. A radical agonistics rules out violence, because violence is actually an impulse to eliminate conflict
by annihilating or incapacitating an opponent, bringing the agon to an end. In a later work Nietzsche discusses the
"spiritualization of hostility (Feindschaft)," wherein one must affirm both the presence and the power of one's
opponents as implicated in one's own posture (TI "Morality as Antinature," 3). And in this passage Nietzsche specifically
applies such a notion to the political realm. What this implies is that the category of the social need not be confined
to something like peace or harmony. Agonistic relations, therefore, do not connote a deterioration of a social
disposition and can thus be extended to political relations.
Murray 45
A/T: Gotta Include Group X
The alternative solves inclusion not by affirming an inherent value to inclusion, but rather
by negating arbitrary forms of exclusion. The alternative is opposed to
racism/classism/sexism/ableism not to protect the opporessed because they are forces of
exclusion which negate respect for the other
Hatab, 02 (Prospects For A Democratic Agon: Why We Can Still Be Nietzscheans, Lawrence J. Hatab, The Journal of Nietzsche Studies
24 (2002) 132-147, Professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, Old Dominion University).
Appel concedes that a political agon can be healthy and prevent the establishment of entrenched, permanent hierarchies (NCD, p.162). But he
poses an important question, which is in the spirit of French neo-liberal critics of Nietzschean politics: Might not a radical agon all the
way down in political life "debunk" important democratic "verities" such as universal suffrage, equal respect, and
human rights? This is indeed a pressing question that many postmodern writers have not addressed adequately. Yet Appel, like many critics of postmodernism, simply assumes the truth
and necessity of these traditional democratic notions, without much articulation of how agonistics threatens these notions, and without any defense of the viability of these notions in the wake of
Nietzschean genealogical criticisms. Such criticisms have been effectively advanced by Foucauldian appropriations of Nietzsche that reveal how modern "reason" cannot help being caught up in
what it presumes to overcome—namely regimes of power—and consequently cannot help producing exclusionary effects and constraints that belie the modern rhetoric of emancipation .
Nietzsche's genealogical critique of liberal democratic ideals, I think, is important and still relevant for political
philosophy. The question at hand turns on two possibilities: Does the critique presume a refutation of these ideals or
does it open up the possibility of redescribing these ideals in quasi-Nietzschean terms? Appel presumes the former possibility, I take up
the latter, while agreeing that most postmodern appropriations of Nietzsche have not done much to address either possibility. We cannot assume the truth of universal suffrage, equality, and
Universal
human rights by ignoring Nietzsche's trenchant attacks. My strategy has been to redescribe democratic ideals in the light of Nietzschean suspicions of their traditional warrants.
suffrage, equality, respect, and political rights can be defended by way of a postmodern via negativa that simply
rules out grounds for exclusion rather than postulates conditions that warrant inclusion. Nietzschean perspectivism,
metaphysical suspicion, and agonistics simply destabilize politics and prevent even ostensibly democratic propensities from
instigating exclusions or closed conceptions of political practice. In what follows I will briefly address two questions: How can a Nietzschean
agonistics be extended to the body politic so as to be viably democratic? How can agonistics redescribe respect and political rights without the baggage of traditional egalitarianism so forcefully
assailed by Nietzsche? Appel does indicate that his appraisal of political Nietzscheanism is not meant to discredit Nietzsche but to invite democrats to face Nietzsche's challenge and defend
We cannot dismiss Nietzsche's
democratic ideals (NCD, p.167). He admits that Nietzsche forces us to ask: Why equality? Equality of what? (NCD, p.169).
aristocraticism as irrelevant, uninteresting, or trivial (NCD, p.170). The strategy of my work has been to take up this
challenge, not by reiterating or renewing defenses of egalitarianism but by trying to show that democracy need not
be committed to traditional egalitarian rhetoric and so can approach a Nietzschean comfort with social stratification
in ways that Nietzsche did not expect or think through. Appel is right in calling to account selective appropriations of Nietzsche by postmodern democrats who ignore or sidestep his elitism. Few
Excellence is
writers who celebrate difference and democratic openness in Nietzsche's name have embraced his affirmation of excellence. There is difference and then there is difference.
a form of difference that implies gradations and judgments concerning superior and inferior, better and worse
performances. Many have embraced a Nietzschean openness to difference on behalf of a generalized liberation of diverse life styles and modes of self-creation. 19 Such a generalized
emancipation, however, would repulse Nietzsche. He was interested in fostering special individuals and high achievements. I wonder whether certain postmodern celebrations of difference
conceal a kind of egalitarianism in their avoidance or suppression of Nietzsche's clear comfort with social stratification. And it is important, in my view, to sustain a sense of excellence that is
Excellence and democracy are compatible as long as excellence is understood
vital for both democratic politics and cultural production. 20
in a contextual and performative sense, rather than a substantive sense of permanent, pervasive, or essential
superiority.
Murray 46
***1NC Fiat Double Bind

A. Fiat double bind – Either the harms to the 1AC are true and they cannot solve for
extinction before they control the levers of power OR their harms are constructed for the
purpose of alarmism which makes them symbolic terrorists.
B. Their model of fiat cedes the political and papers over personal responsibility
Kappeler 95 (Susanne, The Will to Violence: The politics of personal behavior, Pg. 10-11)
Yet our insight that indeed we are not responsible for the decisions of a Serbian general or a Croatian
president tends to mislead us into thinking that therefore we have no responsibility at all, not
even for forming our own judgment, and thus into underrating the responsibility we do have
within our own sphere of action. In particular, it seems to absolve us from having to try to see any relation
between our own actions and those events, or to recognize the connections between those political decisions and our own
personal decisions. It not only shows that we participate in what Beck calls 'organized irresponsibility', upholding the apparent lack of
connection between bureaucratically, institutionally, nationally, and also individually organized separate competences. It also proves the
phenomenal and unquestioned alliance of our personal thinking with the thinking of the major power mongers, For we tend to think
that we cannot 'do' anything, say, about a war, because we deem ourselves to be in the wrong situation because we are
not where the major decisions are made. Which is why many of those not yet entirely disillusioned
with politics tend to engage in a form of mental deputy politics, in the style of 'what would I do
if I were the general, the prime minister, the president, the foreign minister or the minister of defense?' Since we
seem to regard their mega spheres of action as the only worthwhile and truly effective ones, and
since our political analyses tend to dwell there first of all, any question of what I would do if I were indeed
myself tends to peter out in the comparative insignificance of having what is perceived as
'virtually no possibilities': what I could do seems petty and futile. For my own action I obviously
desire the range of action of a general, a prime minister, or a General Secretary of the UN - finding expression in ever more prevalent
formulations like 'I want to stop this war', 'I want military intervention', 'I want to stop this backlash', or 'I want a moral revolution. 'We
are this war', however, even if we do not command the troops or participate in co-called peace talks, namely as Drakulic says, in our
non-comprehension': our willed refusal to feel responsible for our own thinking and for working out our own understanding,
preferring innocently to drift along the ideological current of prefabricated arguments or less than innocently
taking advantage of the advantages these offer. And we 'are' the war in our 'unconscious cruelty towards you', our tolerance
of the 'fact that you have a yellow form for refugees and I don't' - our readiness, in other words, to build identities, one for ourselves and
We share in the responsibility for this war and its
one for refugees, one of our own and one for the 'others.'
violence in the way we let them grow inside us, that is, in the way we shape 'our feelings,
our relationships, our values' according: to the structures and the values of war and
violence.
Murray 47
2NC Information Dissuasive

Resist the attempt to take everything and lay the world open to analysis. We must maintain
the intelligence of mystery or suffer planetary symbolic extinction
Baudrillard 2010 CARNIVAL AND CANNIBAL p70-3
In the Promethean Perspective of unlimited growth, there is not merely the desire to make everything function, to liberate
everything, but also the desire to make everything signify. Everything is to be brought under the aegis of
meaning (and reality). In some cases we know that knowledge will forever escape us. But in the immense
majority of cases we do not even know what has disappeared and has always already eluded us. Now, science
makes a systematic effort to eradicate this secret area, this "constellation of the mystery" and to eliminate this demarcation line between
the violable and the inviolable. All that is concealed must be revealed; everything must be reducible to analysis.
Hence the whole effort (particularly since the death of God, who restrained this attempt to break open the natural world) leads us to an
extension of the field of meaning (of knowledge, analysis, objectivity, and reality). Now, everything inclines us to think that
this accumulation, this over-production, this proliferation of meaning, constitutes (a little like the accumulation of
greenhouse gases) a virtual threat for the species (and for the planet), since it is gradually destroying, through experimentation,
that domain of the inviolable that serves us, as it were, as an ozone layer and protects us from the worst -
from the lethal irradiation and obliteration of our symbolic space. Shouldn't we then, work precisely in the
opposite direction, to extend the domain of the inviolable? To restrain the production of greenhouse gases, to reinforce
that constellation of the mystery and that intangible barrier that serves as a screen against the welter of
information, interaction and universal exchange. The countervailing work exists - it is the work of thought.
Not the analytic work of an understanding of causes, of the dissection of an object-world, not the work of a critical, enlightened thought,
but another form of understanding or intelligence, which is the intelligence of mystery.
Murray 48
2NC Cannot Engage the Political

Even if their education arguments are right, they cannot account for the masses
disengagement from politics, only the alt solves
Gilbert 2009 (Jeremy, "Deleuzian Politics? A survey and Some Suggestions", New Formations, EBSCO)
The key question which emerges here is one of the most vexed and contentious in the field of studies of Deleuzian politics: namely,
Deleuze and Guattari’s attitude to democracy. While it is quite possible to read in their work an advocacy of that ‘plural radical
democracy’ which Laclau and Mouffe have also famously advocated,80 it is equally possible to read in Deleuze an aristocratic distaste
for democracy which he shares with Nietzsche and much of the philosophical tradition. This is the reading offered by Phillipe Mengue,
and it is not difficult to understand his argument. Democracy necessarily implies government by
majorities, and as we have seen, ‘majority’ is, for Deleuze and Guattari, a wholly negative term. Deleuze’s express distaste for
‘opinion’, for ‘discussion’, his consistent emphasison the value of the new, the creative and the different, all seem to
bespeak an avant-gardism which is ultimately inimical to any politics of popular sovereignty. On the other hand,
as Paul Patton has argued in response to Mengue,81 most of Deleuze’s anti-democratic statements can easily be read as
expressions of distaste with the inadequacy of actually-existing liberal democracy, informed by the desire for
a ‘becoming-democratic’ which would exceed the self-evident limitations of current arrangements. Taking this further, I would
argue that if any mode of self-government emerges as implicitly desirable from the perspective developed by Deleuze and Guattari, then
it would clearly be one which was both democratic and pluralistic without being subject to the existing limitations of representative
liberal democracy. Deleuze’s earlier work may occasionally be characterised by a Nietzschean aristocratic tone. However, where he
expresses ‘anti-democratic’ sentiments in his work with Guattari, these only ever seem to spring from a commitment to that Marxian
tradition which understands liberal democratic forms to be deeply imbricated with processes of capitalist exploitation.82 When weighing
up the legacy of this tradition today, it is worth reflecting that the
degradation of actually existing
‘democracy’ under neoliberal conditions in recent decades, especially in the years since the fall of the Berlin wall,
has lent much weight to the hypothesis that a ‘democratic’ politics which has no anti-
capitalist dimension can only ultimately fail, as the individualisation of the social
sphere and the corporate control of politics progressively undermine the effectiveness
of public institutions. From such a perspective, the problems with existing forms of representative
democracy are several. Firstly, in ceding legislative sovereignty to elected bodies for several
years at a time, they rely on the artificial stabilisation of ‘majorities’ of opinion along
party lines which do not actually express the complexity of popular desires in any
meaningful way. While it is clearly true that democracy as such necessarily demands the temporary organisation of ‘molarities’ for the
purpose of taking collective decisions, the
existing set of relationships between individuals and
parties does not enable these molarities to emerge with sufficient intensity to effect
major change: for example, despite the vehemence of anti-war opinion in the UK in 2003, the
government was effectively at liberty to pursue the invasion of Iraq, safe in the knowledge
that this intensity would disperse before the next general election. At the same time, these
relationships do not enable the emergence of sites of engagement and deliberation which would
enable new ideas and practices to emerge, simply delegating political engagement to a
class of professional politicians, journalists, and policy-specialists whose job is not to
innovate, invent and transform existing relations of power, but to maintain them, and
the arrangements which express them. Most crucially, they do not enable the new forms of collective
becoming which a more participatory, decentralised, ‘molecular’ democracy would
facilitate, preventing any meaningful institutional expression of those new forms of dynamic, mobile,
cosmopolitan collectivity which ‘globalisation’ makes possible. Instead they seek to actualise that potential
only in the politically ineffectual forms of a universalised liberalism or banal forms of multiculturalism, two
complementary ‘grids’ which are imposed upon global flows within the parameters of either the nation state or legalistic
supra-national institutions.84 The drive to find new forms of participative democracy which characterises the leading-edge of
contemporary socialist practice,85 and which has informed not only the politics of the social forum movement86 but more broadly the
entire history of radical democratic demands (including, for example, the Chartists’ demand for annual parliaments, or the Bolshevik cry
for ‘all power to the soviets’), surely expresses just this desire for democratic forms not stymied by the apparatuses of majority and
individualisation.
Micropolitics Key to re-engage agency

Colebrook 2002 (Claire, Understanding Deleuze, Pg. xxxviii)
Murray 49
Human freedom became the problem. If human beings are free, does this mean that there is some ultimate
‘man’ who can be liberated from the forces of production; or does radical freedom mean that there is no
longer any human essence to which politics can appeal? All this came to a head in the student sit-
ins and disruptions of 1968. There were protests throughout Europe in the late 1960s which were
random, unthought out, and motivated not by the economically defined class of workers so much as by
students and intellectuals. In the aftermath of these disruptions it was realised that politics was no
longer the affair of economic classes and large or ‘molar’ groupings. Local
disruptions at the level of knowledge, ideas and identity could transform the political
terrain. Deleuze and others opened the politics of the virtual: it was no longer accepted that actual
material reality, such as the economy, produced ideas. Many insisted that the virtual (images, desires,
concepts) was directly productive of social reality. This overturned the simple idea of ideology,
the idea that images and beliefs were produced by the governing classes to deceive us
about our real social conditions. We have to do away with the idea that there is some ultimate
political reality or actuality which lies behind all our images. Images are not just surface effects of some
underlying economic cause; images and the virtual have their own autonomous power. This is where
structuralism and post-1968 politics intersected. We
need to see our languages and systems of
representation not just as masks or signs of the actual, but as fully real powers in their
own right. The way we think, speak, desire and see the world is itself political; it
produces relations, effects, and organises our bodies.
Murray 50
2NC Individual  State

People  state, State does not  People
Lambert 2010 (Gregg, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and Founding Director of the Humanities Centre, Syracuse University, New
York “The War-Machine and “a people who revolt””, Theory and Event)
By contrast, what I am suggesting is that the image of “a people” that we find in Deleuze and Guattari’s writings bears the same bi-polar
characteristics that they also ascribed to the war-machine. We might propose this equivalence in the following manner: just as the
State has no war-machine of its own, since it is of “another species, another nature, another origin than the
State apparatus,” as Deleuze and Guattari state repeatedly in defining this relationship, we can also say that
the State has no people of its own—that is, it is an “empty form of appropriation.”8 We can find the above
hypothesis confirmed when we realize that the State-Form entertains a relationship with the people that runs parallel to
the predicament it faces with its own war-machine, one of exteriority and occasionally extreme volatility.
First of all, the people are always posited as being “outside” the State-Form and, in some sense, precede its
arrival and accompany the stages of its development all the way to the future in which the people are yet to
actually arrive. Second, just as in the case of the war-machine, the State does not create “a people,” but
rather attempts to internalize already existing peoples, even though this existence
may be purely virtual and nomadically distributed across an open space or territory
that precedes the arrival of the State form. It is the specific mythology created by the
State form that attempts to reverse this precedence (of the people outside the state) by making the
people an “idea” that first occurs in the mind of those subjects who are already found
to be internal to the State-Form. (This is the myth of the Founding Fathers, for example, when they
say “We, the people …”.) This may be one way of truly understanding the problem of idealism: the failure of
a people to truly arrive, because of the internalization of the people into the form of the State. This was
equally the problem of fascism as it is of the idealism of the democratic state ; consequently, it should not come as a
surprise that Hitler ordered the German people to join him in an act of suicide for their failure in realizing the form of the Reich. By
contrast, in a democratic form, the state entertains a fundamentally ambivalent relationship with its own
people, one that is often prone to become extremely volatile. There are too many resisting elements, too
many numbers; moreover, the people are always failing the ideals of the State, always found to be lacking, or
exhibit a tendency to go a little insane, to return to religion and to the family, and if pushed to the extreme
limit, to become terrorists or serialkillers. 9
Murray 51
2NC Link – Plan

The plan is a form of transcendent ethics which disconnects agency from action – the 1AC
understanding of agency creates a slave-ontology which replicates oppression and prevents
liberatory politics
Smith 1998 (Daniel W. Prof at Grimmell “The Place of Ethics in Deleuze’s Philosophy”; New Mappings in
Politics, Philosophy and Culture)
2. How is a mode of existence evaluated? The first ethical question concerning the determination of modes leads directly into the
second question: How does one evaluate modes of existence thus determined? This, one might say, is the ethical task
properly speaking, and it is here that Deleuze and Foucault have come under criticism, even from sympathetic readers, for their apparent
inability (or refusal) to put forward normative criteria of judgment, leading critics to caricature the political consequences of such a
philosophy as everything from an "infantile leftism" to "neo-conservative."' What does it mean to evaluate modes of existence according
to purely immanent criteria? If modes of existence are defined as a degree of power (the capacity to affect and to be affected), then they
can be evaluated in terms of the manner in which they come into possession of their power. From the viewpoint of an ethology of
humans, Spinoza distinguishes between two types of affections: passive
affections, which originate outside the
individual and separate it from its power of acting; and active affections, which are
explained by the nature of the affected individual and allow it to come into possession
of its power. To the degree that a body's power of being affected is filled by passive affections, this
power itself is presented as a power of being acted upon; conversely, to the degree that a body manages to
fill (at least partially) its power of being affected by active affections, this capacity will be presented as a power acting. For a given
individual, its capacity to affect and be affected (its degree of power) remains constant and is constantly filled, under continuously
variable conditions, by a series of affects and affections, while the power of acting and the power of being acted upon vary greatly, in
inverse ratio to each other. But in fact this opposition between passive and active affections is purely abstract, for
only the power of acting is, strictly speaking, real, positive and affirmative. Our power of
being acted on is simply a limitation on our power of acting and merely expresses the
degree to which we are separated from what we "can do."' It is this distinction that allows Spinoza to
introduce an "ethical difference" between various types of modes of existence. In Spinoza, an individual will be
considered "bad" (or servile or weak or foolish) who remains cut off from its power of
acting, who remains in a state of slavery or impotence; conversely, a mode of existence will be called
"good" (or free or rational or strong) that exercises its capacity for being affected in such a way that its power of acting increases, to the
point where it produces active affections and adequate ideas. For Deleuze, this is the point of convergence that unites Nietzsche and
Spinoza. It is never a matter of judging degrees of power quantitatively; the smallest degree of power is
equivalent to the largest degree once it is not separated from what it can do. It
is rather a question of
knowing whether a mode of existence, however small or great, can deploy its power,
increasing its power of acting to the point where it goes to the limit of what it "can do."" Modes are no longer
"judged" in terms of their degree of proximity to or distance from an external principle but are "evaluated" in terms of the manner by
which they "occupy" their existence: the intensity of their power, their "tenor" of life.' What
an ethics of immanence
will criticize, then, is not simply modes of thought derived from base modes of
existence but anything that separates a mode of existence from its power of acting. This
is the second positive task of an immanent ethics. When Spinoza and Nietzsche criticize transcendence, their interest is not merely
theoretical or speculative (to expose its fictional or illusory status) but rather practical and ethical: far from being our salvation,
transcendence expresses our slavery and impotence at its lowest point 5' This is why Foucault
could interpret Anti-Oedipus as a book of ethics, insofar as it attempted to diagnose the contemporary mechanisms of "microfascism" —
in psychoanalysis and elsewhere—that cause us to desire the very things that dominate and exploit us and that cause us to fight for our
servitude as stubbornly as though it were our salvation. At the same time, the book attempted to set forth the concrete conditions under
which a mode of existence can come into possession of its power, in other words, how it can become active. This leads us to a
third question.
Murray 52
2NC Normative Fiat Bad

The logic of a normative understanding of engaging the political is founded by a
managerial discourse bent on maintaining predictable order at all costs. Our goal is to
invent new tropes of political reality which effectively challenge state oppression vis-à-vis
ungraspability that cannot be tied to predetermined goals and conclusions.
Goddard in 2k6 (July 6 , 2006: The Encounter between Guattari and Berandi and the Post – Modern Era “Felix and Alice in
th
Wonderland”; http://www.generation-online.org/p/fpbifo1.htm)
What this type of radio achieved most of all was the short-circuiting of representation in both the aesthetic sense of representing the
social realities they dealt with and in the political sense of the delegate or the authorised spokesperson, in favour of generating a space of
direct communication in which, as Guattari put it, “it is as if, in some immense, permanent meeting place—given the size of the potential
audience—anyone, even the most hesitant, even those with the weakest voices, suddenly have the possibility of expressing themselves
whenever they wanted. In these conditions, one can expect certain truths to find a new matter of expression.” In this sense, Radio Alice
was also an intervention into the language of media; the transformation from what Guattari calls the police
languages of the managerial milieu and the University to a direct language of desire: “direct speech,
living speech, full of confidence, but also hesitation, contradiction, indeed even absurdity, is charged
with desire. And it is always this aspect of desire that spokespeople , commentators and
beaureaucrats of every stamp tend to reduce, to filter. [...] Languages of desire invent new means
and tend to lead straight to action; they begin by ‘touching,’ by provoking laughter, by moving
people, and then they make people want to ‘move out,’ towards those who speak and toward those stakes of concern to them.” It is this
activating dimension of popular free radio that most distinguishes it from the usual pacifying operations of the
mass media and that also posed the greatest threat to the authorities; if people were just sitting at home listening to
strange political broadcasts, or being urged to participate in conventional, organised political actions such as demonstrations that would
be tolerable but once
you start mobilising a massive and unpredictable political affectivity
and subjectivation that is autonomous, self-referential and self-reinforcing, then this
is a cause for panic on the part of the forces of social order, as was amply demonstrated in Bologna in
1977. Finally, in the much more poetic and manifesto-like preface with which Guattari introduces the translation of texts and documents
form Radio Alice, he comes to a conclusion which can perhaps stand as an embryonic formula for the emergence of the post-media era
as anticipated by Radio Alice and the Autonomia movement more generally: In Bologna and Rome, the thresholds of a revolution
without any relation to the ones that have overturned history up until today have been illuminated, a revolution that will throw out not
only capitalist regimes but also the bastions of beaureaucratic socialism [...] , a revolution, the fronts of which will perhaps embrace
entire continents but which will also be concentrated sometimes on a specific neighbourhood, a factory, a school. Its wagers concern just
as much the great economic and technological choices as attitudes, relations to the world and singularities of desire. Bosses, police
officers, politicians, beuareaucrats, professors and psycho-analysts will in vain conjugate their efforts to stop it, channel it, recuperate it,
they will in vain sophisticate, diversify and miniaturise their weapons to the infinite, they will no longer succede in gathering up the
immense movement of flight and the multitude of molecular mutations of desire that it has already unleashed. The police have liquidated
Alice—its animators are hunted, condemned, imprisoned, their sites are pillaged—but its work of revolutionary deterritorialisation is
pursued ineluctably right up to the nervous fibres of its persecutors.” This is because the
revolution unleashed by Alice was
not reducible to a political or media form but was rather an
explosion of mutant desire capable of
infecting the entire social field because of its slippery ungraspability and
irreducibility to existing sociopolitical categories. It leaves the forces of order
scratching their heads because they don’t know where the crack-up is coming from
since it doesn’t rely on pre-existing identities or even express a future programme but
rather only expresses immanently its own movement of auto-referential self-constitution, the proliferation of
desires capable of resonating even with the forces of order themselves which now have to police not only these
dangerous outsiders but also their own desires. This
shift from fixed political subjectivities and a
specified programme is the key to the transformation to a post-political politics and
indeed to a post-media era in that politics becomes an unpredictable, immanent process of becoming rather than the fulfilment of a
transcendental narrative. In today’s political language one could say that what
counts is the pure potential that
another world is possible and the movement towards it rather than speculation as to
how that world will be organised. As Guattari concludes: “ The point of view of the Alicians on this question is the
following: they consider that the movement that arrives at destroying the gigantic capitalist-beaureaucratic machine will be, a fortiori,
completely capable of constructing an other world—the collective competence in the matter will come to it in the course of the journey,
without it being necessary, at the present stage to outline projections of societal change.”
Murray 53
2NC No Levers of Power

No levers of power
Schlag in 1991 (pierre, colorado law prof. 139 u. Pa. L. Rev.801, april)
For these legal thinkers,
it will seem especially urgent to ask once again: What should be done? How should we
live? What should the law be? These are the hard questions. These are the momentous questions. [*805]
And they are the wrong ones. They are wrong because it is these very normative questions that reprieve legal
thinkers from recognizing the extent to which the cherished "ideals" of legal academic thought are implicated
in the reproduction and maintenance of precisely those ugly "realities" of legal practice the academy so
routinely condemns. It is these normative questions that allow legal thinkers to shield
themselves from the recognition that their work product consists largely of the
reproduction of rhetorical structures by which human beings can be coerced into achieving
ends of dubious social origin and implication. It is
these very normative questions that allow legal academics to
continue to address (rather lamely) bureaucratic power structures as if they were rational, morally competent,
individual humanist subjects. It is these very normative questions that allow legal thinkers to assume blithely that -- in a world
ruled by HMOs, personnel policies, standard operating procedures, performance requirements, standard work incentives, and
productivity monitoring -- they somehow have escaped the bureaucratic power games. It is these normative questions that
enable them to represent themselves as whole and intact, as self-directing individual liberal humanist subjects
at once rational, morally competent, and in control of their own situations, the captain of their own ships, the
Hercules of their own empires, the author of their own texts. It isn't so. n5 And if it isn't so, it would seem
advisable to make some adjustments in the agenda and practice of legal thought. That is what I will be trying to do
here. Much of what follows will no doubt seem threatening or nihilistic to many readers. In part that is because this article puts in
question the very coherence, meaningfulness, and integrity of the kinds of normative disputes and discussion that almost all of us in the
legal academy practice.
Murray 54
***1NC Apocalyptic Predictions Bad

Shotgun Kuwasara – we read the conclusion to his article: even if some predictions are
good, Apocalyptic predictions make serial policy failure inevitable
Kurasawa 4 – Professor of Sociology, York University of Toronto, Fuyuki, “Cautionary Tales: The Global Culture of Prevention and the
Work of Foresight”, Constellations Volume 11, No 4, http://www.yorku.ca/kurasawa/Kurasawa%20Articles/Constellations%20Article.pdf
Up to this point, I have tried to demonstrate that transnational socio-political relations are nurturing a thriving culture
and infrastructure of prevention from below, which challenges presumptions about the inscrutability of the
future (II) and a stance of indifference toward it (III). Nonetheless, unless and until it is substantively ‘filled in,’ the
argument is vulnerable to misappropriation since farsightedness does not in and of itself ensure emancipatory
outcomes. Therefore, this section proposes to specify normative criteria and participatory procedures through which citizens can
determine the ‘reasonableness,’ legitimacy, and effectiveness of competing dystopian visions in order to arrive at a socially self-
instituting future. Foremost
among thepossible distortions of farsightedness is alarmism, the
manufacturing ofunwarranted and unfounded doomsday scenarios. State and market
institutionsmay seek to produce a culture of fear by deliberately stretching interpretations
of realitybeyond the limits of the plausible so as to exaggerate the prospects of impending catastrophes, or
yet again, by intentionally promoting certain prognoses over others for instrumental purposes. Accordingly,
regressive dystopiascan operate as Trojan horses advancing political agendasor commercial
interests that would otherwise be susceptible to public scrutiny and opposition. Instances of
this kind of manipulation of the dystopian imaginary are plentiful: the invasion of Iraq in the name of
fighting terrorism and an imminent threat of use of ‘weapons of mass destruction’; the severe curtailing of American
civil liberties amidst fears of a collapse of ‘homeland security’; the neoliberal dismantling of the welfare state as the only
remedy for an ideologically constructed fiscal crisis; the conservative expansion of policing and incarceration due to
supposedly spiraling crime waves; and so forth. Alarmism constructs and codes the future in particular ways,
producing or reinforcing certain crisis narratives, belief structures, and rhetorical conventions. As much as
alarmist ideas beget a culture of fear, the reverse is no less true. If fear-mongering is a misappropriation of preventive foresight,
resignation about the future represents a problematic outgrowth of the popular acknowledgment of global perils. Some believe that the
world to come is so uncertain and dangerous that we should not attempt to modify the course of history; the future will look after itself
for better or worse, regardless of what we do or wish. One version of this argument consists in a complacent optimism perceiving the
future as fated to be better than either the past or the present. Frequently accompanying it is a self-deluding denial of what is plausible
(‘the world will not be so bad after all’), or a naively Panglossian pragmatism (‘things will work themselves out in spite of everything,
more common, however, isthe opposite reaction, a
because humankind always finds ways to survive’).37 Much
fatalistic pessimism reconciled to the idea that the future will be necessarily worse than
what preceded it. This is sustained by a tragic chronological framework according to
which humanity is doomed to decay, or a cyclical one of the endless repetition of the mistakes of
the past. On top of their dubious assessments of what is to come, alarmismand resignation would, if
widely accepted, undermine a viable practice of farsightedness. Indeed, both of them encourage
public disengagement from deliberation about scenarios for the future, a process that appears to be
dangerous, pointless, or unnecessary. The resulting ‘depublicization’ of debate leaves
dominant groups and institutions(the state, the market, techno-science) in charge of sorting
out the future for the rest of us, thus effectively producing a heteronomous social
order. How, then, can we support a democratic process of prevention from below? The answer, I think, lies in cultivating the public
capacity for critical judgment and deliberation, so that participants in global civil society subject all claims about potential catastrophes
to examination, evaluation, and contestation. Two normative concepts are particularly well suited to grounding these tasks: the
precautionary principle and global justice.
Murray 55
The alternative is to reject the apocalyptic frames of the 1AC
Even if the rational arguments in favor of the plan are logical, the representations of
apocalypse colonize the debate towards pressure for fast invasion and warmongering
Goodnight 2010 (G. Thomas Goodnight is Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles; "The Metapolitics of the 2002 Iraq Debate: Public Policy and the Network Imaginary",
Rhetoric & Public Affairs Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2010)
Opponents of the Democratic Party argued the risks of war, but their pragmatic policy challenges did not
grab sufficient traction to slow the unreeling web of justification. Of course, there was little denial that the war
would create more terrorists, generate a lower threshold for intervention, receive weak international support, and in the end
leave the dangerous business of Afghanistan unfinished. But the Democrats became entangled in reflexive posturing about
the effects of the debate itself—the importance of "message sending" to the United Nations and "consensus" backing for the president as
negotiator-in-chief. With 9/11 not far behind, "tough" messages appeared to provide a much desired supplement
to boost confidence, while pragmatism, caution, and planning took a back seat. Presidential hopefuls cut
loose from this morass and took advantage of Republican-offered political cover. Republicans did appear to
benefit from tough war rhetoric in the immediate election aftermath, enabling Bush to run successfully in
2004 as a wartime president. As WMD continued not to turn up, the intervention dragged on, costs mounted, political fortunes
reversed—although the entanglements remained and remain. [End Page 87] The debate of 2002 found that a systematic presidential
campaign—when bolstered by cherry-picked evidence—can be particularly powerful, especially when administration supporters in
Congress veer shamelessly from long-held positions on policy and the leadership of the opposing party takes shelter in offered political
cover. Further, the debate illustrates how the events that should prompt policy debate become colonized , in this
case making common sense difficult to muster because the network imaginary laces a web of associative
fears with compensatory toughness. On the whole, the debates were not the nation's finest hour. The debate of 2002 strove to
convert a traumatic national event into a conservative-articulated, Republican-captured, presidentially initiated rise in power, and ended
by setting the stage for congressional investigation, the rise of the Democrats, reassertion of congressional power, and a new presidency
committed to public diplomacy. WMD were at the heart of the six-year-long controversy. It was hardly remembered that
[WMD] weapons of mass destruction were not deployed by terrorists on September 11th. Rather, fast,
anonymous, networked, modern systems of circulation were turned, through ingenuity, into first-strike
weapons. Seen with fresh militancy, 9/11 suggests that the modern world remains vulnerable to mutating events that change, shock,
and command attention, actions that attain expanding scope and influence by virtue of a network imaginary, where such moments self-
organize and multiply in varied directions. The development of policy studies as rhetoric, then, calls attention to the
disruptive events as these become situated in the restricted focus of national debate and recovered, through
critique, as an unfinished metapolitics, which demands rethinking of the taken-for-granted grounds and
alliances upon which post-event consensus became fabricated . In its time, the "War on Terror" was framed as a "clash of
civilizations" and a new Munich. In retrospect, 9/11 should be understood as signaling a much closer, changing, entangled, future world
where the complications of security spread and interlock to haunt twenty-first-century network imaginaries.
Murray 56
2NC Overview
Goodnight – apocalyptic representations are net worse for policy making they require a
suspension of logic and critical interrogation by utilizing exigency as a means to push
through emergency politics. Empirically this caused the war in Iraq as a response to 9/11
despite knowing full well it would only create more terrorists. The affs politics necessitate
lashing out against states like China and India to prevent the minute risk of existential
catastrophe. This is the paradox of existential risk – no matter how small the probability
the risk of infinity necessitates military intervention to prevent the unthinkable.
The 1NC Kuwasara evidence indicates APOCALYPTIC rhetoric is a unique form of
prediction making that should be rejected because it creates Trojan horse politics where
politics are no longer scrutinized and dominant power groups can push agendas without
repercussion. The impact is ceding the political to specialists who are divorced from
rational comparisons of policy.
Murray 57
A/T: Case Outweighs

Prefer structural root cause claims to specific scenarios – you have a cognitive bias to
overevaluate details
Yudkowsky 7 - Eliezer, Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, “Burdensome Details”, Less Wrong, 9/20,
http://lesswrong.com/lw/jk/burdensome_details/
"Merely corroborative detail, intended to give artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative..." -- Pooh-
Bah, in Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado The conjunction fallacy is whenhumans rate the probability
P(A&B) higher than the probability P(B), even though it is a theorem that P(A&B) <= P(B). For example, in one
experiment in 1981, 68% of the subjects ranked it more likely that "Reagan will provide federal support for
unwed mothers and cut federal support to local governments" than that "Reagan will provide federal support
for unwed mothers." A long series of cleverly designed experiments, which weeded out alternative hypotheses and nailed down the
standard interpretation, confirmed that conjunction fallacy occurs because we "substitute judgment of representativeness for
judgment of probability". By adding extra details, you can make an outcome seem more characteristic of the
process that generates it. You can make it sound more plausible that Reagan will support unwed mothers, by adding the claim
that Reagan will also cut support to local governments. The implausibility of one claim is compensated by
the plausibility of the other; they "average out". Which is to say: Adding detail can make a scenario
SOUND MORE PLAUSIBLE,even though the event necessarily BECOMES LESS
PROBABLE. If so, then, hypothetically speaking, we might find futurists spinning unconscionably plausible and detailed future
histories, or find people swallowing huge packages of unsupported claims bundled with a few strong-sounding assertions at the center.
If you are presented with the conjunction fallacy in a naked, direct comparison, then you may succeed on that
particular problem by consciously correcting yourself. But this is only slapping a band-aid on the problem,
not fixing it in general. In the 1982 experiment where professional forecasters assignedsystematically higher
probabilities to "Russia invades Poland, followed by suspension ofdiplomatic
relationsbetween USA and USSR" versus "Suspension ofdiplomatic relationsbetween USA and
USSR", each experimental group was only presented with one proposition. What strategy could these forecasters have
followed, as a group, that would have eliminated the conjunction fallacy, when no individual knew directly
about the comparison? When no individual even knew that the experiment was about the conjunction fallacy? How could they
have done better on their probability judgments? Patching one gotcha as a special case doesn't fix the general problem. The gotcha is the
symptom, not the disease. That would be as silly as, oh, say, prohibiting box cutters on airplanes. What could the forecasters have done
to avoid the conjunction fallacy, without seeing the direct comparison, or even knowing that anyone was going to test them on the
conjunction fallacy? It seems to me, that they would need to notice the word "and". They would need to be wary of it - not
just wary, but leap back from it. Even without knowing that researchers were afterward going to test them on the conjunction
would need to notice the conjunction of two entire details, and be shocked by the
fallacy particularly. They
audacity of anyone asking them to endorse such an insanely complicated prediction.
And they would need to penalize the probability substantially - a factor of four, at least, according to the
experimental details. It might also have helped the forecasters to think about possible reasons why the US and Soviet Union would
suspend diplomatic relations. The scenario is not "The US and Soviet Union suddenly suspend diplomatic relations for no reason", but
"The US and Soviet Union suspend diplomatic relations for any reason." And the subjects who rated "Reagan will provide federal
support for unwed mothers and cut federal support to local governments"? Again, they would need to be shocked by the word "and".
Moreover, they would need to add absurdities - where the absurdity is the log probability, so you can add it - rather than averaging
them. They would need to think, "Reagan might or might not cut support to local governments (1 bit), but it seems very unlikely that he
will support unwed mothers (4 bits). Total absurdity: 5 bits." Or maybe, "Reagan won't support unwed mothers. One strike and it's
out. The other proposition just makes it even worse." Similarly, consider the six-sided die with four green faces and one red face. The
subjects had to bet on the sequence (1) "RGRRR", (2) "GRGRRR", or "GRRRRR" appearing anywhere in 20 rolls of the dice. 65% of
the subjects chose "GRGRRR", which is strictly dominated by "RGRRR", since any sequence containing "GRGRRR" also pays off for
"RGRRR". How could the subjects have done better? By noticing the inclusion? Perhaps; but that is only a band-aid, it does not fix the
fundamental problem. By explicitly calculating the probabilities? That would certainly fix the fundamental problem, but you can't
always calculate an exact probability. The subjects lost heuristically by thinking: "Aha! Sequence 2 has the highest
proportion of green to red! I should bet on Sequence 2!" To win heuristically, the subjects would need to
think: "Aha! Sequence 1 is short! I should go with Sequence 1!" They would need to feel a stronger
emotional impact from Occam's Razor - feel everyadded detail as aburden, even a single extra roll of
the dice.Once upon a time, I was speaking to someone who had been mesmerized by an incautious futurist. (One who adds on lots
of details that sound neat.) I was trying to explain why I was not likewise mesmerized by these amazing, incredible theories. So I
explained about the conjunction fallacy, specifically the "suspending relations +/- invading Poland" experiment. And he said, "Okay,
but what does this have to do with -" And I said, "It is more probable that universes replicate for any reason, than that they replicate via
black holes because advanced civilizations manufacture black holes because universes evolve to make them do it." And he said, "Oh."
Until then, he had not felt these extra details as extra burdens. Instead they were corroborative detail, lending verisimilitude to the
narrative. Someone presents you with a package of strange ideas, one of which is that universes replicate.
Murray 58
Then they present support for the assertion that universes replicate. But this is not support for the package,
though it is all told as one story. You have to disentangle the details. You have to hold up every one independently,
and ask, "How do we know this detail?" Someone sketches out a picture of humanity's descent into nanotechnological warfare, where
China refuses to abide by an international control agreement, followed by an arms race... Wait a minute - how do you know it will be
China? Is that a crystal ball in your pocket or are you just happy to be a futurist? Where are all these details coming from? Where did
that specific detail come from? For it is written: If you can lighten your burden you must do so. There is no straw that lacks the power to
break your back.
Impact is the sum of all existential risks

Yudkowsky 6 - Research Fellow at the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence Eliezer, “Cognitive biases potentially affecting
judgment of global risks” Forthcoming in Global Catastrophic Risks, eds. Nick Bostrom and Milan Cirkovic 8/31,
http://singinst.org/upload/cognitive-biases.pdf
Thinking about existential risks falls prey to all the same fallacies that prey upon
thinking- in-general. But the stakes are much, much higher. A common result in heuristics and biases is
that offering
money or other incentives does not eliminate the bias. (Kachelmeier and Shehata (1992) offered subjects
living in the People's Republic of China the equivalent of three months' salary.) The subjects
in these experiments don't
make mistakes on purpose; they make mistakes because they don't know how to do better. Even if
you told them the survival of humankind was at stake, they still would not thereby know
how to do better. (It might increase their need for closure, causing them to do worse.) It is a terribly frightening thing, but
people do not become any smarter, just because the survival of humankind is at stake . In addition to standard
biases, I have personally observed what look like harmful modes of thinking specific to existential risks. The Spanish flu of 1918 killed
25-50 million people. World War II killed 60 million people. 107 is the order of the largest catastrophes in humanity's written history.
Substantially larger numbers, such as 500 million deaths, and especially qualitatively different scenarios such as the extinction of the
entire human species, seem to trigger a different mode of thinking - enter into a "separate magisterium". People who would never dream
of hurting a child hear of an existential risk, and say, "Well, maybe the human species doesn't really deserve to survive." There is a
saying in heuristics and biases that people do not evaluate events, but descriptions of events - what is
called non-extensional reasoning. The extension of humanity's extinction includes the death of yourself, of your friends, of your
family, of your loved ones, of your city, of your country, of your political fellows. Yet people who would take great offense at a
proposal to wipe the country of Britain from the map, to kill every member of the Democratic Party in the U.S., to turn the city of Paris
to glass - who would feel still greater horror on hearing the doctor say that their child had cancer - these people will discuss the
extinction of humanity with perfect calm. "Extinction of humanity", as words on paper, appears in fictional novels, or
is discussed in philosophy books - it belongs to a different context than the Spanish flu. We evaluate
descriptions of events, not extensions of events. The cliché phrase end of the world invokes the
magisterium of myth and dream, of prophecy and apocalypse, of novels and movies. The challenge
of existential risks to rationality is that, the catastrophes being so huge, people snap into a
different mode of thinking. Human deaths are suddenly no longer bad, and detailed predictions
suddenly no longer require any expertise, and whether the story is told with a happy ending or a
sad ending is a matter of personal taste in stories.
Murray 59
A/T: Perm do the Alt
The permutation severs out of the 1AC discourse which is a voting issue because it creates a
moving target that leaves the negative incapable of generating stable link ground – makes
debating impossible.
Plan focus is a cop-out: the plan text is 10 seconds which leaves 95% of the aff
unquestionable – they are responsible for the justifications of the 1AC because they shape
the outcome of the plan – why we need [the plan] determines the effects of the plan and the
posture and policy the USFG would take after the plans passage.
Aff chose the advantages which makes PIKing out of them predictable. CX proves – an
advantage is only a justification for the plan after it is entered into the debate.
The 1AC is a textual artifact – they are responsible for everything said. This is fair – they
have all year to craft a 1AC. PICs out of things like a single word or the Gregorian
calendar have no intrinsic basis to the justifications of the 1AC and would clearly be
rejected.
We’re predictable – the alternative evidence says there are distinct ways of framing which
are incompatible.
Motivation is relevant
Murray 60
A/T: Other Instances
There are no other instances – only the 1AC in front of you: we have to interrogate the
creation of fear-culture at the local level because the products of fear stem not from the
state but from local communities and civil society discourse – spaces like debate are a key
place to challenge their apocalyptic rhetoric.
The entire K is an impact turn to their assertion of suspending judgment because of the
magnitude of the 1AC claims
This is intrinsic – the other instances are neither in the plan or the alternative – voting issue
because it allows unpredictable aff permutations which allow them to get out of the
internal link to any possible disadvantage. They could just as easily do the plan and
something to boost political capital or do the plan and help the economy.
Murray 61
A/T: Do Both
This severs out of the 1AC impact framing – voting issue because it creates a moving target
that leaves the negative incapable of generating stable link ground – makes debating
impossible.
No Net benefit to the perm.
Murray 62
2NC Predictions Overview

Even if the rational arguments in favor of the plan are logical, the representations of
apocalypse colonize the debate towards pressure for fast invasion and warmongering
Goodnight 2010 (G. Thomas Goodnight is Professor and Director of Doctoral Studies at the Annenberg School for Communication, the
University of Southern California in Los Angeles; "The Metapolitics of the 2002 Iraq Debate: Public Policy and the Network Imaginary",
Rhetoric & Public Affairs Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2010)
Opponents of the Democratic Party argued the risks of war, but their pragmatic policy challenges did not
grab sufficient traction to slow the unreeling web of justification. Of course, there was little denial that the war
would create more terrorists, generate a lower threshold for intervention, receive weak international support, and in the end
leave the dangerous business of Afghanistan unfinished. But the Democrats became entangled in reflexive posturing about
the effects of the debate itself—the importance of "message sending" to the United Nations and "consensus" backing for the president as
negotiator-in-chief. With 9/11 not far behind, "tough" messages appeared to provide a much desired supplement
to boost confidence, while pragmatism, caution, and planning took a back seat. Presidential hopefuls cut
loose from this morass and took advantage of Republican-offered political cover. Republicans did appear to
benefit from tough war rhetoric in the immediate election aftermath, enabling Bush to run successfully in
2004 as a wartime president. As WMD continued not to turn up, the intervention dragged on, costs mounted, political fortunes
reversed—although the entanglements remained and remain. [End Page 87] The debate of 2002 found that a systematic presidential
campaign—when bolstered by cherry-picked evidence—can be particularly powerful, especially when administration supporters in
Congress veer shamelessly from long-held positions on policy and the leadership of the opposing party takes shelter in offered political
cover. Further, the debate illustrates how the events that should prompt policy debate become colonized , in this
case making common sense difficult to muster because the network imaginary laces a web of associative
fears with compensatory toughness. On the whole, the debates were not the nation's finest hour. The debate of 2002 strove to
convert a traumatic national event into a conservative-articulated, Republican-captured, presidentially initiated rise in power, and ended
by setting the stage for congressional investigation, the rise of the Democrats, reassertion of congressional power, and a new presidency
committed to public diplomacy. WMD were at the heart of the six-year-long controversy. It was hardly remembered that
[WMD] weapons of mass destruction were not deployed by terrorists on September 11th. Rather, fast,
anonymous, networked, modern systems of circulation were turned, through ingenuity, into first-strike
weapons. Seen with fresh militancy, 9/11 suggests that the modern world remains vulnerable to mutating events that change, shock,
and command attention, actions that attain expanding scope and influence by virtue of a network imaginary, where such moments self-
organize and multiply in varied directions. The development of policy studies as rhetoric, then, calls attention to the
disruptive events as these become situated in the restricted focus of national debate and recovered, through
critique, as an unfinished metapolitics, which demands rethinking of the taken-for-granted grounds and
alliances upon which post-event consensus became fabricated . In its time, the "War on Terror" was framed as a "clash of
civilizations" and a new Munich. In retrospect, 9/11 should be understood as signaling a much closer, changing, entangled, future world
where the complications of security spread and interlock to haunt twenty-first-century network imaginaries.
Murray 63
History is on our side – the threat of apocalypse mobilizes the war effort and ensures
domestic totalitarian control over ideology as groundwork to justify external violence
Coviello 00 - Assistant Professor of English @ the Bowdoin College [Peter, Queer Frontiers: Millennial Geographies, Genders, and
Generations. "Apocalypse from Now On."]
Apocalypse, as I began by saying, changed – it did not go away. And here I want to hazard my second
assertion: if, in the nuclear age of yesteryear, apocalypse signified an event threatening everyone and
everything with (in Jacques Derrida's suitably menacing phrase) "remainderless and a-symbolic destruction," then in
the postnuclear world apocalypse is an affair whose parameters are definitively local. In shape and in
substance, apocalypseis defined now by the affliction it brings somewhere else, always to an "other" people
whose very presence might then be written as a kind of dangerous contagion, threatening the safety and
prosperity of a cherished "general population."This fact seems to me to stand behind Susan Sontag's incisive observation,
from 1989, that, "Apocalypse is now a long running serial: not 'Apocalypse Now' but 'Apocalypse
from Now On.'" The decisive point here in the perpetuation of the threat of apocalypse(the point Sontag
goes on, at length, to miss) is that the apocalypse is ever present because, as an element in a vast economy
of power, it is ever useful. That is, throughthe perpetual threat of destruction– through the
constant reproduction of the figure of the apocalypse – the agencies of power ensure their
authority to act on and through the bodies of a particular population. No one turns this point
more persuasively than Michel Foucault, who in the final chapter of his first volume of The History of Sexuality addresses himself to the
problem of a power that is less repressive than productive, less life-threatening than, in his words, "life-administering." Power, he
contends, "exerts a positive influence on life … [and] endeavors to administer, optimize, and multiply it,
subjecting it to precise controls and comprehensive regulations." In his brief comments on what20he calls "the atomic
situation," however, Foucault insists as well that the productiveness of modern power must not be mistaken for a uniform repudiation of
violent or even lethal means. For as
"managers of life and survival, of bodies and the race,"agencies
of modern power presume to act "on the behalf of the existence of everyone." Whatsoever
might be construed as a threat to life and survival in this way serves to authorize any
expression of force, no matter how invasive, or, indeed, potentially annihilating."If
genocide is indeed the dream of modern power," Foucault writes, "this is not because of a recent
return to the ancient right to kill' it is because power is situated and exercised at the level of life, the species, the
race, and the large-scale phenomena of population." For a state that would arm itself not with the power to kill its
population, but with a more comprehensive power over the patters and functioning of its collective life, the
threat of an apocalyptic demise, nuclear or otherwise, seems a civic initiative that can scarcely be done
without.
Murray 64
2NC Framework
Beginning at the level of the individual is key to prevent the culture of fear. Fear is not
solely instilled by the state upon its people, but rather is initiated and reproduced by civil
society
Bell 2007 (Daniel M., Associate Professor of Theological Ethics, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Journal for Cultural and
Religious Theory, JCRT 8.2 SPRING 2007 55,d http://www.jcrt.org/archives/08.2/)
There is yet another lesson to be learned regarding the contemporary culture and politics of fear from Foucault’s account of liberal
governmentality. “Governmentality” also sheds light on Hobbes’ observation that for fear to work, people must
be invested in it; they much be induced to believe in its benefits, while the counterposed virtues are
marginalized. This is to say, Foucault helps us make sense of our collaboration with the production and perpetuation of a culture of
fear. After all, if fear is not an extra-political intrusion but thoroughly political and if power is not the sole
possession of a sovereign but instead is always already dispersed in its various forms (disciplines, technologies of
the self, etc.) across the socius, then it will not do to argue that the culture of fear is simply imposed from on
high by an imperial sovereign upon a repressed and captive population. (No one takes those color-coded alerts that
seriously). After all, as the account of governmentality suggests, there is no “on high” where power accumulates, leaving a vacuum
“below.” Nor, for the same reasons, will it suffice to assert a vast cabal of powerful institutions and persons.
While it can hardly be denied that there are indeed powerful institutions and persons with vested interests in
the perpetuation of fear, such an assertion is insufficient as an explanation in that it fails to appreciate the
lesson of governmentality: fear is not merely reflected but is also produced and reproduced by civil society.
This is to say, the security moms are not mere dupes of powerful men, but are themselves invested in fear
and so reproduce it in their communities and children and so forth.
<Theory Arguments>
Murray 65
Ceding the educational space as a site for politics makes authoritarianism inevitable
Giroux, 2006 (Henry A., “Dirty Democracy and State Terrorism: The Politics of the New Authoritarianism in the United States,”
Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East, Volume 26, Number 2)
Such circumstances require that pedagogy be embraced as a moral and political practice, one that is directive and not dogmatic, an
outgrowth of struggles designed to resist the increasing depoliticization of political culture that is the hallmark of the current Bush
revolution.Education is the terrain where consciousness is shaped, needs are constructed, and the
capacity for individual self-refl ection and broad social change is nurtured and produced. Education has assumed an unparalleled signifi
cance in shaping the language, values, and ideologies that legitimize the structures and organizations that support the imperatives of
global capitalism. Efforts to reduce it to a technique or methodology set aside, education remains a crucial site for the production and
struggle over those pedagogical and political conditions that provide the possibilities for people to develop forms of agency that enable
them individually and collectively to intervene in the processes through which the material relations of power shape the meaning and
practices of their everyday lives. Within the current historical context,struggles
over power take on a symbolic
and discursive as well as a material and institutional form. Thestruggle over education is
about more than the struggle over meaning and identity; it is alsoabout how meaning, knowledge,
and values are produced, authorized, and made operational within economic and structural relations of
power. Educationis not at odds with politics;it is an important and crucial element in any defi nition of the
political and offers not only the theoretical tools for a systematic critique of authoritarianismbut
also a language of possibilityfor creating actual movements for democratic social change and a new biopolitics that affi
rms life rather than death, shared responsibility rather than shared fears, and engaged citizenship rather than the stripped-down values of
consumerism. At stake here is combining symbolic forms and processes conducive to democratization with broader social contexts and
the institutional formations of power itself. The key point here is to understand and engage educational and pedagogical practices from
the point of view of how they are bound up with larger relations of power. Educators, students, and parents need to be clearer about how
power works through and in texts, representations, and discourses, while at the same time recognizing that power cannot be limited to
the study of representations and discourses, even at the level of public policy. Changing consciousness is not the same as altering the
institutional basis of oppression; at the same time,institutional
reform cannot take place without a
change in consciousness capable of recognizingnot only injustice but also the very possibility for reform, the capacity to
reinvent the conditions and practices that make a more just future possible. In addition, it is crucial to raise questions about the relationship between pedagogy and civic culture, on
the one hand, and what it takes for individuals and social groups to believe that they have any responsibility whatsoever even to address the realities of class, race, gender, and other
progressives have ignored that the strategic dimension of

specifi c forms of domination, on the other hand. For too long, the
politics is inextricably connected to questions of critical educationand pedagogy, to what it means to

acknowledge that education is always tangled up with power, ideologies, values, and the acquisition of both particular forms of agency and specifi c visions of the future. The primacy
of critical pedagogy to politics, social change, and the radical imagination in such dark times is dramatically captured by the internationally renowned sociologist Zygmunt Bauman.
He writes, Adverse odds may be overwhelming, and yet a democratic (or, as Cornelius Castoriadis would say, an autonomous) society knows of no substitute for education and self-
education as a means to inf luence the turn of events that can be squared with its own nature, while that nature cannot be preserved for long without “critical pedagogy”—an education
sharpening its critical edge, “making society feel guilty” and “stirring things up” through stirring human consciences. The fates of freedom, of democracy that makes it possible while
being made possible by it, and of education that breeds dissatisfaction with the level of both freedom and democracy achieved thus far, are inextricably connected and not to be
detached from one another. One may view that intimate connection as another specimen of a vicious circle—but it is within that circle that human hopes and the chances of humanity
are inscribed, and can be nowhere else.59 Fortunately, power is never completely on the side of domination, religious fanaticism, or political corruption. Neither is it entirely in the
hands of those who view democracy as an excess or burden. Educators need to develop a new discourse and a revitalized
global politics whose aim is to foster a democratic pedagogyand political culture that embody the legacy and principles of social justice,
equality, freedom, and rights associated with democratic notions of time, space, pluralism, power, discourse, identities, morality, and the future. But such a politics cannot be simply
nation based. If it is to be effective, it has to fi nd ways to globalize both justice and resistance, use the new media as critical pedagogical tools, and form new alliances among various
oppositional groups, taking seriously pedagogy as a political practice that crosses borders, affi rms difference, and generates new international alliances in the struggle for new public
spaces. More and more individuals and movements at home and around the globe including students, workers, feminists, educators, writers, environmentalists, senior citizens, artists,
and a host of others are organizing to challenge the dangerous slide on the part of the United States into the dark abyss of an authoritarianism that threatens not just the promise but
the very idea of global democracy in the twenty-fi rst century.
Murray 66
A/T Aff Choice

Shotgun is stupid – framework isn’t about choice it’s about what’s best for debate as a
game. This prevents arbitrary frameworks like “interpretive dance only,” and means that
the aff can still win by justifying their framework with a defense of its merits.
Murray 67
A/T Predictability
1. Predictability is a practice – saying that we can’t predict this argument because we
didn’t think about it is circular nonsense.
2. Our framework solves predictability – we focus debate on the basic assumption of how
communities are created. You only have to win one argument to win this flow, compare
that to the number of process counterplans and politics disads that they have to debate.
Murray 68
A/T Moots the 1AC

1. All our evidence on framework proves that the primary question is the way we
relate to the other and the narratives that surround our policies rather than simple
bureaucratic changes in policy making – they should have offense for their
justifications
2. It’s inevitable – PICs and really good advantage CPs do the same thing
Murray 69
A/T Policy Education

1. we have already impact turned that kind of education above
2. we allow for better policy education – policies that are constructed without an ethical
relationship with the other are inevitably demonic and genocidal. Only the alternative
allows for the creation of effective policies.
Murray 70
Link/Impact – Research Method
Their research methods result in a total war against unspecified enemies.

Lambert 2010 (Gregg, Dean’s Professor of the Humanities and Founding Director of the Humanities Centre, Syracuse University, New
York “The War-Machine and “a people who revolt””, Theory and Event)
In conclusion, I will risk providing my own perspective on this question, which will take the form of a hypothesis concerning two areas
of future research or lines of inquiry. According to the earlier statement quoted above, there is one point of view where the
difference between the two poles is greatest: death. In other words, it is by inhabiting this perspective that
one might introduce a maximal difference in order to separate violence from violence, in order to cause
something to appear. As Deleuze and Guattari speculate, this something = x would have to do with what they call the
“incommensurable character of the quantities that confront one another in the two kinds of warmachines.” 39 In order to occupy the
perspective or “point of view” of death, as if staring out from death’s own eyes, one line of research would
be to continue to analyze the exceptional figures that Deleuze and Guattari themselves privilege. On the one
hand, there is Ahab, and death is equal to the vision of a white wall and the Nothingness beyond. To this image corresponds
the specific death produced by one kind of war-machine: pure destruction, extermination, genocidal
extinction. “Nothingness, Nothingness!”40 Historically speaking, human societies have created a dizzying number of manners of
producing death. It is in this area that our species is exceptionally creative—much more so than prodigious Nature herself. Here, I recall
a line from Camus who once said that if one has difficultly imagining the death caused by a plague, one only has to think of an audience
in a movie theater being piled up in the town square. Nowadays, such quantities are not so difficult to imagine! With the
development of late-Capitalist societies, we have created a kind of death that is aimed at entire populations.
This is the death created by the technological advancement of the war-machine of the first kind: total
extermination, absolute extinction, the production of nearly infinite quantities along a scale that corresponds to final stage
universal Capitalism. A second line of research would seek to study the seemingly more rare kind of death that
aims for something positive (an object) beyond the wall, thus making use of death as a pure transition or
“becoming.” What images are provided to allow us to occupy the point of view of this second kind of death? The guerilla
fighter, the revolutionary, the minority, the faceless image of a nomad, or a people who revolt? Clearly, we lack a
distinctive image for this second point of view. Perhaps this is because the death produced by the second kind of war-
machine, according to the second pole (the creative one), is too populous and is animated by a different
character of quantity that directly confronts the death of the first kind, according to the first pole. Of course, it
goes without saying that small bands of minorities, and minorities of minorities, can band together in fewer
quantities, necessarily so, and may also constitute new nonorganic social relations. But is our only hope to become
survivors and refugees of a “total war against an unspecified enemy” produced by a war machine that today covers the entire surface of
the earth?41 (This may be one possibility, but it is one that seems to correspond more to the thought of Agamben than to the
“revolutionary” image of thought that is frequently ascribed to the writings of Deleuze and Guattari.) However, already in the final pages
of their 1984 treatise, Deleuze and Guattari forecast the development of world-wide total war against an
“unspecified enemy” as the final stage in the development of the war-machine appropriated by globalized
Capitalist societies, which they posit as the second, post-fascist figure of a war-machine that takes peace as
its direct object, “the peace of Terror or Survival.” The most important thing to notice is the extreme nature of this
alternative, which will also determine the future evolution of the State-Form according to the same form of the political that also seems
beyond Ideology. In other words, if Marx had earlier on defined Ideology as the manner in which the pure “extortion” of surplus value
from labor can be expressed as the legal, rational, moral, and even political choice that determines “the social contract,” then the most
recent alternative upon which State power is founded no longer requires any of the old trappings of conscious
deception, and thus is the most literal and rudimentary, even primitive, in establishing its principle, which
might be better compared with armed robbery. Perhaps it is for this reason that Deleuze and Guattari admit, even twenty
years before 9/11 and the “world-wide war on terror,” that “the present situation is highly discouraging,” since the war-
machine has grown like a creature in science fiction, “has taken charge of the aim, world-wide order, and the
States are now [even then] no more than objects or means adapted to that machine.”42
Murray 71
Link – Sovereign War

Focus on sovereign war trades off the normalization of control over life
Evans and Guillaume, 2010 (Brad Evans is lecturer in the School of Politics and International Studies at the University of Leeds,
Laura has a PhD in International Politics from Aberystwyth University; “Deleuze and War: Introduction”, Theory and Event)
Brad Evans and Michael Hardt discuss the extent to which civil war is no longer understood primarily through the prism of sovereignty.
This is to say, with the primary mode of warfare no longer taking place between states, or for that matter within
states for the acquisition of state power (as in conventional civil war), then the once familiar location of ‘war’ in
relation to ‘peaceful politics’ now becomes intensely problematic. To put it another way, in focusing exclusively
on the relationship between sovereignty and war, we are in danger of becoming blind to the iterations of
war/governance which generate the conditions of possibility for everyday politics . Indeed, as Evans and Hardt
suggest, while Liberal forms of governance are increasingly unhindered by the muddying of the waters between ‘war’ and ‘not war’ ,
Liberalism itself as a framework for a politics concerned with emancipation and resistance might be fatally
imperilled by the generalised state of war. Not only does this suggest the need for a rethinking of the politics
of the left, or of radical democracy, but also that this new politics should take account of the ways in which
modern strategies of rule are dedicated to the differential production and organisation of bodies in ways
which determine the possibilities for resistance, and make the emergence of certain forms of life complicit in
the martial logic of rule. Examples include the potentially redeemable body of the insurgent, the life-inimical body of the terrorist,
and the inviolable and valuable body of the US soldier. What this means is that one can no longer assume that war is fought
according to the structures of friend/enemy, them/us. Instead, it is that the production of these categories (and
the multiple sub-categories that populate them) which itself is internal to ‘war.’ In turn, this necessitates a change in the
way in which we think about war, which becomes less associated with transcendent categories of power
(good/evil, friend/enemy) such as are associated with a moment of sovereign decision, and more concerned
with the immanent production of identities and lives: with what we might call a political economy whereby
the production of life is itself the production of war. Economy thus becomes as great a concern in the analysis of
contemporary war as the transcendent principles of law and sovereignty. Hence, whilst the ‘exceptional’ instances of transcendent
sovereign domination are easy to find in the recent past—as with, for example, Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib—these, Evans and
Hardt suggest, may not be the essence of the current paradigm of war. Indeed, there is a potential danger for a politics of
resistance or criticism in focusing exclusively on these dramatic examples of sovereign rule. This has the
potential to conceal the ‘normalised’ ways in which power operates, through the juridical policing of
humanity, through the production and organisation of life, through the regulation of flow and exchange in
accordance with the predicates of the economising facets of global Liberal rule. It is to these that we must
turn if we are to conceive a politics of resistance adequate to the task of confronting the multifaceted
dimensions of war and the martial economy.
Murray 72
Impact – Turns Liberalism

Fear manifests itself in liberal politics as a motivation for the creation of civil societies
which unknowingly erect sovereign authority. The affirmatives use of a fear-driven politics
to justify liberalism in the Arab Spring necessitates its inverse and the imposition of
totalitarianism
Bell 2007 (Daniel M., Associate Professor of Theological Ethics, Lutheran Theological Southern Seminary, Journal for Cultural and
Religious Theory, JCRT 8.2 SPRING 2007 55,d http://www.jcrt.org/archives/08.2/)
In the standard account, liberalism is cast as the end of fear and civil society, in particular, as a space of liberty. This account is not
without its challengers. In particular, there are those who take issue with the claim that liberalism establishes a space
of freedom from fear. Specifically, it is argued that far from warding off an extra-political fear, liberalism
actually thrives on fear, generating and governs by means of that fear. Liberalism is, in effect, a politics of
fear. Hobbes, for example, would certainly agree with those who suggest that liberalism is established on a foundation provided by
fear. However, he would disagree sharply with the suggestion that the fear that underwrites the political project of the commonwealth
was a pre-political passion. While acknowledging that persons do experience a pre-political sense of fear, Hobbes noted that that
aversion in and of itself is insufficient to sustain the kind of commitment to self preservation on which the
sovereign commonwealth depends. In fact, Hobbes observes, fear often gives way to other passions, such as the desire for glory
and honor, thus diminishing the motivating force of self-preservation. Consequently, in order for the commonwealth to
actually unite under the sovereign, fear had to be promoted as a virtue in the service of a morally legitimate
concern for self preservation, while the moral stature of virtues such as courage had to suffer a corresponding
reduction. As Corey Robin puts it, “Hobbes . . . thought about the fear of death and the demand of self-preservation not as a
description of an already existing reality – of how human beings actually behaved in the world – but as a project of political and cultural
reconstruction, requiring the creation of a new ethos and a new man.”6 But how, pray tell, was this new ethos to be constructed and this
new person birthed? Addressing this question, Hobbes proved himself a much more astute political thinker than Machiavelli, who
encouraged his prince to induce fear with the rather blunt instrument of stately violence. Hobbes realized that no prince possessed
sufficient force to instill the requisite fear. Moreover, he recognized that fear alone, without a concomitant sense of
investment or benefit, would not sustain obedience. In other words, what was needed was a way for citizens to
participate in, and a reason for them to collaborate with, this induction of fear. For this, Hobbes turned to civil
society. He thought that the leaders of civil society, particularly preachers and teachers (who had certainly shown themselves
adept at inciting rebellion during the English civil war), could play a central role in the fostering a culture of fear .
Legitimating the moral elevation of self-preservation on the grounds that if one were dead, one could not
pursue any goods, civic leaders could persuade the populace that it has a moral stake in perpetuating fear and
moral grounds for collaborating in the establishment and maintenance of the sovereign’s authority. Hobbes’
vision provides a blueprint for the modern state erected on the negative moral foundation of fear. This fear,
however, is not extra-political but rather the thoroughgoing production of political processes. Moreover, it is
the product of a collaboration between the sovereign and civil society, thus calling into question the extent to
which civil society is rightly understood as a space of liberty from fear.
Murray 73
**A/T: Fear Good (MUST READ)
Ontology comes first – the state of pure war is an internalized dread which manifests itself
in populations conditioned by the dramatization of catastrophic events. This is invisible,
psychic, violence comes first because it occurs at the individual level and makes material
war and violence possible.
Borg 2003 (Mark; PhD in psychoanalysis, practicing psychoanalyst and community/organizational consultant working in New York City.
He is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute's psychoanalytic certification program and continues his candidacy in their organizational
dynamics program. He is co-founder and executive director of the Community Consulting Group, "Psychoanalytic Pure War: Interactions with
the Post-Apocalyptic Unconscious": JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2003, MUSE)
Paul Virilio and Sylvere Lotringer’s concept of “pure war” refers to the potential of a culture to destroy itself
completely (12).2We as psychoanalysts can—and increasingly must—explore the impact of this concept on our practice, and on the
growing number of patients who live with the inability to repress or dissociate their experience and awareness of the pure war condition.
The realization of a patient’s worst fears in actual catastrophic events has always been a profound enough psychotherapeutic challenge.
These days, however, catastrophic events not only threaten friends, family, and neighbors; they also become the
stuff of endless repetitions and dramatizations on radio, television, and Internet.3 Such continual reminders of death
and destruction affect us all. What is the role of the analyst treating patients who live with an ever-threatening sense of the pure war
lying just below the surface of our cultural veneer? At the end of the First World War, the first “total war,” Walter Benjamin
observed that “nothing [after the war] remained unchanged but the clouds, and beneath these clouds, in a field of
force of destructive torrents and explosions, was the tiny, fragile human body”(84). Julia Kristeva makes a similar
note about our contemporary situation, “The recourse to atomic weapons seems to prove that horror...can rage absolutely” (232). And, as
if he too were acknowledging this same fragility and uncontainability, the French politician Georges Clemenceau commented in the
context of World War I that “war is too serious to be confined to the military” (qtd. in Virilio and Lotringer 15). Virilio and Lotringer
gave the name “pure war” to the psychological condition that results when people know that they live in a world
where the possibility for absolute destruction (e.g., nuclear holocaust) exists. As Virilio and Lotringer see it, it is
not the technological capacity for destruction (that is, for example, the existence of nuclear armaments) that imposes the
dread characteristic of a pure war psychology but the belief systems that this capacity sets up. Psychological
survival requires that a way be found (at least unconsciously) to escape inevitable destruction—it requires a way out—
but this enforces an irresolvable paradox, because the definition of pure war culture is that there is no escape. Once
people
believe in the external possibility— at least those people whose defenses cannot
handle the weight of the dread that pure war imposes— pure war becomes an
internal condition, a perpetual state of preparation for absolute destruction and for
personal, social, and cultural death.
The modern liberal state utilizes the threat of nuclear weapons to justify invasion in the
interim to prevent catastrophe. Their representations are more likely to lead to
preemption than passivity.
Massumi 07 (Brian, Communication Department of the Université de Montréal , “Potential Politics and the Primacy of Preemption”)
Fear is always a good reason to go politically conditional. Fear is the palpable action in the present of a
threatening future cause. It acts just as palpably whether the threat is determinate or not. It weakens your resolve, creates
stress, lowers consumer confidence, and may ultimately lead to individual and/or economic paralysis . To avoid the
paralysis, which would make yourself even more of a target and carry the fear to even higher level, you
must simply act. In Bush administration parlance, you "go kinetic."6 You leap into action on a level with the potential that
frightens you. You do that, once again, by inciting the potential to take an actual shape you can respond to. You trigger a
production of what you fear. You
turn the objectively indeterminate cause into an actual
effect so you can actually deal with it in some way. Any time you feel the need to act, then all you have to
do is actuate a fear. The production of the effect follows as smoothly as a reflex. This affective dynamic is still very much in place,
independent of Rumsfeld's individual fate. It will remain in place as long as fear and remains politically actuatable. The logic of
preemption operates on this affective plane, in this proliferative or ontogenetic way: in a way that contributes to
the reflex production of the specific being of the threat. You're afraid Iraq is a breeding ground for
terrorists? It could have been. If it could have been, it would have been. So go ahead, make it
one. "Bring 'em on," the President said, following Hollywood-trained reflex. He knew it in his "guts." He couldn't have gone
Murray 74
wrong. His reflex was right. Because "now we can all agree" that Iraq is in actual fact a
breeding ground for "terrrorists". That just goes to prove that the potential was
always there. Before, there was doubt in some quarters that Saddam had to be removed from power. Some agreed he had to go,
some didn't. Now we can all agree. It was right to remove him because doing so made Iraq become what it always could have been. And
that's the truth. Truth, in this new world order, is by nature retroactive. Fact grows conditionally in the affective soil of an
indeterminately present futurity. It becomes objective as that present reflexively plays out, as a effect of the preemptive action taken.
The reality-based community wastes time studying empirical reality, the Bushites said: "we create it." And because of that, "we" the
preemptors will always be right. We always will have been right to preempt, because we have objectively produced
a recursive truth-effect for your judicious study. And while you are looking back studying the truth of it, we
will have acted with reflex speed again, effecting a new reality. 7 We will always have had no choice but to
prosecute the "war on terror," ever more vigilantly and ever more intensely on every potential front. We,
preemptors, are the producers of your world. Get used to it. The War in Iraq is a success to the extent that it made the
productivity of the preemptive "war on terror" a self-perpetuating movement. Even if the US were to withdraw from Iraq tomorrow, the
war would have to continue on other fronts no matter who controls Congress or who is in the White House. It would have to continue in
Afghanistan, for example, where the assymetrical tactics perfected in Iraq are now being applied to renew the conflict there. Or in Iran,
which also always could have/would have been a terrorist breeding ground. Or it could morph and move to the Mexican-US border,
itself morphed into a distributed frontline proliferating throughout the territory in the moving form of "illegal immigration". On
the
indefinite Homeland Security front of a protieform war, who knows what threats may be
spinelessly incubating where, abetted by those who lack the "backbone" to go kinetic. Preemption is
like deterrence in that it combines a proprietary epistemology with a unique ontology in
such a way as to make present a future cause that sets a self-perpetuating movement
into operation. Its differences from deterrence hinge on its taking objectively indeterminate or potential threat as its self-
constitutive cause rather than fully formed and specified threat. It situates itself on the ground of ontogenetic potential. There, rather than
deterring the feared effect, it actualizes the potential in a shape to which it hopes it can respond. It assumes a proliferation of potential
threats, and mirrors that capacity in its own operation. It becomes proliferative. It assumes the objective imbalance of a far-
from-equilibrium state as a permanent condition. Rather than trying to right the imbalance, it seizes it as an
opportunity for itself. Preemption also sets a race in motion. But this is a race run on the edge of chaos. It is a race of
movement-flushing, detection, perception, and affective actuation, run in irreparably chaotic or quasi-chaotic conditions. The race of
preemption has any number of laps, each ending in the actual effecting of a threat. Each actualization of a threat triggers the next lap, as
a continuation of the first in the same direction, or in another way in a different field. Deterrence revolved around an objective cause.
Preemption revolves around a proliferative effect. Both are operative logics. The operative logic of deterrence, however, remained
causal even as it displaced its cause's effect. Preemption
is an effective operative logic rather than a causal
operative logic. Since its ground is potential, there is no actual cause for it to organize itself around. It
compensates for the absence of an actual cause by producing an actual effect in its
place. This it makes the motor of its movement: it converts an absent or virtual cause really, directly into a
taking-actual-effect. It does this affectively. It uses affect to effectively trigger a virtual causality.8 Preemption is when the
futurity of unspecified threat is affectively held in the present in a perpetual state of potential emergence(y)
so that a movement of actualization may be triggered that is not only self-propelling but also effectively,
indefinitely, ontologically productive, because it works from a virtual cause whose potential no single actualization exhausts.
Preemption's operational parameters mean that is never univocal. It operates in the element of vagueness and objective uncertainty. Due
to its proliferative nature, it cannot be monolithic. Its logic cannot close in around its self-causing as the logic deterrence does. It
includes an essential openness in its productive logic.9 It incites its adversary to take emergent form. It then strives to become as
proteiform as its ever-emergent adversary can be. It is as shape-shifting as it is self-driving. It infiltrates across boundaries, sweeping up
existing formations in its own transversal movement. Faced with gravity-bound formations too inertial for it to sweep up and carry off
with its own operative logic, it contents itself with opening windows of opportunity to pass through. This is the case with the domestic
legal and juridical structure in the US. It can't sweep that away. But it can build into that structure escape holes for itself. These take the
form of formal provisions vastly expanding the power of the executive, in the person of the president in his role as commander-in-chief,
to declare states of exception which suspend the normal legal course in order to enable a continued flow of preemptive action.10
Preemption stands for conflict unlimited: the potential for peace amended to become
a perpetual state of undeclared war. This is the "permanent state of emergency" so presciently described
by Walter Benjamin. In current Bush administration parlance,
it has come to be called "Long War" replacing the Cold
War: a preemptive war with an in-built tendency to be never-ending. Deterrence produced asymmetrical conflict as a
by-product. The MADly balanced East-West bipolarity spun off a North-South sub-polarity. This was less a polarity than an axis of
imbalance. The "South" was neither a second Western First nor another Eastern Second. It was an anomalous Third. In this chaotic "
Third World ," local conflicts prefiguring the present "imbalance of terror" proliferated. The phrase "the war on terror" was in fact first
popularized by Richard Nixon in 1972 in response to the attack at the Munich Olympics when the Israeli-Palestinian conflict
spectacularly overspilled northward. Asymmetrical conflicts, however, were perceivable by the reigning logic of deterrence only as a
reflection of itself. The dynamic of deterrence were overlaid upon them. Their heterogeneity was overcoded by the familiar US-Soviet
duality. Globally such conflicts figured only as opportunities to reproduce the worldwide balance of terror on a reduced scale. The
strategy of "containment" adopted toward them was for the two sides in the dominant dyad to operate in each local theater through
proxies in such a way that their influence, on the whole, balanced out. "I decided," Nixon said after Munich , "that we must maintain a
Murray 75
balance."11 He did not, as Bush did after 9-11, decide to skew things by going unilaterally "kinetic." The rhetoric of the "war on terror"
fell into abeyance during the remainder of the 1970s, as Southern asymmetries tended to be overcoded as global rebalancings, and going
kinetic was "contained" to the status of local anomaly.
This worst case storytelling causes social paralysis and serial policy failure—extinction.
Furedi 10 – Professor of sociology at the University of Kent, Frank, “This shutdown is about more than volcanic ash”, Spiked, 4/19,
http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/8607/
Whatever the risks posed by the eruption of a volcano in Iceland, it seems clear that the shutting down of much of Europe’s air space is
not just about the threat posed by clouds of ash to flying passengers. We
live in an era where problems of
uncertainty andrisk are continually amplified, and where our fearful imaginations can make
these problems seem like existential threats. Consequently, unexpected natural events are rarely treated
simply as unexpected natural events – instead they are swiftly dramatised and transformed into ‘threats to human
survival’. This becomes most clear in the tendency to dramatise the forecasting of the weather. Once upon a time, weather forecasts
were those boring moments on the radio or TV when most of us got up to make a snack. However, with the invention of concepts such
as ‘extreme weather’, routine events like storms, smog or unexpected snowfall have become compellingly entertaining. Ours is a world
where a relatively ordinary technical problem like the so-called Millennium Bug can be interpreted as a threat of apocalyptic proportions
– and where a flu epidemic is turned by officials into a kind of plot line from a Hollywood disaster flick. When the World Health
Organisation can warn that the entire human species is threatened by swine flu, it’s pretty clear that cultural prejudice rather
than sober risk assessment influences much of official thinking today. I am not a natural scientist, and I claim no
authority to say anything of value about the risks posed by volcanic ash clouds to flying aircraft. However, as a sociologist interested in
the process of decision-making, it is evident to me that the reluctance to lift the ban on air traffic in Europe is motivated by worst-case
thinking rather than rigorous risk assessment. Risk
assessment is based on an attempt to calculatethe
probability of different outcomes. Worst-case thinking –these days known as ‘precautionary
thinking’ – is based on an act of imagination. It imagines the worst-case scenario and then takes
action on that basis. In the case of the Icelandic volcano, fears that particles in the ash cloud
could cause aeroplane engines to shut down automatically mutated into a conclusion that this
wouldhappen. So it seems to me to be the fantasy of the worst-case scenario rather than risk assessment that underpins the current
official ban on air traffic. Many individuals associated with the air-travel industry are perturbed by what they perceive to be a one-
dimensional overreaction. Ulrich Schulte-Strathaus, secretary-general of the Association of European Airlines, observed that
‘verification flights undertaken by several of our airlines have revealed no irregularities at all’. He believes that ‘this confirms our
requirement that other options should be deployed to determine genuine risk’. Giovanni Bisignani, director-general of the International
Air Transport Association, describes the ban as a ‘European embarrassment’ and a ‘European mess’. Also, individuals associated with
Europe’s air-control authorities have conceded that they have been interpreting international guidelines ‘more rigorously’ than, say, their
American counterparts. British forecasters claimed the volcanic ash cloud could hit the eastern Canadian coast. Whatever the risks of
flying in the wake of the volcano, it seems clear that it is not evidence but speculation that is fuelling the current flight ban. The
reluctance actually to weigh up the evidence and act on the basis of probabilities is motivated by fear of
making a wrong decision. Of course when lives are at stake it is essential to weigh up the evidence carefully – but at the end of the
day, our leaders have a responsibility to make decisions and live with the consequences. The slowness with which EU
ministers responded to this crisis indicates that worst-case thinking discourages responsible
decision-making. Yet as Giovanni Bisignani said, the decision to close airspace ‘has to be based on facts
and supported by risk assessment’, not on the politics of decision-avoidance. Tragically, this failure of nerve
in relation to the volcanic ash is the inevitable outcome of the institutionalisation of worst-case policymaking .
This approach, based on the unprecedented sensitivity of contemporary Western society to uncertainty and unknown dangers, has led to
a radically new way of perceiving and managing risks. As a result, the traditional association of risk with probabilities is now under fire
from a growing body of opinion, which claims that humanity lacks the knowledge to calculate risks in any meaningful way. Sadly,
critics of traditional probabilistic risk-assessments have more faith in speculative computer models than they do in science’s capacity to
use knowledge to transform uncertainties into calculable risks. The emergence of a speculative approach towards risk is
paralleled by the growing influence of ‘possibilistic thinking’ rather than probabilistic thinking, which
actively invites speculation about what could possibly go wrong. In today’s culture of fear, frequently
‘what could possiblygo wrong’ is confused with ‘what is likely to happen’.Numerous critics
of old forms of probabilistic thinking call for a radical break with past practices on the grounds that we simply lack the information to
This rejection of probabilities is motivated by a belief that the dangers we face
calculate probabilities.
are just too overwhelming and catastrophic – the Millennium Bug, international terrorism, swine flu,
climate change, etc – and we simply cannot wait until we have all the information before we
calculate their possible destructive effects. ‘Shut it down!’ is the default response. In any case, it is
argued, since so many of the threats are ‘unknown’ there is little information on which a realistic calculation
of probabilities can be made. One of the many regrettable consequences of this outlook is that policies
designed to deal with threats are increasingly based on feelings and intuition rather than on
Murray 76
evidence or facts. Worst-case thinking encourages society to adopt fear asof one of the
key principles around which the public, the government andvarious institutions should
organisetheir lives. It institutionalises insecurity and fosters a mood of confusion and
powerlessness. Through popularising the belief that worst cases are normal, it also
encourages people to feel defenceless and vulnerable to a wide range of future threats. In all but
name, it is an invitation to social paralysis. The eruption of a volcano in Iceland poses technical problems, for
which responsible decision-makers should swiftly come up with sensible solutions. But instead, Europe has decided to turn a problem
into a drama. In 50 years’ time, historians
will be writing about our society’s reluctanceto act
when practical problems arose. It is no doubt difficult to face up to a natural disaster – but in this case it isthe all-too-
apparent manmade disaster brought on by indecision and a reluctance to engage with uncertainty that
represents the real threat to our future.
Murray 77
A/T: Fear key to VTL

Shenanigans – we don’t eliminate all fear, but we say apocalyptic representations driving
fear is bad. Their evidence is less specific than ours which is kinda funny because we’re the
K team
A Pure War culture leaves us forever tied to the atrocities of the past, preventing psychic
wholeness
Borg 2003 (Mark; PhD in psychoanalysis, practicing psychoanalyst and community/organizational consultant working in New York City.
He is a graduate of the William Alanson White Institute's psychoanalytic certification program and continues his candidacy in their organizational
dynamics program. He is co-founder and executive director of the Community Consulting Group, "Psychoanalytic Pure War: Interactions with
the Post-Apocalyptic Unconscious": JPCS: Journal for the Psychoanalysis of Culture & Society, Volume 8, Number 1, Spring 2003, MUSE)
A precursor to the notion of pure war can be seen in a comment made by Freud in the aftermath of the First World War: The primitive
fear of death is still strong within us and always ready to come to the surface on any provocation. Most likely, our fear still implies
the old belief that the dead man becomes the enemy of his survivor and seeks to carry him off to share his
new life with him. (242) That is, through the constant preparation for war demanded by the pure war condition
and the enactments that such preparation entails, we “share” our lives with the dead. Winnicott’s description of
“fear of breakdown” is a related vision, addressing fear of a previous, rather than a future, event (103). In his view, haunting of the
living by the dead relates to past, current, and ongoing conditions of internalized pure war, rather than to actual or
certain future events: It must be asked here: why does the patient go on being worried by this that belongs to the past?
The answer must be that the original experience of primitive agony cannot get into the past tense unless the ego
can first gather it into its own present and into omnipotent control now. (105) In pure war, omnipotence is shattered.
Winnicott speaks to a timelessness in the unconscious, and indeed pure war represents the ultimate end point of the ego’s
once seemingly infinite timeline. As in Winnicott’s notion of fear of breakdown, we cannot ward off pure war without
anticipating it, and we cannot anticipate it without its being already there, forming our horizon .
Murray 78
A/T:VTL Inevitable/ Can’t Measure

We turn this – fear-driven liberalism creates a state war machine which justifies the
elimination of populations which do not effectively aid the apparatus of terror. The status
quo attempts to objectively measure value to life in a way that makes bodies disposable in
the name of utilitarianism
Murray 79
A/T: Discourse Irrelevant

Language shapes how we understand the world – it’s the reason war exists
Wenden, 2003 (Anita L., Professor Emerita of Research and Academic Writing and Professor Emerita of cultural Diversity at York College,
“Achieving a Comprehensive Peace,” April, Peace and Change, Vol. 28, No. 2)
In 1986 a group of social, behavioral, and natural scientists from 12 nations and Þve continents met under the auspices of the Spanish
National Commission for UNESCO. The outcome of their deliberations, the Seville Statement on Violence, debunked the myths that
contribute to the belief that violence is innate in humans. One of their conclusions points to the role played by social institutions
and learned skills, including language, in socializing citizens into the use of violence: It is scientifically
incorrect to say that war is caused by instinct or any single motivation. Here our social scientists took the
leading role and showed how modern war is not a matter of emotion so much as the institutional use of
obedience, suggestibility, idealism and social skills, such as language ...1 This view on the use of language in social life
is a theme that has been elaborated by critical linguists, whose research aims to identify the social, institutional, and situational
determinants and effects of discourse. 2 They have argued that language is not Òa neutral medium for the description
of
reality.Ó3 Rather, it actively shapes and gives meaning to human experience, inßuencing actual practice and
the way in which people think about particular objects, events, and situations. According to Michael Halliday, ÒOur
reality is not something ready made waiting to be meantÑit has to be actively construed; and ... language evolved in
the process of, and as the agency of, its construal ... hence language has the power to shape our consciousness ...4
Moreover, the meaning assigned to a particular object, event, or situation will vary depending upon the
biographical, historical, sociocultural, and political perspectives of various groups. Thus, there may be a competition
among groups to determine whose representation is to be accepted, with each view striving to have their view dominate. This is referred
to as the politics of representation.5 The global debate over whether or not to use force in Iraq, to what extent, and for what purpose is
one example. The persistence and intensity with which opposing views strive to be heard and to remain in the dominant position testiÞes
to the fact that what is saidÑthe manner of representing a social or political issueÑwill inßuence what we do.
Motivated by these assumptions about the use of language in social life, this paper would like to argue that the
linguistic factor be taken into account by scholars and researchers, policy makers and government planners,
educators and activists in their attempts to deal with the problems of social and ecological violence that
challenge contemporary societies. To that end, it will outline the components of a linguistic framework that can be used to
uncover the ideology in discourse.6 Then, for illustrative purposes, the framework will be applied to an analysis of (1) introductions to
two reports on the problem of environmental security written near the time of the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development7; and (2) President BushÕs September 20, 2001, address on terrorism before a joint meeting of Congress.8
Murray 80
A/T: Util Good
Utilitarian calculations never happen within a vacuum – implicit in their argument is an

assumption about whose life is worse living which guarantees genocidal violence.
Narkunas, 2007 (J. Paul, Assistant Professor of Literary Theory in the Department of English at John Jay College, City University of New
York, “Utilitarian Humanism: Culture in the Service of Regulating "We Other Humans",” Theory & Event, 10:3)
The statistics may expedite, however, a form of "cultural natural selection" or "survival of the statistically fit/correct" through sustained development of ever-more meticulous
statistical analysis. Culture functions thereby through an epistemological norm that measures its origins and telos through statistics. The epistemological norm takes an ontological
quality due to a certain nominalism, a process that reductively grasps representation and epistemology as the final limit of analysis. Culture relies on a set of mutually accepted and
institutionalized protocols, what Raymond Williams called a "structure of feeling," in order to take particular forms and practices as exhibiting the work of cultures, giving
representation or form to the world. To believe in cultures suggests the need to take for granted the pre-determined state of the world or universe as a form, whereby cultures are sets
the agent presumes the frame[Gestell] of the world in the

of a larger species. To use Heideggerian language by way of Kant,
production of the world as a picture, with the ability to render the world as an object
of reflection.15 As Heidegger acknowledged, the human is one such frame that is challenged by changes in technology; the human sciences provide the epistemological
material to fill the human frame with a coherent picture [bild], while paradoxically also unraveling its field of experience in world through technological standardization.16 The
human differentiates itself from animals and other forms of life by being thrown into a particular culture and acquiring the specific national language of its community to
communicate with others in this community. This creates a horizon for thinking the species ontologically as a being within a culture. A human can not be without a culture to
inhabit as the expression of this being. However, the reduction of human ontology to its statistical representation by UNESCO's recognized cultural processes creates a statistical
Life not only becomes statistical, but also enframed within epistemological
being.
schema.The World Culture Reports measure culture through normalizing human practices that are useful, calculating thereby in a
self-sustaining fashion the limits of life - human and otherwise - through rationalized culture. The WCRs define forms of life within
particular geographies, and bestow intelligibility to disparate political and economic practices that become the mythological origin of
Utility becomes the moral and ethical register for thinking
global humans as useful objects.
humans as a form of use value, suggesting the need to consider the moral and ethical legacy of utilitarianism. Jeremy Bentham's and Mill's moral
philosophy of utilitarianism offers an important corrective to the transcendent scope of Kantian ethics and the hope of the categorical imperative - act as if your actions were
universally equivalent.17 Rather than a set of guiding transcendent moral principles and duties humans naturally have and or follow, utilitarianism proposes an immanent and
historical model of "means" with the understanding that eventually human ethics would be universalized through equalization ("ends"). Indeed, utility acknowledges a radical
temporality and specific historical and immanent conditions for establishing or thinking utility as "...a theory of life on which this theory of morality is grounded..."18 For
utilitarianism, happiness is purportedly the sole end of all human action at once limited or unlimited, individualizing and massifying. To understand human ends, Bentham proposed
in his utilitarianism the "greatest happiness principle" to shore up "good" human practices in defining utility: "that property in any object, whereby it tends to produce benefit,
advantage, pleasure, good, or happiness...or...to prevent the happening of mischief, pain, evil, or unhappiness."19 Mill would extend a more precise if similarly ambiguous
definition: "Utility, or the Greatest Happiness Principle, holds that actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of
happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain, and the privation of pleasure."20 Utilitarianism was invested in the idea of creating
subjects through character, of establishing a common consensus or notion of what pleasure and thereby happiness could encompass by what was rendered visible:...utility would
enjoin, first, that laws and social arrangements should place the happiness, or (as speaking practically it may be called) the interest, of every individual, as nearly as possible in
harmony with the interest of the whole; and secondly, that education and opinion, which have so vast a power over human character, should so use that power as to establish in the
mind of every individual an indissoluble association between his own happiness and the good of the whole; especially between his own happiness and the practice of such modes of
conduct, negative and positive, as regard for the universal happiness prescribes...a direct impulse to promote the general good may be in every individual one of the habitual modes of
action.21 Rather than a virtual theological a priori on the good or overarching principles (moral law) of Kantian ethics, utilitarianism indicates a historical process to establish useful
principles of happiness through the standardization of character rendered within the sensible world. Any notion of incoherent force or power in effectuating this character would
establishing the universal character of

seemingly be evacuated due to a normative claim to democratic or equalizing desires in
utilitythrough acts and beliefs made manifest and true. Karl Marx in Capital, Volume One acknowledged the universalizing danger of utilitarianism in describing Bentham: "If
I had the courage of my friend Heinrich Heine, I should call Mr. Jeremy a genius by way of bourgeois stupidity...with the driest naiveté he assumes that the modern petty bourgeois,
especially the English petty bourgeois, is the normal man. Whatever is useful to this peculiar kind of normal man, and to his world, is useful in and for itself. He applies this
yardstick to the past, the present and the future."22 Marx identifies Bentham's establishment of universals in time and from specific practices of the bourgeois Englishman that are
then generalized as part and parcel of a universal human condition, what he describes elsewhere as the great civilizing mission of capital in socializing humans. Bentham - whom
through
Foucault once described as more important to the history of philosophy than Kant or Hegel and depicted Bentham as the primary figure of the disciplinary society
the machinery of panopticism - normalized humans through the production of souls

as a mechanism of power that straddles thevisible and invisible worlds.23 UNESCO proposes a more recent
incarnation of these techniques by conceiving human life ontologically through utilitarian mechanisms of usefulness and maximizing happiness for bourgeois global elites or the
"global human." The "global human" is knowable through its ability to generate value for the marketplace or for nation-states, or in other words its capacity to generate value by
recognizing humans as commodities.24 Specific cultures may only enter into the (global) "being human" when they add value for the market, when they work efficiently. In short,
forms of human culture exist because of a pragmatic value. Rather than arbitrary and contingent variables of humans that connect to an inherent or universal being, they demonstrate
their value because they have "proven" to be effective, just, or ethical. Needless to say, this is not an ontological fact of being human, but the naturalization of a regime of value as
ontology, whereby humans have being or life when they represent value. Adding value marks the limits of humanity, when the object of the idea is profit, a danger of what I call
utilitarian humanism. This is my central claim: Rather than commodities as objects of utility deployed by humans, human practices and traditions offer a similar scale of use for
humans as commodities to "sustain development." 25 Human actions or creations, as well as humans in their very ontology, could offer for UNESCO a virtually limitless production
of new forms of sustainable subjectivities within the generalized structure of the "global human."UNESCO's WCRs respond to inhuman forces of globalization in the economy and
statecraft by reasserting an ontological notion of the human as utilitarian.26 Through my above engagement with the WCRs and diagnosis of the dangers of life conceived as utility, I
want to stress how culture is not only a site of resistance, self-reflection, and form of being, but an epistemological system of identification and containment in creating the global
human as utilitarian. Despite terms like creative diversity and pluralism, culture has value and use for maximizing happiness and pleasure, and reducing pain, creating a system of
organization to expedite those regimes of value, while offering the "performance" of emancipation within categories of use. The specific attributes of the particular culture, race, or
ethnicity, however, are less important than their contributions, their value, to understanding the "total human system" recognized through cultural and human attributes that embody
utilitarian value. Specific cultural formations can then heighten the efficiency of the global human system. A utilitarian humanism emerges from "a reserve of knowledge and
experience about good and useful ways of doing things" (WCR 1998, 18). To summarize up to this point: Utilitarian humanism can be identified via two separate
mechanisms: 1. A useful and productive human will have culture. 2. Certain cultures are more useful than others; therefore, cultures of
expedience should thrive. Utilitarian humanism may function, thereby, in governmental fashion, deciding the limits of the community.
Instead of the citizen, state, culture, or nation, the very limit of the species and life becomes the governmental horizon of judgment.
Giorgio Agamben in Homo Sacer uses the work of Michel Foucault on biopower to argue convincingly that the
sovereign
decision of whoor what can be regarded asa form of lifethat is protected by law (in the community or nomos) is reconfigured to define
what a human is and can be, where life exists.27 For Agamben "naked life" is "life that can be killed but not sacrificed." Unrecognized through humanist or Enlightenment political
categories and therefore unprotected by classical political theory and legal mechanisms, life is read instead through the biological functions of the species as still pre-differentiated
energy.28 His diagnosis indicates how naked life resides in a zone of indistinction, permitting the potential for new forms of politicization or forms of life that can be executed,
Murray 81
tortured, or merely put to death without any legal recourse. Borrowing from Foucault he describes how certain forms of life are made to live and others let die. In contradistinction to
trauma and abjection theorists on life like Judith Butler, Agamben expounds that not all "naked life" exists de facto in a state of abjection. He does not claim that naked life is merely
expendable and needs to be reformed into classical political categories, like liberal democracy. Naked life does not reside in a politicized category of the human; it's neither
democratic, republican, socialist, nor totalitarian, but stands in for energy or potentialities - acategorical thinking for possibilities of life.Nevertheless, because it is unrecognized
through cultural or political modes of life, naked life may be seized for practices deemed utilitarian and useful, which is the new measure of (sustainable) happiness for all life.
a purported human way of life, be rendered an attribute

Indeed, could culture, as a free floating mechanism of value that describes
for the market to judge certain populations as life "worth

living," and others unrecognized
through culture or utilitarian categories as not quite living or the unliving? UNESCO exemplifies one institution
that may, wittingly or unwittingly, render such "governmental" decisions on what life is worth living, and turn naked life, unrecognized as cultural or useful, into expendable life.
Naked life could shuffle between a form of value worth living or one that must reform itself into useful cultural classifications or die, but never as a form of existence that could live
without value measured culturally in potentia or in reserve.29 UNESCO's utilitarian humanism, by establishing a certain ontic faith in culture, innocently decides who lives and dies
in the global system. How might cultural critics and theorists, witting or unwitting, contribute to this project? UNESCO's exemplary faith in consensus, legitimation, and the debate
of reason rely on habitual strategies for conceptualizing cultures as benevolent systems of utilitarian management to cultivate humans and establish continuity between past, present,
and future. For example, Arjun Appadurai and Katerina Stenou in the 2000 WCR argue for "sustainable pluralism" within nation-states and across and among states: "Sustainable
pluralism thus defines a situation in which a finite number of culturally diverse groups are organized to relate so that each has maximum opportunity to reproduce its identity and to
evolve creatively over time."30 Different identities, races and ethnicities can turn into objects of knowledge that eventually are made "knowable" through the tracking of different
cultural identities and histories, and deposited into the archive of knowledge to facilitate what Appadurai and Stenou call the "political economy of dignity." By multiplying
possibilities for the imagination and the capacities of "art as an archive of possible forms," the "political economy of dignity" will flourish.31 Specific members of each race and
ethnicity should, thereby, maintain visibility by creating an archive that can be rendered knowable, a cultural history and knowledge that has been pre-scripted for them by their
forebears. This mode of synthesis, though pluralistic, may only recognize differences, however, by their relationship to the cultural whole (how they differ from a cultural identity or
forms of knowledge) or human whole, what I call above the global human system. In other words, forms of culture-practice and knowledge emerge through the synthesis of disparate
elements around an identity that repeats and becomes institutionalized but sustainable, a dangerous effect of which is "utilitarian humanism." Attractive slogans like "sustainable
development,""sustainable pluralism," or Appadurai's other arguments for "globalization from below" must avoid becoming slogans that merely reassert hegemonic articulations of
power by questioning their techniques of incorporation. If humans can only achieve self-consciousness (in themselves and for themselves) through culture, they could realize
themselves emerging as culture in reserve: "utilitarian humanists." "Global humans" are forms of life that are worth living because they follow the market or cultural consensus of
Other" humans are expendable, but they must not be sacrificed callously; that would
utilitarian humanism. "
be waste. Rather, the market and cultural consensus adjudicate biopolitical decisions, making
"humanitarian" gestures for cultural humans to contribute through creatively
demonstrating how their culture has value, even if it entails bringing conditions that will result in
their being killed slowly and systematically, albeit all-too-sustainably. In a similar vein, life that is not
defined along UNESCO's humanistic or cultural frame could be "made to die." The market and global
institutions, often armed with righteous intentions, exercise decisions on who lives or
dies,and produce populations that are expendable because they have not sufficiently adapted to the "global human consensus." Armed with a self-righteous benevolence that
cannot conceive of its technical prowess in killing without sacrificing, UNESCO and the United Nations can label "other" cultural practices as inefficient at best, but also construe
them as terrorist, antagonistic, and/or enslaving because of their incompatibility with the cultural whole. In the process, despite claims and calls for openness, adaptability, pluralism,
and so forth, UNESCO increasingly polices the human community, regulating and extirpating any disturbance in the utilitarian image of the human it institutionalizes as cultural.
Relying on strict utilitarian calculus justified suicide bombing, the bombing of Hiroshima
and Nagasaki, and continued genocide and other bad things probably
Farer 2008 (Tom,former President of the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights of the Organization of American States, is Dean
of the Graduate School of International Studies at the University of Denver; "Un-Just War Against Terrorism and the Struggle to Appropriate
Human Rights": Human Rights QUarterly, Volume 30, Number 2; MUSE)
American leaders who thought of themselves as thoroughly decent people, as exemplars of the
values of the West, authorized the incineration of the inhabitants of those cities, and years
afterwards continued to defend the decision, defended it in the only way they could, on grounds
that in doing so, they were saving American lives170 and carrying out the purposes for which the long and
terrible Second World War was fought. It is a pure consequentialist argument unless one takes the position that
through their passive support for the government of Japan, all of the Japanese were in some sense guilty, a position that cannot be
reconciled with the distinction between combatants and non-combatants that, as Elshtain rightly argues, is central to just war
thought. Palestinian suicide bombers and their defenders make exactly the same
consequentialist argument: "We are illegally and unjustly occupied. We are penned into what amount to open-
air concentration camps run by the inmates but surrounded by guards. We tried passive resistance and were beaten down.171 We
tried negotiation, but did not delay by one second the seizure of our land and the
proliferation of armed colonies in our midst.172 We threw stones and were shot down and had our limbs broken.173
Thousands of us are imprisoned without due process of law;174 thousands have [End Page 401] been subjected to cruel and inhuman
interrogation.175 We have no army, no air force. We cannot attack combatants, so
we must drive up the cost of
occupation by attacking non-combatants." And they could cite as precedents the actions of pre-
state Jewish military formations, primarily the Irgun which numbered among its leaders a future Prime
Minister of Israel, Menachem Begin. The hawkish historian, Benny Morris, writes of a dialectic of terrorism between Israelis and
Arabs beginning in mid-1937: "Now for the first time, massive bombs were placed in crowded Arab centers, and dozens
of people were indiscriminately murdered and maimed."176 In one exemplary case "an Irgun operative dressed as an Arab
placed two large milk cans filled with TNT and shrapnel in the Arab market in downtown Haifa. The subsequent explosion killed
twenty-one and wounded fifty-two."177 Referring to this period the political philosopher Hannah Arendt, favorably and repeatedly cited
by Elshtain, wrote: "They think it is all right to murder anyone who can be murdered—an innocent English Tommy or a harmless Arab
Murray 82
in the market of Haifa."178 Defenders
of human rights must in the end reject consequentialist
arguments no matter who makes them. The right of the innocent to life is trumps. But
those of us who in the name of human rights deny weak objects of alien domination the only means they may have to make their
oppressors recalculate costs and benefits have a special obligation to help them. It is in part because their recognition of that obligation is
so selective that the neo-conservatives' claim to be champions of human rights seems meretricious. In the particular case of
Palestine, they are not simply indifferent to the status quo of subordination and misery that is the Palestinians'
lot; rather they are among its advocates.179 When as members of the Reagan administration they saw
continued US support for Saddam Hussein even as he waged genocidal warfare against the Kurds, they did
not resign. When the government of El Salvador massacred peasants they saw no evil .180
They have repeatedly proven that they are consequentialists; for them human [End Page
402] rights are not trumps, and that is a second critical difference between them and liberal advocates
of human rights.
Murray 83
***SATIRE GOOD***
1NC – Critical Affs
Criticizing external actors is really mean – you’re hurting their feelings
The Onion 2011 (Feb. 28, "ExxonMobil CEO Really Hurt That College Student Is Talking About Him Right Now"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/exxonmobil-ceo-really-hurt-that-college-student-is,19333/?utm_source=recentnews)
IRVING, TX—According to sources within ExxonMobil's global headquarters, Rex W. Tillerson, the
company's president, chairman, and CEO, was completely devastated Wednesday by what 18-year-old Skidmore
College freshman Samantha Huestis was saying about him in her dorm room. After aides abruptly pulled the 58-
year-old executive out of a deepwater-exploration meeting, Tillerson was said to have gasped audibly and shaken his
head in apparent despair when notified that the communications major had charged ExxonMobil with "raping
the environment" and had claimed that Tillerson himself "only cares about money." "I've never been so hurt in all my life," said
Tillerson, who is worth an estimated $720 million. "For Samantha to lie on her bed and tell Kaylee, Ben, and even
Becky Stanmore—the dorm's RA, for Christ's sake—that I am poisoning the planet…it's just tearing me apart
inside." "How could she say those things?" continued Tillerson, his voice breaking. "A heartless capitalist? Is that all I am to her? I
actually feel sick to my stomach. I don't know what else to say." Sources confirmed that upon hearing that Samantha
called him "a greedy bastard," Tillerson drew the blinds of his spacious corner office and sat in stunned
silence for several minutes before meekly requesting that his secretary hold any incoming calls and cancel all his meetings and
appearances for the remainder of the week. When informed that roommate Jenny Gagnon bolstered Huestis' tirade by connecting
ExxonMobil's carbon emissions with the plight of polar bears, the leader of the world's largest publicly traded oil company reportedly
buried his head in his hands and repeated the phrase "This can't be happening." "He's really taking the news hard," said
executive assistant Pam Geary, who admitted that Huestis' attacks on ExxonMobil's environmental record,
executive pay practices, and public skepticism of climate-change science had shocked Tillerson, causing him
to wonder aloud how Huestis could be so cruel. "When he heard that Samantha called the company evil, the poor guy went
Fearing that this could be
white as a sheet and just slumped in his chair. It was heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking."
"the beginning of the end" for the world's third-largest corporation, Tillerson told
reporters he was considering giving Huestis a call at her work-study job to smooth
things over. Tillerson also discussed taking his private Learjet to Saratoga Springs to confront Samantha during her intramural
broomball game about why she called ExxonMobil "a shitty company," but his associates advised against it. "How can I possibly move
on from this?" said Tillerson, who canceled a lunch date with hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin
Abdul Aziz al-Saud, stating that he had lost his appetite. "Sure,
we recorded more than $9 billion in profits
last quarter and our stock price is near an all-time high, but that doesn't mean
anything anymore—not when Samantha thinks I'm selfish." By early evening, after reportedly
cycling through a range of emotions from humiliation to anger to despair, Tillerson acknowledged that he had begun to take Huestis'
message to heart, leading him to question ExxonMobil's entire corporate mission . "You know what, maybe she's right," said
Tillerson, staring at his own image on a framed cover of Forbes magazine. "Maybe we are just a
moneygrubbing octopus that doesn't care about anyone else but ourselves. I guess the only conceivable
course of action is to abandon our $400-billion-a-year business model and focus exclusively on clean energy,
like she suggested." "It will certainly cost a lot of money, but it's like Samantha says: We're the most profitable corporation in the
world, so what does it matter to us?" Tillerson continued. "I just hope she's willing to give me a second chance." At press time, the
Israeli government was reportedly holding its breath on word that Huestis had stopped to read a flyer for the
campus group Students for Palestine.
No solvency - our Nation Shudders At Large Blocks Of Uninterrupted Text

The Onion 2010 (March 9, Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text, http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-shudders-
at-large-block-of-uninterrupted-te,16932/)
WASHINGTON—Unable to rest their eyes on a colorful photograph or boldface heading that could be easily skimmed and forgotten
about, Americans collectively recoiled Monday when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text.
Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without
an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by
the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words. "Why won't it just tell me what it's about?" said
Boston resident Charlyne Thomson, who was bombarded with the overwhelming mass of black text late
Monday afternoon. "There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I've looked everywhere—there's nothing here but words."
"Ow," Thomson added after reading the first and last lines in an attempt to get the gist of whatever the article, review, or possibly recipe
was about. At 3:16 p.m., a deafening sigh was heard across the country as the nation grappled with the
Murray 84
daunting cascade of syllables, whose unfamiliar letter-upon-letter structure stretched on for an endless 500
words. Children wailed for the attention of their bewildered parents, businesses were shuttered, and local governments ground to a halt
as Americans scanned the text in vain for a web link to click on. Sources also reported a 450 percent rise in temple rubbing and under-
the-breath cursing around this time. "It demands so much of my time and concentration," said Chicago resident Dale Huza, who was
confronted by the confusing mound of words early Monday afternoon. "This large block of text, it expects me to figure
everything out on my own, and I hate it." "I've never seen anything like it," said Mark Shelton, a high school teacher from St.
Paul, MN who stared blankly at the page in front of him for several minutes before finally holding it up to his ear. "What does it want
As the public grows more desperate, scholars are working to randomly
from us?"
italicize different sections of the text, hoping the italics will land on the important
parts and allow everyone to go on with their day. For now, though, millions of panicked and exhausted
Americans continue to repetitively search the single column of print from top to bottom and right to left, looking for even the slightest
semblance of meaning or perhaps a blurb. Some have speculated that the never-ending flood of sentences may be a news article,
medical study, urgent product recall notice, letter, user agreement, or even a binding contract of some kind. But until the news does a
segment in which they take sections of the text and read them aloud in a slow, calm voice while highlighting those same words on the
screen, no one can say for sure. There are some, however, who remain unfazed by the virtual hailstorm of alternating consonants and
vowels, and are determined to ignore it. "I'm sure if it's important enough, they'll let us know some other way,"
Detroit local Janet Landsman said. "After all, it can't be that serious. If there were anything worthwhile
buried deep in that block of impenetrable English, it would at least have an accompanying photo of a
celebrity or a large humorous title containing a pop culture reference." Added Landsman, "Whatever it is, I'm pretty
sure it doesn't even have a point."
The impact is that listening to their bullshit will waste your life, instead you should go read
a book or bungee jump because doing anything is better than listening to this
might have a chance this year. The
husband and father of two said that every time he's felt at all
heard muttering to himself that he couldn't believe he was almost 40 years old. "Twenty minutes here, 10 minutes there. It
all starts to add up," said Richman, who sat down and figured out that between stupid discussions about favorite baby names and
reviews of restaurants in cities he'll never visit, he'd wasted 390 hours of his life. " And
you know what the worst
part is? It's my fault. Here I thought being considerate to others by always listening
patiently to what they had to say was the right thing to do. Well, fuck me, right?"
According to Richman, he started
thinking about how much time he's flushed down the toilet being an
approachable person after a work meeting in which he let a coworker, David Martin, ramble on and on with
an idea everyone knew was "total shit" the moment the man opened his mouth. Richman said that a single glance at
the clock made him realize he had just spent 14 minutes of his finite time on earth not playing with his kids
or being with his wife, but listening to garbage. "It was like I stepped out of my body and saw
myself actually listening to this man's worthless drivel—but it wasn't him who looked
like a moron, it was me," Richman said. "I was nodding my head like an asshole and saying
ridiculous things like, 'Right,' and, 'I see your point, Dave,' when I should have just
said, 'Dave, your idea isn't good and you are wasting our time and you need to shut
Murray 85
up right now.'" By his estimates, Richman's receptiveness has resulted in 160 irreplaceable hours of listening
to grossly uninformed political opinions, 300 hours of carefully hearing out both sides of pointless
added. "It's true. That's a trip to Europe right there."
Murray 86
***Policy Links
Murray 87
Link – Oil Wells

Oil advantage is non-unique – the US is already liberating oil wells across the globe
The Onion 2003 ("137 More Oil Wells Liberated For Democracy" http://www.theonion.com/articles/137-more-oil-wells-liberated-for-
democracy,152/)
The U.S. continued to make progress in its fight against totalitarianism Tuesday, when 137 more oil wells
were liberated for democracy. "For decades, these oil wells have suffered untold misery under Saddam Hussein's tyrannical rule,"
said U.S. Commander General Tommy Franks, speaking from southern Iraq's Rumailah oil fields, the site of the liberation. "With this
victory, these long-oppressed wells will soon pump their first barrels of crude as free and equal wells in the global petroleum
marketplace. They will join the ranks of the world's liberated oil wells, enjoying the same rights as their democratic brethren around the
globe." The Rumailah wells are the latest of nearly 900 to be freed from the yoke of oppression by coalition forces. As U.S. troops
continue to advance deeper into Iraq–armed with constant standing orders to "Secure the oil wells; repeat,
secure the oil wells"–an estimated 1,500 more wells are expected to be liberated in the coming weeks. For
months, U.S. officials have gone to great lengths to assure the public, both in America and abroad, that the Iraq invasion is not motivated
by oil interests–a sentiment echoed by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld during a press conference Monday. "This war is not
about oil," Rumsfeld said. "Our decision to intercede against this dictator and not against the dozens of other ruthless dictators in the
world is not about oil. France and Russia's opposition to this war is not about the purely coincidental fact that both countries have
lucrative, pre-existing oil contracts with Iraq. Furthermore, the interest of many U.S. corporations in the war has nothing
to do with oil, either. This war is about liberty. Oil wells deserve liberty, too." Continued Rumsfeld: "These
oppressed Iraqi oil wells deserve the right to pump oil as freely as any other oil well on God's Earth–be it in Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, or an
Alaskan wildlife refuge. It is crass and cynical to view this operation as being motivated by greed, profit, or the second-largest oil
reserves in the Middle East. This war is motivated by one thing: democracy. Our military action is meant to
provide all of Iraq's oil wells–be they big or small, staggeringly lucrative or merely very lucrative–with their
God-given right to pump under a democratic system of self-governance ." In the weeks leading up to the war, the U.S.
sought to make its intentions clear by air-dropping hundreds of thousands of pamphlets over Iraq assuring its people that the U.S. was
not launching a war against them, but against Saddam Hussein. The pamphlets also gave Iraqi soldiers instructions on how to surrender
properly, as well as a promise that they would be treated well if they did so. Most importantly, though, they included a stern admonition
to all Iraqis not to burn any oil wells, warning that they would be hunted down and prosecuted as war criminals if they did. U.S. officials
hope that the pamphlets' message, especially the part about the oil wells, gets through. "These valuable natural resources
belong to the Iraqi people, who rely on their output for desperately needed food and medicine under the
U.N.'s Oil-For-Food Program," Franks said. "But ultimately, we need to remember that these oil wells do not really belong to
anybody. They, like any other free oil well, have the basic, inalienable right to independent representational government and self-
determination under their own rule. Every oil well deserves to choose how and when it wishes to produce oil, and for whose economic
benefit." Aiding the wells in their transition to democracy will be Texaco, Mobil, and other U.S. businesses,
each of which bring years of expertise in dealing with the problems and challenges that oil wells face in a
free society. These private companies will be well-equipped to help manage the oil wells as they make the difficult adjustment to
producing oil in freedom. Despite the apparent inevitability of victory in Iraq, White House sources stress that the battle for oil-well
liberty is far from over. "We must remember that there are many, many oil wells living under oppression all
across the world, not just in Iraq," White House press secretary Ari Fleischer said. "Until every oil well enjoys the
fruits of democracy, no oil well is truly free."
Murray 88
Link – War on Terror
War on Terror strong now - US Government has Not Forgotten About Osaka Binn Rogen
The Onion 2010 (April 6, "U.S. Government: We Have Not Forgotten About Osaka Binn Rogen" http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-
government-we-have-not-forgotten-about-osaka-bi,17209/)
WASHINGTON—High-ranking intelligence officials said Monday that the military was still aggressively pursuing
notorious terrorist Osaka Binn Rogen, declaring that they had not forgotten about bringing the leader of the
Al Hydra network to justice. U.S. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates assured citizens that American forces were actively
hunting down Osaka Binn Rogen, and asserted that locating the mastermind behind the tragic 19-11 attacks is as pressing now as it was
when their search first began, six or 10 years ago or however long it's been. "This homicidal madman committed terrible atrocities
against the American people, and we have never, ever lost sight of that," Gates said. "Binn Rogen is the most wanted man on the planet,
and he remains our No. 1 priority." "We have only one thing to say to this heinous individual," Gates added. "We will find you, Osaka
Binn Rogen." Based upon field surveillance and intelligence, officials recently widened the search for Orlama
Win Roben by dispatching CIA paramilitary officers and Delta Force soldiers to track down, capture, or
assassinate the terrorist leader, who has been described as a "very bad, very tall guy with a beard ." "Every
single day our brave soldiers are out plastering wanted posters with Owanda Bun Luvin's face on buildings, telephone poles, and
surrounding trees," Gen. Stanley McChrystal said. "We are constantly scouring the dangerous borderlands of Latvia for
this terrible, terrible man." "It's Latvia, right?" McChrystal added . "Either Latvia or Liberia or somewhere like that.
You know, that general area." Addressing reporters at a press conference Tuesday, McChrystal assured Americans that the
U.S. military "would not rest" until the terrorist fugitive was found, and that they had "in no way" forgotten
about the destruction Bun Loven and his extremalist followers had wrought upon the great city of Chicago.
"The memories of the El Mida terrorist attacks are forever seared into our minds," McChrystal said. "It may have been decades ago, but
the emotional wounds still haven't healed. Believe me, Paga Tin Stogen will pay." According to CIA director Leon Panetta, although
Pajama On Llama has thus far eluded U.S. forces, Panetta was optimistic that the founder of the La Tostada network would be captured
or assassinated, pointing to a successful missile strike last month that almost killed a member of the Tallywacker. "I'm pretty sure we
got the No. 2 or No. 3 guy," said Panetta. "Didn't we? It was someone in the top 10, for sure." Members of Congress and U.S. allies
agreed that Okenny Ben Loggens was very much present in their minds. Sen. Richard Lugar (R-IN), ranking member of the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee, pledged "any necessary resources" to help hunt down the evil man who planned the horrific attacks on the
World Trade Federation, as well as the Octagon. "We should really try to find him soon, or as soon as is realistic, given that he is so
hard to find," Lugar said. "This is Oggie Ring Quabben we're talking about after all." Afghan president Hamid Karzai, who
recommended checking a few countries to the left, said that he also was dedicated to finding the terrorist
leader. "I don't see Osama that often," Karzai said. "But next time I do, I'll definitely let him know that our
allies are looking for him."
We control the root cause - terrorists do not start the day with a good breakfast.
Rethinking breakfast is key
The Onion 2000 (April 19, Report: Most Terrorists Do Not Start The Day Off With A Good Breakfast,
http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-most-terrorists-do-not-start-the-day-off-wi,3566/)
GENEVA, SWITZERLAND–In a report that is prompting some to rethink the causes of terrorism, the World
Health Organization announced Monday that a startling 96 percent of international terrorists do not start off
the day with a good breakfast. "Very few of those who use violence to advance their radical agendas enjoy a
healthy, well-balanced breakfast with selections from a variety of food groups ," WHO director Johann Bruckhörst-
Kliebe said. "These findings make it clear that when it comes to the problem of fighting terrorism, nutrition may
play a far more important role than previously believed."
Murray 89
Link – Senate bad
The Onion 2010 (March 30, U.S. Government To Save Billions By Cutting Wasteful Senator Program,
http://www.theonion.com/articles/us-government-to-save-billions-by-cutting-wasteful,17171/)
WASHINGTON—In an effort to reduce wasteful spending and eliminate non-vital federal services, the U.S. government
announced plans this week to cut its long-standing senator program, a move it says will help save more than
$300 billion each year. According to officials, the decision to cut the national legislative body was reached during a budget review
meeting on Tuesday. After hours of deliberation,
it was agreed that the cost of financing U.S. senators
far outweighed the benefits they provided. "Now more than ever, we must eliminate needless spending
wherever possible," President Obama said at a press conference Wednesday. "When we sat down to go over our annual budget, we
asked ourselves, where can we safely trim back? What programs can we do away with without negatively impacting the American
people? Which bloated and ineffective institutions can we no longer justify having around?" "The answer was obvious," Obama added.
"The U.S. Senate just needed to go." Established in 1789 as a means of overseeing the passage of bills into law, the
once-promising senator program has reportedly failed to contribute to the governing of the nation in any
significant way since 1964. Last year alone, approximately $450 billion was funneled into the legislative chamber, an amount
deemed fiscally unsound considering how few citizens actually benefit in any way from its existence. In fact, the program has gone
unchecked for so long that many in Washington are now unable to recall what purpose U.S. senators were originally meant to serve.
"I'm sure when it was first introduced the U.S. Senate seemed like a worthwhile public service that would aid
vast segments of the population and play an important role in the years to come," said Sheila McKenzie, president of
the watchdog group the American Center for Responsible Government. "But in reality, this program has been a complete and utter
failure." "It simply doesn't work," she added. "We've been pouring taxpayer dollars into this outdated relic for far too long ." An
analysis conducted last week revealed a number of troubling flaws within the long-running, heavily
subsidized program, including a lack of consistent oversight, no clear objectives or goals, the persistent
hiring of unqualified and selfishly motivated individuals, and a 100 percent redundancy rate among its
employees. Moreover, the study found that the U.S. government already funds a fully operational legislative
body that appears to do the exact same job as the Senate, but which also provides a fair and proportional
representation of the nation's citizens and has rules in place to prevent one individual from holding the
operations of the entire chamber hostage until he is guaranteed massive federal spending projects for his home state of
Alabama. Not only have U.S. Senators cost the country billions of dollars in misspent funds over the years, but Washington
insiders claim they have also derailed a wide range of other government programs, from social welfare to job
creation to environmental protection. "Even just the space the Senate currently occupies could be put to better use," consumer
advocate Michael Dodgerson said. "Were the government to open a day-care center, a homeless shelter, or even an affordable restaurant
in that building, it would make more of a difference in the lives of everyday Americans than what's there now." So far, reaction to the
cutback has been overwhelming positive, with many across the country calling it a long-awaited step toward progress. Still, a small
pocket of the nation's populace vehemently disagreed with Tuesday's decision. "This is outrageous," said Joe Lieberman, a
Connecticut-area resident and concerned citizen who makes more than $150,000 a year, enjoys full health
care benefits, and lives comfortably in a large, non-foreclosed home. "The U.S. Senate has always looked out
for my best interests. It's always done right by me." Added Lieberman, "Without it, I'll have no choice but to exploit my
extensive connections in the real estate, legal, insurance, and pharmaceutical industries to obtain strictly honorary positions at large
companies that, in exchange for my subservience over the years and the prestige of my name, will compensate me generously and allow
me to continue living a privileged life without contributing even a moment of my time to the society that has made it all possible."
Murray 90
Link – Economic Doomsaying
You guys are being real downers about the economy. No one wants to hear that.
The Onion 2009 (May 4, "Nation Ready To Be Lied To About Economy Again", http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-ready-to-be-
lied-to-about-economy-again,2717/)
After nearly four months of frank, honest, and open dialogue about the failing economy, a weary U.S.
populace announced this week that it is once again ready to be lied to about the current state of the financial
system. Tired of hearing the grim truth about their economic future, Americans demanded that the bald-
faced lies resume immediately, particularly whenever politicians feel the need to
divulge another terrifying problem with Wall Street, the housing market, or any one
of a hundred other ticking time bombs everyone was better off not knowing about. In
addition, citizens are requesting that the phrase, "It will only get worse before it gets better," be permanently replaced with, "Things are
going great. Enjoy yourselves." "I thought I wanted a new era of transparency and accountability, but honestly, I
just can't handle it," Ohio resident Nathan Pletcher said. "All I ever hear about now is how my retirement has been pushed back 15
years and how I won't be able to afford my daughter's tuition when she grows up." "From now on, just tell me the bullshit I want to
hear," Pletcher added. "Tell me my savings are okay, everybody has a job, and we're No. 1 again. Please, just lie to my face." The
national call for decreased candor began last month, after the Department of Labor released another soul-
crushing report that most Americans agreed "wasn't helping anything" and "didn't need to be so specific, at
least." The report estimated that 663,000 private and public sector jobs were lost in the month of March—a revealing statistic many
people found shockingly blunt. Responding to the new information, an overwhelming majority of citizens said they believe that, during
these extremely uncertain times, our leaders have a responsibility to come together, sit the American people down, and lie through their
teeth about everything from misappropriations of taxpayer dollars to the severity of the credit crisis. "I don't need to be constantly
reminded that the lack of regulations on Wall Street compounded with failing institutions like AIG basically plunged the world economy
into a global recession," said 32-year-old office manager Alexis Harrington. "What I want is for someone to tell me with a straight face
that the GDP is through the roof so that I can feel better and instantly forget what all these terms even mean." "For the first time in my
life I know who the secretary of the treasury is," Harrington continued. "And I don't like it." Reluctantly informed citizens like
Harrington have also asked that CEOs of the nation's five largest banks release a joint statement saying that the October bailout worked
perfectly, normal lending has resumed, and that we're nowhere close to having the entire monetary system collapse upon itself like a
house of cards. According to a CBS News/New York Times poll, 98 percent of Americans no longer appreciate President Barack
Obama's attempts to break down the economic crisis into simple terms they can understand. Instead, many say the president should have
the decency to insult their intelligence by using complex jargon to confuse and deceive them, perhaps even implying that the subprime
mortgage fallout was just a big misunderstanding that resulted from a clerical error. "I know when he's telling the truth, and it bothers
me," recently laid-off schoolteacher Mary Hanover said of Obama. "He gets this serious expression on his face and says things like,
'This is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.' Who needs to hear that? For Christ's sake, smile a bit and say
we just found a diamond mine under Montana that's going to pay for everything. I'll believe you." "Please,
treat me like a child. Treat me like a five-year-old," Sacramento resident David Cooke, 64, wrote in a letter to Congress. "I
lost everything when the Dow tanked, and I'm too old to start working again, so why punish me further by explaining in detail the clever
ways these investment firms ripped me off and how they're all going to get away with it?" Thus far, many policymakers in Washington
have responded favorably to their constituents' requests, saying they respect and understand the public's need for dishonesty. "I think we
can accommodate the American people on this," Senate majority leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters. "Why, just today we made
excellent progress with GM, whose CEO Fritz Henderson told us that every penny of federal and taxpayer funds would go directly to the
construction of three new auto plants in Detroit that will create over 90,000 new jobs and spark the economic rebound we've been
waiting for." Continued Reid, "Things are looking very, very bright."
Murray 91
2NC Economic Doomsaying
The economy will slowly recover now – most recent data says jobs are growing and exports
are up
Economic Doomsaying collapses the economy – people don’t spend during bad times they
save money for the future. That dries up capital flows which are necessary for banks to
make small business loans. That collapses consumer spending and job growth from the
bottom-up which can’t be solved by federal policy because interest rates are already at 0%.
The only impact to economic collapse assumes the logic of preemption that the alternative
solves – Holcomb says empirically the tragic frame makes enemy creation inevitable during
recessions. They make their diversionary war AND trade disputes internal links inevitable
and only the alt can solve them.
Murray 92
Link – Fixing Things
The Onion 2008 (November 5, "Nation Finally Shitty Enough To Make Social Progress" http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-
finally-shitty-enough-to-make-social-progre,2594/)
WASHINGTON—After emerging victorious from one of the most pivotal elections in history, president-elect Barack Obama will
assume the role of commander in chief on Jan. 20, shattering a racial barrier the United States is, at long last, shitty enough to overcome.
Although polls going into the final weeks of October showed Sen. Obama in the lead, it remained unclear
whether the failing economy, dilapidated housing market, crumbling national infrastructure, health care
crisis, energy crisis, and five-year-long disastrous war in Iraq had made the nation crappy enough to rise
above 300 years of racial prejudice and make lasting change. "Today the American people have made their
voices heard, and they have said, 'Things are finally as terrible as we're willing to tolerate, " said Obama,
addressing a crowd of unemployed, uninsured, and debt-ridden supporters. "To elect a black man, in this country, and at this time—these
last eight years must have really broken you." Added Obama, "It's a great day for our nation." Carrying a majority of the
popular vote, Obama did especially well among women and young voters, who polls showed were
particularly sensitive to the current climate of everything being fucked. Another contributing factor to Obama's victory,
political experts said, may have been the growing number of Americans who, faced with the complete collapse of their country, were at
last able to abandon their preconceptions and cast their vote for a progressive African-American. Citizens with eyes, ears, and the ability
to wake up and realize what truly matters in the end are also believed to have played a crucial role in Tuesday's election. According to a
CNN exit poll, 42 percent of voters said that the nation's financial woes had finally become frightening enough
to eclipse such concerns as gay marriage, while 30 percent said that the relentless body count in Iraq was at
last harrowing enough to outweigh long ideological debates over abortion. In addition, 28 percent of voters were
reportedly too busy paying off medical bills, desperately trying not to lose their homes, or watching their futures disappear to dismiss
Obama any longer. "The election of our first African-American president truly shows how far we've come as a nation," said NBC
Nightly News anchor Brian Williams. "Just eight years ago, this moment would have been unthinkable. But finally
we, as a country, have joined together, realized we've reached rock bottom, and for the first time voted for a
candidate based on his policies rather than the color of his skin." "Today Americans have grudgingly taken a
giant leap forward," Williams continued. "And all it took was severe economic downturn, a bloody and
unjust war, terrorist attacks on lower Manhattan, nearly 2,000 deaths in New Orleans, and more than three
centuries of frequently violent racial turmoil." Said Williams, "The American people should be commended for their long-
overdue courage." Obama's victory is being called the most significant change in politics since the 1992 election, when a full-scale
economic recession led voters to momentarily ignore the fact that candidate Bill Clinton had once smoked marijuana. While many
believed things had once again reached an all-time low in 2004, the successful reelection of President George
W. Bush—despite historically low approval ratings nationwide—proved that things were not quite shitty
enough to challenge the already pretty shitty status quo. "If Obama learned one thing from his predecessors, it's that
timing means everything," said Dr. James Pung, a professor of political science at Princeton University. "Less than a decade ago, Al
Gore made the crucial mistake of suggesting we should care about preserving the environment before it became unavoidably clear that
global warming would kill us all, and in 2004, John Kerry cost himself the presidency by saying we should pull out of Iraq months
before everyone realized our invasion had become a complete and total quagmire." "Obama had the foresight to run for
president at a time when being an African-American was not as important to Americans as, say, the ability to
clothe and feed their children," Pung continued. "An election like this only comes once, maybe twice, in a lifetime." As we
enter a new era of equality for all people, the election of Barack Obama will decidedly be a milestone in U.S.
history, undeniable proof that Americans, when pushed to the very brink, are willing to look past outward
appearances and judge a person by the quality of his character and strength of his record. So as long as that
person is not a woman.
Murray 93
Link – Hegemony
We control uniqueness - last time I checked, this was America

The Onion 2010 (June 5, Last Time Sources Checked This Still America, http://www.theonion.com/articles/last-time-sources-checked-
this-still-america,17545/)
WASHINGTON—All across the country, from Maine to Mississippi, sources
confirmed this week that last time they
checked this was still America, and would remain America, like it or not. Despite what the mainstream media would
like sources to believe, those interviewed said Tuesday that, unless they missed something while they were sleeping, the United States of
America had not turned overnight into some communist-type nation that didn't care about ideals like freedom, liberty, or democracy
anymore. "I've never been very good at geography, but I'm pretty sure this isn't China we're supposed to be
living in," Denver resident Jim Sanborn said. "At least, I didn't see any tanks rolling down the street last time I looked out my
window." "Nope," added Sanborn, pulling back the curtain of his kitchen window. "Sure doesn't look like Beijing to me." The fifth
largest and single greatest country in the world, the United States of America was founded in 1776 when our founding forefathers—who
sources claimed were turning over in their goddamn graves right now—signed the Declaration of Independence. The Bill of Rights was
ratified 13 years later, guaranteeing each citizen freedom, the cost of which is reportedly not free. "You know, I seem to recall a whole
lot of our young men dying so that we could have these many liberties we enjoy," Rebecca Treeman, a Miami-area mother of four, told
reporters. "So excuse me if I don't jump with joy every time I see someone trashing the red, white, and blue." Treeman went on to
explain that these colors, which make up the American flag, do not run. A survey conducted by Rasmussen Reports
bolstered sources' claims that more and more people don't seem to know that this was founded as a Christian
nation, and that a majority of them that don't would be better off packing up and moving some place where
they don't believe in things like the Bible. Eighty-three percent of those polled said the United States is not some backwards
socialist haven; 64 percent believed that the United States was not France or Sweden or some godforsaken place like Iraq; 29 percent
said the government had no business getting involved; and 14 percent said that America was still America and would stay that way if
they had anything to do with it. Sources admitted that new policies introduced by you-know-who in the White
House had given some the impression that America was a big old cash machine that liked to give handouts to
any illegal immigrant who wandered across the border. But, they asserted, a close examination of the
population at large reveals that, yup, we still speak a language called English around here . "I respect people of all
races and colors," said contractor Dave Altschul of Santa Fe, NM. "But hardworking
Americans are losing their
jobs every day. I don't know about you, but I'd rather celebrate the Fourth of July
than Cinco de Mayo." "Last time I read the Constitution, it didn't say anything about Mexico," Altschul
added. Upon hearing that New York's redevelopment plans for the site of its 9/11 attack may include a 13-story mosque, a number of
sources said they were confused by this fact, and asked reporters why they didn't get the memo that all 300 million Americans had
converted to Islam all of a sudden. Sources also confirmed USA! USA! USA! USA! "In the final analysis, it
is the diversity of people and ideas that makes our nation great," sociologist Rick Harper of Georgetown University said. "However, just
because people have the right to say that doesn't mean that they should. This is America. Love it or leave it."
Murray 94
Link – Libya
The symbolic freedom provided by Libya won’t last
The Onion 2011 ("America Gets Set To Enjoy Month Or So Of Libya Seeming Like Symbol Of Freedom"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/america-gets-set-to-enjoy-month-or-so-of-libya-see,21228/)
GRAND RAPIDS, MI—Americans across the nation told reporters Wednesday that with the collapse of
Muammar Qaddafi’s despotic regime, they were preparing to savor the next month or so of Libya seeming
like an inspirational symbol of freedom. “We’ve got a nice four weeks of thinking Libya represents a triumph
of liberty before the situation begins to deteriorate and some new form of authoritarianism inevitably asserts
itself,” said Michigan-based architect Wes Reinhorn, adding that while he was looking forward to the nation potentially
serving as a model for other Arab countries, he would eventually realize the situation in the region was very complex,
and any hope he had of Libya transforming things for the better would presumably fade away by October.
“We should all enjoy this stirring image of Libya as a beacon of democracy before Islamists or a new
military strongman moves in to fill the power vacuum.” Other Americans , however, said that after a month of
looking to Libya as a symbol of freedom, they planned to simply stop paying attention to the nation
altogether.
Murray 95
Link - Security
No Matter How Much You Protect Your Kids, Sooner Or Later One Of Them's Going To
Drown In A Swimming Pool
The Onion 2011 ("No Matter How Much You Protect Your Kids, Sooner Or Later One Of Them's Going To Drown In A Swimming
Pool" http://www.theonion.com/articles/no-matter-how-much-you-protect-your-kids-sooner-or,26255/)
As parents, the responsibility to keep our children safe is an obligation we all take very seriously. Our homes
are fortified with baby gates and monitors, outlet covers and drawer locks, every safety gizmo under the sun—and yet,
when our child gets a tiny boo-boo on her knee, we still feel that twinge of guilt for letting it happen. But the truth is, there's only so
much even the best mommies and daddies can do for their kids. Like it or not, it's only a matter of time before one of your
children drowns in a swimming pool. That's because of one simple truth: You will—I repeat, will—make
mistakes. You are not perfect. No parent is. You're a human being, and you don't have eyes growing out of the back of your head. If
you think you can raise a family without one of your kids drowning in a pool, guess again. It won't happen every day, of
course. In fact, it'll hardly happen at all. But it will happen, because sooner or later your back will be turned
while you're talking to your neighbor about the new restaurant that just opened where that Tex-Mex place
used to be, and your 3-year-old will slip out onto the patio, pop open the screen door, and toddle into the
water. Sure, you could beat yourself up about it. You could frantically drag your son out of the pool he's been floating in for half an
hour, all the while thinking, "I'm such a terrible parent. I bet I'm the worst parent in the whole world." But you know what? You're not
wearing a big red cape right now, which means you're not Superman (or Superwoman). By all means, attempt to resuscitate your child,
but if it doesn't work, there's no point in dwelling on it till the end of time. Face it, certain things in childhood are
inevitable: night terrors and tummy aches, scrapes and bumps, and drowning in a backyard pool because
you've got the TV up so loud you can't hear the splash or even the dog barking like crazy. That's not bad parenting, that's
just how the world works. Honestly, if you think there's a parent out there who won't someday need to have a 911 dispatcher talk them
through CPR, you're living in a dream world. Oh, and don't look at me for a role model. I may be an expert, but I goof up, too! I read
all the books—heck, I've written half of them—but that didn't stop me from accidentally leaving the pool gate unlatched one day and
allowing my middle one, Zach, to plop right into the water while I was on the phone with American Express. I thought to myself, "Susie,
you've got some nerve giving other folks advice on raising their children when here you are fishing your own kid out of the deep end."
But my husband, who was watching baseball in the living room when Zach fell in, said something I'll never forget. He said, "Well, there
may be an award for Parents of Year, but no one's ever won it." That's so true! It's always been this way, and it always will. Think about
your brother or sister who drowned in a pool when you were a kid. Did that make your parents terrible? Of course not. And guess
what? No matter what you do, no matter how much you shelter them, your surviving children are going to
grow up one day and have kids of their own who drown in a pool. Why? It's just a little thing called life. And
how do you want to live it? You could spend all day worrying about whether you should've gotten your kids
swimming lessons sooner or whether you should've bought a more expensive childproof latch for the door.
Or you can just embrace parenting in all its messiness and accept that sometimes your child's just going to
drown 20 feet away from you while you're vacuuming the living room. Remember, raising kids is tough. But
when it's all said and done, most of them live.
Murray 96
Link – Apocalypse Reps
Recent studies prove all American problems could be solved by just stopping and thinking
for two seconds
The Onion 2011 ("Study: All American Problems Could Be Solved By Just Stopping And Thinking For Two Seconds"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-all-american-problems-could-be-solved-by-jus,20515/)
CHAPEL HILL, NC—A study published Thursday by psychologists at the University of North Carolina concluded
that all American problems—from stuck jacket zippers to the national debt—could be solved if citizens just
stopped, took a deep breath, and thought for two seconds before they acted. "We found that in 93 percent of cases, a
positive outcome could have been achieved if Americans simply splashed a little water on their faces prior to dealing with an unfair
boss, being out of clean spoons, signing on to direct a second Wall Street film, or answering a call from a parent," Janet Mallory, the
study's lead author, told reporters. "Our data indicate that when U.S. citizens don't take a second to compose
themselves, they typically charge in like maniacs and hurt either themselves or several million Iraqi
civilians." Mallory said a good rule of thumb for Americans is to think of a plan, stop, and then do the
complete opposite.
Murray 97
Link – Prolif
Prolif inevitable - they has the means and motive to proliferate – the price of nuclear
secrets is plummeting
The Onion, 2004 (Price Of Nuclear Secrets Plummeting, SRM)
WASHINGTON, DC—Top-secret information about the design, construction, and delivery of nuclear weapons
has never been more affordable than it is today, CIA Director George Tenet announced Monday. Enlarge
ImagePlans for weapons like Pakistan's medium-range Shaheen II missile are cheaper than ever. "We're seeing items like warhead
blueprints and uranium-enrichment instructions go for a fraction of what they used to cost," Tenet said. "There's never been a
better time to snag a deal on low-mass, high-yield weaponry schematics. Countries like Iran and North Korea
are finding that it's a real buyer's market." Tenet said he expects prices to continue to decline. "These bargain prices will create more buyers, which will in
turn widen the black market to include more sellers," Tenet said. "If this trend continues, then by 2010, nuclear secrets will be well within the reach of Uzbekistan, Morocco, and
pretty much anyone else with enough money to buy a used car." The trend toward cheaper, more readily available nuclear secrets began in the early '90s, when Pakistani scientists
sold plans and equipment for uranium-refining gas centrifuges to Iran and Iraq. While the price initially hovered around $100 million, the expanding market quickly drove prices
down. "Three years ago, a complete W-88 warhead data suite went to the Chinese for a sum in the mid-nine figures," CIA nuclear-weapons specialist Mitch Romano said. "Now, you
can pick up that W-88 data in Central Asia for a tenth of that cost—and they'll deliver it free." Romano cited another example of plunging prices. "About six months ago, one of our
wiretaps recorded the sale of plans for a two-foot, 12-megaton warhead to a Quebecois separatist cell for slightly more than $1 million," Romano said. "Yesterday, the plans surfaced
again, this time on the Internet. It was eBay item #2899538529, and it had a 'Buy it now' price of $18,500." Romano assured the public that the CIA has the seller, a San Diego-based
car-audio retailer with the screen name of BatVette65, under strict surveillance. "He's got tons of new deals every week," Romano said. "Right now, he's got plans for an artillery-
Romano said that, although prices are plunging, quality is
launched supergun nuke and a set of blueprints for cool old vintage Soviet-era silos."
improving. "We're not talking about a waist-high stack of floppy disks storing instructions for some clunky
old atom bomb," Romano said. "We're talking detailed specs on a U.S.-produced Special Atomic Demolition
Munitions suitcase device. Those are great little bombs that you can't even get on the straight market anymore, because of the Spratt-Furse law." Martin Woess, an
atomic-intelligence branch operative from Great Britain's MI-6, said prices are so low that virtually any political organization that wants a nuclear program can afford one. "Last
week, we investigated reports that a cell in Edinburgh had sold classified British intelligence information to an American group," Woess said. "The group turned out to be the Young
Republicans organization at the University of Virginia." "NATO has since classified the group as a Class D potential nuclear threat," Woess added. At least one intelligence expert
"It was an embarrassment to our country that Abdul Qadeer Khan
expressed trepidation over the booming nuclear-secrets economy.
sold nuclear secrets and technology to Iran, Libya, and North Korea," said General Mohammed Kanazwa, a
senior officer for Pakistani military intelligence. "But it was all the more embarrassing when we found out
that he had sold them in the 'Bargains Under $100' section of the Cleveland Plain Dealer ." As dire as the news may
seem, Tenet stressed the difference between acquiring the technical know-how necessary to build a nuclear-weapons program and
actually initiating such a program. "Although nuclear-weapons intelligence may be selling for less than a thousandth
of its Cold War price, the buyer would still require qualified personnel and hard-to-find materials to actually
construct a device," Tenet said. "They may be able to get plans for a bomb for a few pennies, but weapons-
grade plutonium, when available, sells for hundreds, sometimes thousands of dollars a pound."
Murray 98
Link – Iran
Threat of Iran is high - they posses trillions of potentially dangerous atoms.
The Onion 2007 (U.S. Intelligence: Iran Possesses Trillions Of Potentially Dangerous Atoms, SRM)
WASHINGTON—Barely two months after U.N. inspectors in Iran failed to find evidence of an active nuclear
weapons program, the Department of Homeland Security uncovered new information Monday proving the
Middle Eastern nation has obtained literally trillions of atoms—the same particles sometimes used to make
atomic bombs—for unknown purposes. "We have no doubt that Iran now possesses an alarming number of atoms within its
borders, despite countless warnings from the international community," Secretary of Homeland Security Michael Chertoff said at a press
conference Monday afternoon, as he pointed to a satellite image marked with dozens of locations where his office claims the
unauthorized atoms are being held. "The Iranians maintain the atoms are only being used to form the building
blocks of all existence, but we cannot afford to take that risk." The atoms, which DHS officials believe to be "the
smallest indivisible units of any element," were first discovered in aerial photographs taken of a laboratory in central Isfahan. When the
photographs were enlarged several hundred thousand times, additional clusters of atoms—known in intelligence circles
as "matter"—were spotted in large cargo trucks parked nearby the facility, in storage units on the grounds,
and in the pockets, shoes, clothing, hair, and skin of several nuclear physicists in the parking lot. More alarming,
officials said, is the "very likely" possibility that there are more atoms inside the laboratory. " The threat of atoms in Iran is real,"
said Chertoff, showing reporters an empty vial to illustrate his point. "Even as we speak, Iranians are turning
millions of carbon atoms into a powerful energy source they can use to strengthen their armies, pilots,
president, and someday perhaps, a team of nuclear physicists." Earlier this month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice
made a visit to the region, where she reportedly observed atoms being smuggled across the border from neighboring countries Iraq and
Afghanistan, as well as daily shipments of atoms from as far away as Russia, China, and the troposphere. Secretary Rice also witnessed
atoms being strategically used to deliver televised press conferences regarding the nonproliferation of Iranian atoms. "Security
checkpoints have been unable to stop the flow of atoms into Iran," Rice said. "Even with the best equipment available, it is
nearly impossible to distinguish dangerous atoms that could be used in fission for the purposes of massive
destruction from the kind of atoms that are functioning primarily as mechanical pencils." Added Rice: "We cannot
afford to let these atoms fall into, or be a part of, the wrong hands." Vice President Dick Cheney and his staff were briefed on the atomic
situation in Iran Tuesday with the aid of colorful interlocking plastic models and a short film. "The United States will not stand idly by
while Iran gains the protons, neutrons, and whatever else they need to threaten the free world," Cheney said at a press conference that
afternoon. "Iran has demonstrated time and time again its ability to combine atoms of hydrogen and oxygen right out in the open, and we
cannot allow that to go on any longer." Iranian officials claim the atoms are being used only for peaceful, life-
sustaining purposes, and that it is physically impossible for Iran or any government to create or destroy
matter in order to comply with U.S. regulations. Next month, U.N. inspectors will visit Iran to investigate and
catalog all of the nation's current atomic holdings in order to determine if the country may be stockpiling
dangerous atoms in unregistered laboratories, underground facilities, above-ground facilities, the citizenry,
air, water, soil, grass, shoes, picnic lunches, pets, flaky pastries, or the numerous nuclear warheads the
country has recently featured in parades.
Murray 99
We’re on the brink - Iran is enriching students
The Onion 2006 (Report: Iranian Science Teachers May Be Enriching Students, SRM)
WASHINGTON, DC—A recently released Pentagon report is raising new worries that Iran has been operating several large
facilities designed solely for the purpose of enriching mass quantities of high-grade students . "We have
reason to believe that specially trained Iranian science teachers are taking raw, unrefined brain power and
bombarding it with knowledge at accelerated levels," said U.S. Undersecretary Of Defense For Intelligence Stephen
Cambone at a Tuesday press conference. "If current levels of student concentration remain this high, Iran could be a mere five to
eight years away from developing an atomic scientist." Leading analysts believe that the teachers are using a widely applied enrichment process
in which students are isolated from such elements as family, play, and cartoons, and are rotated through seven separative work units over the course of each day. This cycle is
repeated for months, until the students are made highly reactive to reading matter, which enables them to absorb large amounts of information in short periods of time. The students
are then continually exposed to heavy material, taught to achieve critical thought, and finally graduate to a state of explosive productivity. Hard evidence that would support the
Pentagon's findings includes a top-secret syllabus, acquired by the CIA, which indicates that Iran may begin testing their students, possibly without warning, as early as next Friday.
Despite the
Reconnaissance-satellite images also reveal the presence of two Tehran–area facilities identified by intelligence sources only as "P.S. 235" and "H.S. 238."
Pentagon's announcement in mid-June that Iran had halted its nuclear-science program, additional satellite
photos taken in early September clearly show 40-foot-long buses transporting multiple loads of students to
these facilities in the morning hours between 7 and 8 a.m. Some images also reveal a short, 20-foot-long bus thought to
contain a smaller number of highly volatile, non-reactive, and extremely dense students. "While we believe that a majority of these
students were developed within Iran's borders anywhere from 13 to 17 years ago, there is also evidence that they are
importing older students from former Soviet republics and Pakistan in what officials have dubbed an
'exchange program,'" CIA Director Michael Hayden said. Although no one is sure exactly what is being conducted inside the
accelerated core curriculum, a team of UNESCO inspectors who visited suspected Iranian enrichment facilities in 2004 found a number
of microscopes, Bunsen burners, centrifuges, and reference materials, including a stockpile of instructional materials and textbooks
covered in brown paper wrapping intended to obscure the material's subject matter. In a nationally televised Oval Office address
Tuesday, President Bush expressed the concern that if Iran is allowed to enrich its students unchecked, many of them
could end up anywhere, with some potentially landing in major university centers in New York and Los
Angeles. 9"The U.S. stopped enriching its students decades ago, and we call upon Iran
to do the same," Bush said. "If the Iranians do not put an end to this program by the middle of December, and impose final
examinations, they could face further isolation from the international community." As the U.S. awaits a response to the ultimatum,
American intelligence continues to monitor a rumored late-afternoon summit, consisting of a series of secretive bilateral meetings
between parents and a female science expert known as Mrs. Bakhtiari.
Murray 100
A/T: Bioweapons
Bioweapons inevitable - nerf developing now

The Onion 2010 (Nerf Develops New Line Of Biological Weapons)
PAWTUCKET, RI—Nerf, the popular toy manufacturer, announced Tuesday that it was introducing a new line
of foam-based biological weapons capable of causing "massive outbreaks of fun ." According to company officials,
the Nerf biological weapons represent the next logical step in foam warfare, offering kids all the enjoyment of deploying a disease-
causing agent, while still being safe for indoor play. "Kids of all ages will have a blast striking their favorite domestic
target with these new highly contagious, neon-colored pathogens," Nerf CEO James Anderson told reporters. "Whether
contaminating their city's water supply, or releasing an invisible cloud of airborne foam agents, our Nerf biological weapons will result
in hours of enjoyment." Developed over the past 15 years by top toy designers in exile from Russia, the microscopic Nerf neurotoxins
are sold in two sizes: Bacterial Blast and Pandemic Pump. When released upon unsuspecting populations ages 6 and up,
the cushy spores harmlessly infect a host by entering the nose, lungs, and eyes, before gently ricocheting off
the internal organs. Nerf has also introduced the new Rapid-Fire Mega-Poxx-86 Inoculator, a distribution device capable of
delivering 35 vials of brightly colored toy biohazards with pump-action precision. "Get ready to feel your chest slowly fill with
excitement!" said Nerf spokesperson Patricia Mora, holding up a small plastic test tube filled with 10 milligrams of her company's
newest toy. "Just grab a friend, unleash a few neon microorganisms, and prepare for a squishy attack on your entire central nervous
system." According to the Nerf website, the incubation period for its latest line of playthings is 72 hours, but the excitement doesn't stop
there, primarily because Nerf-infected children unknowingly transmit the highly communicable toy microbes to everyone they
encounter. One vial of Nerf biotoxin, priced at $14.99, can entertain up to 20 children or one densely populated metropolitan area for up
to six unforgettable days. The Nerf bioweapons reportedly offer a variety of "completely safe" physical symptoms ranging from
coughing, to temporary respiratory paralysis, to breaking out in colored polka-dot hives, to harmlessly rolling on the ground doing what
company officials have termed the "crazy seizure dance." "It was so cool," 11-year-old test user Alex Richanbach said.
"First I started shaking a little, and then I got really, really hot. After that, everything went dark and dizzy,
and when I woke up in the backyard, I puked up a bunch of foam balls." Added Richanbach, "Nerf biological
weapons rule!" In time, Nerf plans to release accessories to complement the new line of bioterrorism toys, including Funmat suits,
squishy canisters containing vaccines or "antifoamotics," and a large plastic tarp with Velcro straps that can turn any bedroom into a
Nerf triage unit. The company will also sell the spongy pathogens in refill packs that can be used to create a never-ending biological
weapons stockpile. "Pending the success of the Nerf biological agents, we may begin work on our long-standing
Nerfcular weapons program," Anderson said. "Within five years, we could be sitting on a Nerftron Bomb." Added Anderson,
"The only part of your face that will get melted off is your frown!" At press time, company scientists were scrambling to
locate more than 500 gallons of missing Nerf gas.
Murray 101
China to Overtake the US
US hegemony collapse inevitable - China To Overtake U.S. As World's Biggest Asshole By 2020
OR
Alternate causality - China To Overtake U.S. As World's Biggest Asshole By 2020 (with the alt cause, read the conely 2k6 card)
The Onion 2010 (April 19, Report: China To Overtake U.S. As World's Biggest Asshole By 2020)
WASHINGTON—According to a new report released Monday by a panel of top economists and social scientists, the People's
Republic of China will overtake the United States as the world's dominant asshole by the year 2020. The
findings, published in the most recent issue of Foreign Affairs, support recent speculation that America's unquestioned
reign as the leading super-prick may soon be drawing to a close, leaving China as the foremost shithead
among all developed nations. "We are seeing a changing of the asshole guard," said Andrew Freireich, noted economist and lead
author of the article. "Although the U.S. will remain among the world's two or three biggest cocks through much of this century, we
can now confidently project that China, with its soaring economic growth, ever-expanding cultural influence,
and total disregard for basic human rights, will overtake America as King Prick Numero Uno within the next
10 years." Added Freireich, "It's the dawning of a new huge bastard era." According to the report, China has slowly emerged as a
massive fucker over the past half century, a period of egotistical growth unseen since America's booming douche years following World
War II. Over that same time, China has seen a dramatic rise in both its GDP and Shithead Index, definite signs that the Asian nation is
developing into a cocksucker of global proportions. "When you consider China's wanton pollution, rising militarism,
and rampant overdevelopment, it's clear they'll soon be thoroughly out-dicking the U.S. in every measurable
area," international affairs specialist Neil Farren said. "Not many Americans want to admit it, but as the yuan continues to get stronger,
and millions upon millions are exploited as a result, more and more people worldwide will be looking to China, not America, and
saying, 'Man, can you believe what an unbelievable sack of shit that country is?'" China's ascension to supreme asshole status is
occurring at a much faster pace than experts originally predicted. In fact, many now believe that by as early as 2015 Chinese citizens
will arrogantly strut across the globe disrespecting other cultures and shouting loudly while dressed in XXL "Speak Chinese or Go
Home" T-shirts. Prominent scholars claim that America's gradual fall from the upper echelon of international supershits is merely part
of an inevitable pattern seen time and again throughout world history. "All of the great asshole nations eventually watch their day in the
sun slip away," historian Richard Merriam told reporters. "Don't forget that Great Britain was the world's dominant asshole for well over
three centuries, and look at it now: a pussy-whipped shell of the insufferable, bullying jackass it used to be." Others have posited
that China's ascension may be part of a larger reorganization of the global asshole hegemony that could see
the United States losing even more ground in the century to come. "A country like Iran is obviously a pretty big dick,
but ultimately it lacks the resources to be a truly world-class asshole," Farran said. "Same goes for Pakistan. But the list of abominable
shit-heel countries competing for global prick dominance is a long one, and the U.S. is just going to have to get used to seeing countries
like Russia and India mentioned in the same breath as itself." "Many Americans are going to be upset over the prospect of falling from
that top spot, but that's the reality we face," Farrar continued. "Hopefully, the United States will find a way to grow and adjust to its
evolving role on the world stage without acting like a complete and utter fuckhead about it."
Murray 102
The American Flag
The Onion 2010 (April 13, "U.S. Flag Recalled After Causing 143 Million Deaths")
WASHINGTON—Citing a series of fatal malfunctions dating back to 1777, flag manufacturer Annin & Company announced Monday
that it would be recalling all makes and models of its popular American flag from both foreign and domestic markets. Representatives
from the nation's leading flag producer claimed that as many as 143 million deaths in the past two centuries can be attributed directly to
the faulty U.S. models, which have been utilized extensively since the 18th century in sectors as diverse as government, the military, and
public education. "It has come to our attention that, due to the inherent risks and hazards it poses, the American flag is simply unfit for
general use," said Annin & Company president Ronald Burman, who confirmed that the number of flag-related deaths had noticeably
spiked since 2003. "I would like to strongly urge all U.S. citizens: If you have an American flag hanging in your home or place of
business, please discontinue using it immediately." Added Burman, "The last thing we would want is for more innocent men and
women around the world to die because of our product." Millions of U.S. flag–related injuries and fatalities have been reported over a
230-year period in locations as far flung as Europe, Cuba, Korea, Gettysburg, PA, the Philippines, and Iraq. In addition, the company
found that U.S. flag exports to Vietnam during the late 1960s and early 1970s resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths, a clear sign
that there was something seriously wrong with its product. Despite fears about the flag's safety—especially when improperly used or
manipulated in ways not originally intended—sales continued unabated over the years, potentially putting billions of unsuspecting
people in danger. "At first, we wanted one of our flags in every home in America," Burman said. "Unfortunately, the practical
applications of this product are far outnumbered by the risks it presents. Millions have died needlessly, and when you ask people why,
they point to the flag." Added Burman, "Frankly, we should have pulled it off the market decades ago." Studies conducted by the
Annin & Company research and development department revealed that faulty U.S. flags have caused more than just injuries and deaths.
During the mid-1950s, the flags were found to have the bizarre side effect of causing fear, paranoia, and hysterical behavior among
millions of Americans. This was dismissed as an isolated event until September 2001, when similar symptoms reemerged on a massive
scale. As hazardous as the flags may be on their own, Annin & Company officials claimed the products become even more dangerous
when used in conjunction with other common household items. "When combined with alcohol, excessive patriotism, grief, or well-
intentioned but ultimately misguided ideals, U.S. flags transform into ticking time bombs, just waiting to go off," Burman said.
Manufacturers are addressing the flag's unsafe and potentially lethal alignment of stars and stripes by designing a revised model that they
hope will cut down on deaths in the United States and overseas, where experts say the flag is nearly 1,000 times as deadly. In the
meantime, Annin & Company is advising all Americans to either ship their flags back to the manufacturer or, if no time permits, dispose
of them in an efficient manner. "I understand that people might be reluctant to stop using a product they have found to be reliable over
the years," Burman told reporters. "But I can't in good conscience allow them to use something I know to be dangerous. We'll try to
make adjustments soon and come up with something that benefits everybody rather than hurting them." Added Burman, "In the interim,
I would recommend that all Americans switch to the Canadian flag, which seems to be working just fine."
Murray 103
Extinction Inevitable - Palin

Extinction inevitable - Palin will open the seal to eternal hell
The Onion 2010 (February 24, "Latest Sarah Palin Speech Opens Sixth Seal" http://www.theonion.com/articles/latest-sarah-palin-
speech-opens-sixth-seal,2917/)
Speaking unto an audience of anti-immigration advocates, global-warming deniers, and members of the Tea
Party Nation, former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin gave forth utterances
Monday that reportedly opened the sixth seal of the Book of the Apocalypse. "Wow, it's good to be here, just
shootin' the breeze with a bunch of real, hardworking Americans who love their freedom," said Palin, her words echoing across the
Idaho Falls Civic Auditorium as mighty tremors caused great unrest beneath the land and the sea. "So are the little guys like you and me
gonna fight these Washington insiders with their big government agenda? You betcha we are!" And lo, there was then a great
earthquake; and the sun became black as sackcloth of hair; and the moon became as blood; and "gosh" was spoken repeatedly; and the
stars of heaven fell upon the earth, even as a fig tree casteth her untimely figs, when she is shaken by a mighty wind. These
disturbances reportedly went unnoticed by the audience, however, as their thunderous applause drowned out
the sound of the foretold cataclysm. "This Tea Party movement just goes to show ya that
America is ready for another revolution," Palin said as things long ago divined came
finally to pass. "Who do you think is gonna stand up for the freedoms promised by our Founding Fathers? Folks like us, or some
socialist professor of constitutional law in the Oval Office?" It was then, witnesses claim, that there was a tearing of the heavens, and
the skies receded as does a scroll when it is rolled up, and anecdotes about everyday middle-class Alaskan families were enunciated in
down-to-earth tones. "That's right, partner," Palin said, as every mountain and island moved from its place, and flames overtook the
lakes and the rivers and the seas. "Thanks, but no thanks." According to biblical scholars, the opening of the seven seals
described in the Book of Revelation will usher in the End Times, the Tribulation, the reign of the Antichrist,
and the eventual salvation of the 144,000 chosen few. It is thought that the sixth seal's opening will bring about the full fury of God,
leading ultimately to the Day of Wrath. "Admittedly, this is not what we were expecting," said Robert Harwood, a doctor of divinity at
the University of Cambridge. "The Bible speaks of a beast with seven horns and seven eyes, not a raven-haired woman from the north
who knows not what foolishness she speaks of." "Still, there's no denying it," Harwood added. "The End of Days is upon us." One
member of the crowd not torn apart by swarming harpies told reporters he feared living in a country where
his daughters would grow up speaking Spanish and not be allowed to carry handguns. "Palin for president!" Bill
Coleman, 37, of Topeka, KS chanted, and the stench of flesh rotting in the belly of Satan rose up, and the stench of death rose up. "Sarah
Palin for president!" "Small town folks—the folks who grow our food, run our small businesses, and teach our kids—are getting pretty
riled up by President Obama's big socialist ideas," Palin spoke as the stage upon which she stood was rent apart by an unseen hand,
opening as unto a great chasm, whose gaping void she narrowly escaped by clinging to the podium. "Uh…how's that hopey-changey
stuff workin' out for ya?" Palin added. Chaos and disorder then spread across hill and valley to every corner of the earth, eyewitnesses
reported, and as the minions of the Antichrist prepared for their millennium of world dominion, even the teeming masses of heathens
could not in their hearts deny that the final phase of Armageddon was close at hand, and that you're darn right Joe Six-Pack pays too
many taxes already. The Antichrist, whose true identity remained unknown as of press time, will reportedly
come to torment the sinners of humanity as soon as the seventh and last remaining seal is opened. "I'm so
happy that we've got the liberal left running scared," Palin concluded. "Because whatever the TV pundits
might want you to think, from where I'm standing, the future looks really good."
Murray 104
***Critical Links
1NC Framework
We thought we'd be talking about nuclear weapons, you talked about maple syrup.
The Onion 2010 (http://www.theonion.com/articles/maple-syrup-is-an-excellent-way-to-enhance-the-fla,17143/)
Point
Maple Syrup Is An Excellent Way To Enhance The Flavor Of Pancakes And Waffles
By Ed Sanderson
If there's one thing that almost anyone can agree on, it's that a good, thick maple syrup makes a great addition to any pancake or waffle breakfast.
The experience of poking holes in a steaming hot pancake with your fork and watching the syrup sink slowly in and soak the inner layer is very
enjoyable—not to mention how great it tastes.
Another thing I love about maple syrup is the way it fills up the little square receptacles in a waffle and then overflows onto the plate as you keep
pouring. Just thinking about it makes me want to go get some waffles and syrup and enjoy them right now.
The combination of syrup and melting butter is delicious as well.
To be sure, maple syrup isn't the only way to add flavor to waffles or pancakes. Have you ever tried them with whipped cream and fruit? Or how
about some nice cinnamon and powdered sugar? Those are clearly also delicious. But at the end of the day, maple syrup really is the best of all.
In conclusion, maple syrup, when combined with the flavor and texture of waffles and pancakes, is a real winner, hands down, every time.
Let's hear it for good old maple syrup!

Counterpoint
I Thought We Were Going To Talk About The Proliferation Of Nuclear Weapons
By James W. Edwards, Jr., Senior Fellow, Washington Center for Strategic Planning
Um…wow.
I'll be honest, I'm not really sure how to proceed here. See, I was led to believe we'd be talking about the proliferation of nuclear weapons? In an
uncertain age? Frankly, all of the notes and research I prepared pretty much dealt exclusively with that topic, so this whole syrup thing is a
little...confusing.
Okay, well, I guess I'll just say that nuclear proliferation in this age of terrorism is a problem we all share. The changing face of warfare has
forever altered how we approach diplomatic relations, and it raises urgent questions about the relationship between man and technology. So,
yeah. There's that.
Maple syrup, huh? Gosh. Okay.
Let's see. Um, furthermore, the emergence of rogue states only complicates the issue more, as the possibility of a less-developed and more
politically radicalized enemy procuring a nuclear arsenal poses a very serious threat to….
Who did you talk to at the paper, by the way? Was it Karen? Because I definitely got an e-mail from her saying we'd be writing about nuclear
weapons proliferation. I am almost completely sure that was the topic she mentioned.
This is the first I've heard of anything about waffles or breakfast or anything like that.
I suppose I could try to take a devil's advocate position and debate your thesis, but I'm not really sure there's even an argument here. I mean,
clearly, waffles and maple syrup are a classic combination. Just for the sake of this exercise, I could perhaps point out that maple syrup can be a
bit sticky, and that's a minor disadvantage, especially when it drips into one's beard. But that would really just be argument for argument's sake.
The fact is, I happen to like waffles and syrup as much as the next guy, so trying to debate you seems kind of pointless.
Anyway, in conclusion, nuclear proliferation is a major threat that has placed all our previously held beliefs about military strategy in doubt, and
also, in addition, pancakes and waffles are delicious with maple syrup. I don't know. As I said, I can't argue with you on that, so….
I guess you win this one.

Murray 105
Link – Mastubating
'Carpe Diem,' Says Man Who Spent Previous Day Masturbating In Darkened Room
The Onion 2008 ("'Carpe Diem,' Says Man Who Spent Previous Day Masturbating In Darkened Room"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/carpe-diem-says-man-who-spent-previous-day-masturb,2532/)
OLYMPIA, WA—Less than 12 hours after devoting his entire Saturday to masturbating in a dimly lit room,
local resident Ian Schiller, 25, advised a friend with whom he was eating brunch to "seize the day." "Carpe
diem, that's my motto," Schiller said in response to his companion's quandary over whether he should ask out a woman from his office,
despite Schiller's decision just one day earlier to bring himself to orgasm five times rather than enrich his own life in any way. "Why
shut yourself off from the world, man? You only live once." Schiller then paused briefly to put on sunglasses, his eyes not yet fully
readjusted to normal daytime light levels. Though he refrained from both showering and changing his underwear and
socks during his near-marathon self-pleasuring, Schiller went on to extol the importance of living life to its
fullest and never squandering a minute of one's precious time on this planet . "You gotta make your move, man!" said
Schiller, apparently not recalling the many hours he spent avoiding not only women, but all human contact and natural sunlight in favor
of manually stimulating himself and intermittently dozing off in his computer chair. "What, do you think she's just going to walk right
up to you and ask you out? Go for it. There's nothing worse than regret." Despite having ignored three phone messages
from friends the previous day—urging Schiller to go to the beach, attend an outdoor concert, and go for a
hike in nearby Olympic National Park, respectively—so that he could open several Internet browser tabs to
various pornographic video clips and allow them to load simultaneously to prevent interruption while he
masturbated, Schiller stressed the importance of experiencing everything life has to offer . "Read a book, write a
letter, go to a museum," Schiller said through a yawn, still visibly fatigued from his onanistic excess. "Trust me, you have to take in as
many of life's finer things as you can before your time's up. What's the point in living if you don't nourish your mind and soul?" "You
have to strive to improve yourself every day," Schiller added, his stained, rumpled T-shirt a testament to his failure to complete even the
simple task of doing laundry, a chore that would have taken precious time away from carefully spreading out a towel on a chair to catch
the sweat from his nude exertions, tilting his laptop screen to just the right angle on his desk, and delicately folding a three-foot length of
toilet paper over his erect penis in lieu of two tissues, since his Kleenex supply had been exhausted during an earlier masturbation
session. Schiller then took pause from lecturing his brunch partner on the benefits of getting outside your comfort zone in order to
hastily consume a ham and cheese omelet, his body depleted of proteins and nutrients from the previous day, when he was forced to eat
two small meals of peanut butter and stale crackers in order to avoid running into his roommate in the kitchen. "Variety is the spice of
life," he added. According to Schiller, much of the advice he offered is common sense, and can be tied to a greater life philosophy in
which the day-to-day tribulations of human existence are tempered by sampling life's myriad pleasures and fulfilling one's potential as a
well-rounded person. "It's important to find an element of wonder in everything you do," said Schiller, once more failing to mention the
many hours of repetitive and joyless tugging at his genitals he very recently engaged in while wrapped in a filthy robe, his face
illuminated only by the flat, cold light of a computer monitor. "We're not on this earth for very long, so you have to make
the most of it." "Life's too short to spend sitting around with your dick in your hand," Schiller added.
Murray 106
Link – Engage the State
Non-Unique – The American People hired a lobbyist for that

The Onion 2010 ("American People Hire High-Powered Lobbyist To Push Interests In Congress"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/american-people-hire-highpowered-lobbyist-to-push,18204/
WASHINGTON—Citing a desire to gain influence in Washington, the American people confirmed Friday that they have hired high-powered
D.C. lobbyist Jack Weldon of the firm Patton Boggs to help advance their agenda in Congress. Known among Beltway insiders for his ability to
sway public policy on behalf of massive corporations such as Johnson & Johnson, Monsanto, and AT&T, Weldon, 53, is expected to use his vast
network of political connections to give his new client a voice in the legislative process. Weldon is reportedly charging the American people
$795 an hour. "Unlike R.J. Reynolds, Pfizer, or Bank of America, the U.S. populace lacks the access to public officials required to further its
legislative goals," a statement from the nation read in part. "Jack Weldon gives us that access." "His daily presence in the Capitol will ensure the
American people finally get a seat at the table," the statement continued. "And it will allow him to advance our message that everyone, including
Americans, deserves to be represented in Washington." The 310-million-member group said it will rely on Weldon's considerable clout to ensure
its concerns are taken into account when Congress addresses issues such as education, immigration, national security, health care, transportation,
the economy, affordable college tuition, infrastructure, jobs, equal rights, taxes, Social Security, the environment, housing, the national debt,
agriculture, energy, alternative energy, nutrition, imports, exports, foreign relations, the arts, and crime. Sources confirmed that Weldon is
already scheduled to have drinks Monday with several members of the Senate Appropriations Committee to discuss saving the middle class. "If
you have a problem, say, with America's atrocious treatment of its veterans, you can't just pick up a phone and call your local congressman,"
Weldon told reporters from his office on K Street Monday. "You need someone on the inside who understands how democracy works; someone
who knows how to grease the wheels a little." Weldon said that after successfully advocating on behalf of Goldman Sachs and BP, he is relishing
the opportunity to lobby for the American people, calling it the "challenge of a lifetime." The veteran D.C. power player admitted that his new
client is at a disadvantage because it lacks the money and power of other groups. "The goal is to make it seem politically advantageous for
legislators to keep the American people in mind when making laws," Weldon said. "Lawmakers are going to ask me, 'Why should I care about
the American people? What's in it for me?' And it will be up to me and my team to find some reason why they should consider putting poverty
and medical care for children on the legislative docket." "To be honest," Weldon added, "the American people have always been perceived as a
little naïve when it comes to their representative government. But having me on their side sends a clear message that they're finally serious and
want to play ball." According to Washington heavyweights, hiring Weldon is an immediate game changer and should force politicians to take
citizens' concerns seriously for the first time in decades. Moreover, sources said, Weldon will be able to help lawmakers see the American people
as more than just a low-priority fringe group. "Jack is very good at what he does," said Joseph Pearlman, a headhunter for the McCormick Group
who specializes in placing lobbyists. "He can take an issue that is nowhere on the congressional radar, like the pursuit of happiness, for example,
and make it politically relevant. The next time Congress passes a bill dealing with civil rights or taxes, I wouldn't be surprised if the U.S.
populace is mentioned somewhere in the final language." Though Weldon has only been on the job for three days, legislators have already
seemed to take notice. "Before today, I'd actually never heard of this group," Rep. Eric Cantor (R-VA) told reporters. "But if Jack says they're
worth my time, I'll take a look and see if maybe there are some areas where our interests overlap." "But I'm not making any promises," he added.
"I'm a very busy man."
Murray 107
Link – The Rev
Potential Employee Uprising Quelled With Free Pizza

The Onion 2008 ("Potential Employee Uprising Quelled With Free Pizza" http://www.theonion.com/articles/potential-employee-uprising-
quelled-with-free-pizz,2441/)
NEW YORK—A massive employee backlash over low wages and increased workload was narrowly averted this week when company
management arranged to have eight large pizzas delivered to the design firm Cobalt Media, instantly quelling months of mounting resentment and
dissatisfaction.
The pizzas—topped with pepperoni, mushroom, and extra cheese—effectively cooled down the angry mob, which had reportedly reached its
boiling point. According to Cobalt sources, the free Italian pies arrived approximately 20 minutes after a company-wide e-mail detailing
upcoming cutbacks was sent out late Friday morning.
"Everyone's been fed up and ready to explode at management for weeks," production designer Carolyn Wurster said. "But then all those pizzas
showed up, and it just didn't seem like the right time to start demanding a legitimate healthcare plan or salary raises that reflect the amount of
work we do."
Added Wurster, "They ordered like 10 huge pies."
Purchased from nearby restaurant chain Antonio's, the complimentary pizzas had an acute calming effect on the tense office environment within
minutes. Heated discussions about managerial incompetence were quickly replaced with friendly banter about favorite junk foods, while angry
rumblings over a series of unexplained layoffs were supplanted by conversations about upcoming weekend plans.
A number of Cobalt employees still committed to protesting with a possible work stoppage were silenced upon seeing that, in addition to the tasty
pizzas, a two-liter bottle of Pepsi had also been supplied.
"Almost every day I think about quitting and never coming back," said Michael Schappel, whose duties often require him to work on weekends
for no additional pay. "However, seeing those pizzas, it made me wonder if I hadn't been too hard on management." "At least the garlic knots
showed they were thinking about us," Schappel continued.
Besides suppressing the overwhelming office acrimony, the pizzas appeared to subdue frustrated employees on a physical level, leaving many
full and slightly fatigued. Art director Craig Warren, who was seen just two hours earlier pacing back and forth in anger, skulked quietly back to
his desk after consuming four slices of sausage and ham; and receptionist Margaret Doyle reportedly forgot all about a meeting she had scheduled
with Cobalt supervisors to discuss her dismay over being denied maternity leave.
"We were going to hand in a petition giving management an ultimatum, but it's not like the whole thing can't wait until next week," project
coordinator Phillip Beinart said. "I don't have much time to finish the drawings for our newest account—especially after taking that extra-long
lunch break."
Cobalt upper management has successfully tempered employee hostility in the past. In 2006, growing resentment over the lack of a 401(k) plan
was successfully allayed by a surprise order of gourmet cupcakes. And in 2007, a $25 gift certificate to an online novelty store effectively
convinced employees that converting storage closets into offices and sharing them with three coworkers was not as bad as they had initially
thought.
While no measurable improvements have been observed since the free lunch, Cobalt employees said they believe the pizzas—particularly the
more expensive Hawaiian-style pies—signaled an important turnaround in management philosophy, and could eventually lead to more substantial
changes.
Murray 108
2NC The Rev
Your revolution is futile - pizza will take all of your supporters down. This is why you shouldn't trust the masses.
You condition solvency on the cooperation of rubes and dolts.
This also proves how easy it is to manipulate the masses. Revolutions are quelled with simple concessions.
Murray 109
Link – Criticizing the Masses

The Nation is trying, get off their backs
The Onion 2012 (Nation Trying, Okay? Jesus. http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-trying-okay,27444/)
NEW YORK—Pushed to the breaking point after constantly being taken to task for its shortcomings without
ever hearing so much as a word of thanks for everything it does around here, an overwhelmed and infuriated
nation announced Wednesday that it was trying, okay? Jesus, sources confirmed. Early reports acknowledged that while
every aspect of the country might not be as picture-fucking-perfect as it could be, millions of Americans are working really hard, and
considering the current shitty circumstances, they figured it might be nice if for once—just once—they didn't have someone riding their
asses about it. "We're doing the best we can here, for Christ's sake," said Syracuse, NY sporting goods store manager Eric Mahoney,
who, like many citizens, threw up his hands in frustration over being endlessly hounded about every stupid little detail. " Honestly,
what more could you possibly expect from us? What do you think we are, superheroes or something?" "We
don't need to be reminded that things aren't going so great every goddamn time we turn around—we get it, all right?" continued
Mahoney, echoing the collective exasperation of countless Americans breaking their backs day in and day out without having one single
thing to show for it. "So how about cutting us a little slack for a change instead of shitting on us at every
opportunity?" According to the results of a recent Reuters poll, 33 percent of U.S. residents want nothing more than two freakin'
minutes when someone isn't continually breathing down their necks. 28 percent can't believe they're still putting up with all this horse
shit, and for what? And, in response to comments that 46-year-old Dave Perelson of Richmond, VA seemed to be
able to handle things just fine without always screwing up, roughly 700,000 Americans snapped, "Well, we
can't all fucking be Dave, can we?" Additionally, son-of-a-bitch, 67 percent of Americans reported. "You
know what? Fuck it," said Seattle-based software programmer Damien Truong, 27, one of the millions of
people who are sick and tired of being talked down to like they're some kind of idiots or something. " If you
really think you can do it so much better, then why don't you just take it from here?" Maintaining that it was totally
unreasonable to be held to such high standards, increasingly emotional citizens everywhere said they were really going through a lot
right now, so please just get off their backs, okay? "It's just…we've really been under the gun lately," said Jacksonville FL building
superintendent Lawrence Donovan, holding back tears and struggling to get his words out. "With everything that's been going on,
sometimes even getting the simplest stuff accomplished feels like climbing Mount Everest." "Sure, maybe we could've done some
things a little better or more carefully, but the pressure of trying to be so perfect all the time—it's killing us," Donovan added while
being handed a tissue. Many Americans said that maybe the best thing would be for them to take a couple days to regroup and get their
heads together. Others, meanwhile, lamented the sleepless nights they've suffered just thinking about all the shit that still needs to get
done, how it all just keeps piling up endlessly, and how it's impossible to stay on top of everything all the time. Ultimately, the
majority of the U.S. populace apologized for freaking out, but insisted they needed to be met halfway on this
thing. "Look, we probably shouldn't have lost it like that, but riding us about this shit just makes everything
worse," said Timothy Caputo, a 57-year-old copy editor in Los Angeles. "How about taking the time to point out the
things we did right for a change? Would that really be so hard?" Fucking Christ, the nation added.
Murray 110
Link – Aesthetics/Art
National Endowment For The Arts Funds Construction Of $1.3 Billion Poem
The Onion 2008 ("National Endowment For The Arts Funds Construction Of $1.3 Billion Poem" http://www.theonion.com/articles/national-
endowment-for-the-arts-funds-construction,2528/)
WASHINGTON—The National Endowment for the Arts announced Monday that it has begun construction on a $1.3 billion, 14-line lyric poem
—its largest investment in the nation's aesthetic- industrial complex since the $850 million interpretive-dance budget of 1985.
"America's metaphors have become strained beyond recognition, our nation's verses are severely overwrought, and if one merely examines the
internal logic of some of these archaic poems, they are in danger of completely falling apart," said the project's head stanza foreman Dana Gioia.
"We need to make sure America's poems remain the biggest, best-designed, best-funded poems in the world."
Gioia confirmed that the public-works composition will be assembled letter-by-letter atop a solid base of the relationship between man and
nature. The poem's structure, laid out extensively on lined-paper blueprints, involves a traditional three- quatrain-and-a-couplet framework, which
will be tethered to an iambic meter for increased stability and symmetry. If the planners can secure an additional $6.2 million in funding, they
may affix a long dash to the end of line three, though Gioia said that is a purely optimistic projection at this stage.
The poem is expected not only to revitalize the community, Gioia said, but also create jobs for the nation's hundreds of out-of-work poets.
According to the proposed budget, the poem's 224 authors have allocated $4 million for the final rhyming couplet, $52 million to insert hyphens
into the word "tomorrow" so it reads "to-morrow," $7.45 for a used copy of John Keats' Selected Poems for ideas and inspiration, and $450
million for a simile likening human fate to the wind.
Some experts, however, say the poem is already at risk of going over budget, citing the soaring $5,000-per-square-inch cost of vellum, and an
ambitious but perhaps ill-conceived $135 million undertaking to make the word "owl" rhyme with "soul."
"We've already put 200 hours of manpower into the semicolon at the end of the first stanza," said Charles Simic, poet laureate of the United
States and head author of the still- untitled piece. "And I've got my best guys working around the clock to convert all the 'overs' in the piece into
one-syllable 'o'ers.' I got [Nobel Prize winner Seamus] Heaney and [Margaret] Atwood stripping all the V's and tacking apostrophes in their
place. It's grunt work, but somebody's got to do it if this poem's going to get done."
Murray 111
2NC Aesthetics/Art
Deciding the parameters of art only makes it that much worse.

You assume bigger is somehow automatically better in terms of aesthetics. This is the point of mocking a 1.3 billion dollar 14-line poem.
Murray 112
Link – The Other/Love
They've got a lot of love...TO BARTER!

The Onion 2008 ("I've got a lot of love to barter" http://www.theonion.com/articles/ive-got-a-lot-of-love-to-barter,11361/)
Relationships are a two-way street, and you can't expect to make them work unless you're willing to get out there and risk being hurt.
Took me a long time to learn that, but now that I'm ready to open my heart to another person, it's only a matter of time before I find my
soulmate. So look out, world, because I've got a whole lot of love to give to the first person who can match that
love with a similar offer or its equivalent in luxury items, birthday and anniversary presents, or cash. I will also
accept a biweekly series of dinners at fashionable yet intimate restaurants. I guess I'm just a hopeless romantic. When I see
a handsome man with sparkling baby blues, it's no time before I fall head over heels and offer him an
impressive six-month infatuation package for 2 percent over market price. I can't help myself! Anyone who knows me
knows I'm the kind of girl who wears her heart on her sleeve and doesn't mind haggling for a better deal on growing old together. As
they say, 'tis better to have loved and lost than never to have swapped one's undying affection for having someone around during the
holidays. After all, a life without love is a wasted life. Especially when you consider all the stuff you could get
for that love. Compliments, flowers, the immediate boost in self-confidence that results from knowing you are still
sexually attractive to someone. The reasons to fall in love are virtually endless. And if you act now, I might be persuaded to throw in my
sincere respect and admiration for your career for free! That's my whole heart and soul for the low, low price of spending a few
weekends with me to stave off the bitter loneliness that suffocates me a little more each night I watch Extreme Makeover: Home Edition
by myself in my apartment. You hear that, boys? I'm single, I'm available, and I'm ready to share my life with whoever will
momentarily satisfy my raw, desperate need to connect with just one other soul before I die. Now, I'm not saying I'll settle for just
anyone. No way. The guy who's going to win my heart needs to have the whole package: personality, good looks, and, most importantly,
the ability to provide me with constant distractions from the fact that I am well into my 20s with nothing to show for it. And when I do
find Mr. Right, nothing will get in the way of my true feelings for him, no matter what those feelings might be or how successfully they
might convince him to attend my high school reunion and just go along with it when I tell everyone I'm finally engaged. I'm ready for
romance and all of its positive net gains! God, it all seems like a fairy tale sometimes. Just think: Some lucky man out there doesn't even
know it yet, but we were made for each other. Like two pieces of a puzzle that fit together so perfectly that neither piece will have to
break down sobbing when her mother asks her if she's a lesbian for the fifth Thanksgiving in a row. Isn't love magical? Just knowing
that there's a man out there who will love me for no other reason than that I allow him to indulge in a little
breath play without making accusations about his psychological health, provided that he introduces me to his
parents within six months—it makes the bad days not seem so bad. It's exactly like Casablanca. Just look
into my eyes and you'll know we were born to engage in a mutually beneficial transaction together .
Murray 113
2NC The Other/Love
The aff even trades love. We only love things because we believe they love us back. Consider pets, children, etc - all of those things only love
you because without you they would die and it is that unconditional love for you that makes you feel affection for them.
Ultimately they are still selfish. The most empathetic act is to accept your feelings and find self-worth without the other.
They create an impossible burden on the Other. The affirmative constructs an abusive relationship in which they force their insecurity onto the
other with emotional blackmail.
Murray 114
Link – Talking about stuff

Criticizing external actors is really mean – you’re hurting their feelings
The Onion 2011 (Feb. 28, "ExxonMobil CEO Really Hurt That College Student Is Talking About Him Right Now"
http://www.theonion.com/articles/exxonmobil-ceo-really-hurt-that-college-student-is,19333/?utm_source=recentnews)
IRVING, TX—According to sources within ExxonMobil's global headquarters, Rex W. Tillerson, the
company's president, chairman, and CEO, was completely devastated Wednesday by what 18-year-old Skidmore
College freshman Samantha Huestis was saying about him in her dorm room. After aides abruptly pulled the 58-
year-old executive out of a deepwater-exploration meeting, Tillerson was said to have gasped audibly and shaken his
head in apparent despair when notified that the communications major had charged ExxonMobil with "raping
the environment" and had claimed that Tillerson himself "only cares about money." "I've never been so hurt in all my life," said
Tillerson, who is worth an estimated $720 million. "For Samantha to lie on her bed and tell Kaylee, Ben, and even
Becky Stanmore—the dorm's RA, for Christ's sake—that I am poisoning the planet…it's just tearing me apart
inside." "How could she say those things?" continued Tillerson, his voice breaking. "A heartless capitalist? Is that all I am to her? I
actually feel sick to my stomach. I don't know what else to say." Sources confirmed that upon hearing that Samantha
called him "a greedy bastard," Tillerson drew the blinds of his spacious corner office and sat in stunned
silence for several minutes before meekly requesting that his secretary hold any incoming calls and cancel all his meetings and
appearances for the remainder of the week. When informed that roommate Jenny Gagnon bolstered Huestis' tirade by connecting
ExxonMobil's carbon emissions with the plight of polar bears, the leader of the world's largest publicly traded oil company reportedly
buried his head in his hands and repeated the phrase "This can't be happening." "He's really taking the news hard," said
executive assistant Pam Geary, who admitted that Huestis' attacks on ExxonMobil's environmental record,
executive pay practices, and public skepticism of climate-change science had shocked Tillerson, causing him
to wonder aloud how Huestis could be so cruel. "When he heard that Samantha called the company evil, the poor guy went
Fearing that this could be
white as a sheet and just slumped in his chair. It was heartbreaking. Truly heartbreaking."
"the beginning of the end" for the world's third-largest corporation, Tillerson told
reporters he was considering giving Huestis a call at her work-study job to smooth
things over. Tillerson also discussed taking his private Learjet to Saratoga Springs to confront Samantha during her intramural
broomball game about why she called ExxonMobil "a shitty company," but his associates advised against it. "How can I possibly move
on from this?" said Tillerson, who canceled a lunch date with hedge-fund manager John Paulson and Saudi Crown Prince Sultan bin
Abdul Aziz al-Saud, stating that he had lost his appetite. "Sure,
we recorded more than $9 billion in profits
last quarter and our stock price is near an all-time high, but that doesn't mean
anything anymore—not when Samantha thinks I'm selfish." By early evening, after reportedly
cycling through a range of emotions from humiliation to anger to despair, Tillerson acknowledged that he had begun to take Huestis'
message to heart, leading him to question ExxonMobil's entire corporate mission . "You know what, maybe she's right," said
Tillerson, staring at his own image on a framed cover of Forbes magazine. "Maybe we are just a
moneygrubbing octopus that doesn't care about anyone else but ourselves. I guess the only conceivable
course of action is to abandon our $400-billion-a-year business model and focus exclusively on clean energy,
like she suggested." "It will certainly cost a lot of money, but it's like Samantha says: We're the most profitable corporation in the
world, so what does it matter to us?" Tillerson continued. "I just hope she's willing to give me a second chance." At press time, the
Israeli government was reportedly holding its breath on word that Huestis had stopped to read a flyer for the
campus group Students for Palestine.
Murray 115
Link – Intellectualism
Nation Finally Breaks Down And Begs Its Smart People To Just Fix Everything
The Onion 2011 ("Nation Finally Breaks Down And Begs Its Smart People To Just Fix Everything" http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-
finally-breaks-down-and-begs-its-smart-peop,26450/)
WASHINGTON—Overwhelmed by the frustration of being utterly unable to solve any of the numerous difficult problems it faces, a worn-out
nation finally broke down Thursday morning and begged its smart people to please just fix everything now.
Admitting they had "absolutely no idea what the fuck [they were] doing," millions of Americans immediately ceased trying to manage the
country's large-scale, ongoing disasters and pleaded with U.S. scientists, economists, educators, philosophers, and inventors to intervene and
make things better again.
"You are good at doing things, and we are bad, okay? We admit it," said Cincinnati-area executive Robert Everhart, who belongs to the growing
consortium of citizens desperately asking America's qualified people to take it from here. "So we're begging you, please grab hold of the reins.
We know we said we didn't need to read any books or have a lot of expertise to do this stuff, but we were wrong. We need your help, and we need
it bad."
"Obviously we've messed things up pretty severely, but we're fairly certain you can fix them back up," Everhart added. "You guys are really
smart." Acknowledging they lacked the know-how to put anything together without it all falling apart again in a matter of seconds, millions of
ordinary Americans implored the nation's skilled individuals to just use their knowledge to end the financial crisis, manage the health care
industry, determine which human beings are actually fit to hold political office, teach the nation's children, and enact overarching policy decisions
that serve the greater good.
Citizens across the nation also promised to stay completely out of the way while those people who actually have some idea what they're doing
roll up their sleeves and get down to the bottom of all this. In addition, the competent have been issued assurances they will not be hindered by
irrelevant, totally uninformed opinions while they are getting things done.
"You won't hear a single word out of us, we swear," said Chicago real-estate broker Paul Linder, mentioning that smart people can have all the
time and resources they need to make the necessary repairs to society. "We're going to keep our attention where it's best suited by watching some
T.V., surfing the Internet, or maybe trying to mend that fence of mine that's been falling down for so long. That kind of thing is really more our
speed."
"Although, actually, if you guys could help out with the fence, that would be great," Linder added.
According to Beltway insiders, the phenomenon has spread to the highest levels of the U.S. government, with hundreds of lawmakers crumpling
up all bills currently under debate and claiming that pervasive problems related to unemployment, a crumbling infrastructure, and energy crises
should probably be left to people who know some things about that stuff.
In the hours following the country's desperate pleas, the 2012 Republican presidential candidates issued statements agreeing that the United
States was in pretty bad shape right now and that it would indeed be best to start letting people with a track record of accomplishment act on the
nation's behalf.
"As anyone who listens to me for even two seconds can tell you, I'm no expert when it comes to pretty much anything," Gov. Rick Perry of Texas
said. "That's why I promise voters that as president, I will make it my top priority to just hang back and let smart people take care of everything."
"Come to think of it, though, I'm not really qualified to give an opinion on this or any other issue," Perry continued. "I should probably just shut
the fuck up now and go away."
Murray 116
Link – Intellectualism
No solvency - our Nation Shudders At Large Blocks Of Uninterrupted Text
The Onion 2010 (March 9, Nation Shudders At Large Block Of Uninterrupted Text, http://www.theonion.com/articles/nation-shudders-
at-large-block-of-uninterrupted-te,16932/)
WASHINGTON—Unable to rest their eyes on a colorful photograph or boldface heading that could be easily skimmed and forgotten
about, Americans collectively recoiled Monday when confronted with a solid block of uninterrupted text.
Dumbfounded citizens from Maine to California gazed helplessly at the frightening chunk of print, unsure of what to do next. Without
an illustration, chart, or embedded YouTube video to ease them in, millions were frozen in place, terrified by
the sight of one long, unbroken string of English words. "Why won't it just tell me what it's about?" said
Boston resident Charlyne Thomson, who was bombarded with the overwhelming mass of black text late
Monday afternoon. "There are no bullet points, no highlighted parts. I've looked everywhere—there's nothing here but words."
"Ow," Thomson added after reading the first and last lines in an attempt to get the gist of whatever the article, review, or possibly recipe
was about. At 3:16 p.m., a deafening sigh was heard across the country as the nation grappled with the
daunting cascade of syllables, whose unfamiliar letter-upon-letter structure stretched on for an endless 500
words. Children wailed for the attention of their bewildered parents, businesses were shuttered, and local governments ground to a halt
as Americans scanned the text in vain for a web link to click on. Sources also reported a 450 percent rise in temple rubbing and under-
the-breath cursing around this time. "It demands so much of my time and concentration," said Chicago resident Dale Huza, who was
confronted by the confusing mound of words early Monday afternoon. "This large block of text, it expects me to figure
everything out on my own, and I hate it." "I've never seen anything like it," said Mark Shelton, a high school teacher from St.
Paul, MN who stared blankly at the page in front of him for several minutes before finally holding it up to his ear. "What does it want
As the public grows more desperate, scholars are working to randomly
from us?"
italicize different sections of the text, hoping the italics will land on the important
parts and allow everyone to go on with their day. For now, though, millions of panicked and exhausted
Americans continue to repetitively search the single column of print from top to bottom and right to left, looking for even the slightest
semblance of meaning or perhaps a blurb. Some have speculated that the never-ending flood of sentences may be a news article,
medical study, urgent product recall notice, letter, user agreement, or even a binding contract of some kind. But until the news does a
segment in which they take sections of the text and read them aloud in a slow, calm voice while highlighting those same words on the
screen, no one can say for sure. There are some, however, who remain unfazed by the virtual hailstorm of alternating consonants and
vowels, and are determined to ignore it. "I'm sure if it's important enough, they'll let us know some other way,"
Detroit local Janet Landsman said. "After all, it can't be that serious. If there were anything worthwhile
buried deep in that block of impenetrable English, it would at least have an accompanying photo of a
celebrity or a large humorous title containing a pop culture reference." Added Landsman, "Whatever it is, I'm pretty
sure it doesn't even have a point."
Murray 117
Link – “Racism Bad”
Area man marched against Racism, now it's gone.

The Onion 2007 ("In College, I Marched Against Racism—And It Worked" http://www.theonion.com/articles/in-college-i-marched-against-
racismand-it-worked,11289/)
Is there no one out there who cares about changing the world anymore? What happened to the passion, the love, the determination to
make a difference? Today's youth spend their time sitting in front of their computers, but the people of my generation took a stand, took
action, and reshaped our country. When I was in college, I marched against racism, and now there isn't racism anymore. It was a
turbulent time in American race relations—the late 1980s. I was just an undeclared major at that historic flashpoint of racial reckoning,
the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Those who weren't there just can't understand. They were dark, dark days, crying out for the light
of an organized, campus-wide demonstration, and we heeded that call. We provided that light. Many of us were having our eyes
opened, often for the first time, to the extent of racial injustice in America. Galvanized by the protest songs of Public Enemy and the
writings of Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and caught up in the surging crest of a rising wave of a bold new dawn of a bright new awakening,
we took to the streets. We came together from every area of study to make a statement. We marched with banners and signs and chanted
slogans that made it clear to the entire campus that we, the young people, opposed racism in no uncertain terms. Several black people
even showed up, which was awesome, and we all got our pictures in the college paper. The next morning—poof—racism, in all its
insidious forms, was gone forever. Doesn't that give you the inspiration to go out and fight for whatever you believe in? It's amazing,
when you think about it, how one small group of committed students, almost all of them underclassmen in a relatively sedate
Midwestern college town, could make history. If you require proof, look around you: Today we have black congressmen, black TV news
anchors, and even a black man running for president. Oprah is a billionaire, and rap music is more popular than ever. You're welcome.
Of course, it took more than that one march to end racism—we also put up dozens of flyers and got interviewed on the campus radio
station. We pinned our "Celebrate Difference" buttons to our "Carpe Diem" T-shirts, and proceeded to shake
institutional racism to its core until it crumbled and fell into dust. And the whole thing, including the pre-
march rally, took about 90 minutes.
Murray 118
Link – Educated Bigots
Educated Bigots are that much more terrifying

The Onion 2011 ("Educated Bigot That Much More Terrifying" http://www.theonion.com/articles/educated-bigot-that-much-more-
terrifying,20630/)
FAYETTEVILLE, AR—After arguing with a well-read, articulate racist Wednesday, area man Daniel Truett described the experience as "bone-
chilling," telling reporters it was far scarier than any encounter with an ignorant bigot ever could have been. "I've met some intolerant assholes in
my time, but never one who could quote passages from Booker T. Washington's Up From Slavery to make his point," said Truett, who raised
objections to the man's racial prejudices, but found his opponent was able to anticipate each of his arguments and counter them point by point.
"And the most terrifying part of all is that he's obviously intelligent enough to know he's a hateful, bigoted person, which means he must actually
be okay with that fact." Later that evening, Truett felt even more conflicted after hearing the very same bigot perform an exquisite and nuanced
rendition of the Dvorak cello concerto.
Murray 119
Link – Micropolitics
Don’t trust citizens
The Onion 2010 (May 19, "Report: Majority Of Government Doesn't Trust Citizens Either" http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-
majority-of-government-doesnt-trust-citizen,17459/)
WASHINGTON—At a time when widespread polling data suggests that a majority of the U.S. populace no longer trusts the federal
government, a Pew Research Center report has found that the vast majority of the federal government doesn't trust the
U.S. populace all that much either. According to the poll—which surveyed members of the judicial, legislative, and executive
branches—9 out of 10 government officials reported feeling "disillusioned" by the populace and claimed to
have "completely lost confidence" in the citizenry's ability to act in the nation's best interests. "All the vitriol and
partisan bickering in Congress has caused most Americans to form negative opinions of the U.S. government," Pew researcher Amy
Ratner said. "However, over the same time period, the government has likewise grown wary of U.S. citizens, largely due
to their utter lack of foresight, laziness, and overall incompetence." Added Ratner, "And the fact that American Idol is
still the No. 1 show on television doesn't exactly make our government burst with confidence." Out of 100 U.S. senators polled, 84 said
they don't trust the U.S. populace to do what is right, and 79 said Americans are not qualified to do their jobs. Ninety-one percent
of all government officials polled said they find citizens to be every bit as irresponsible, greedy, irrational,
and selfishly motivated as government officials are. Moreover, according to nearly 100 percent of respondents, Wal-Mart.
"It makes complete sense for Americans to lose faith in a government that has allowed lobbyists and special interests to take over
Washington," Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) told reporters. "That being said, you could see why Washington
might likewise lose faith in a populace that apparently still suspects that its president is a secret Muslim who
was not born in the United States." Citing the billions of dollars wasted annually on flavored water and boneless buffalo wings,
the number of drunk-driving deaths each year, and the lack of citizen accountability for the rise of Kim Kardashian, government officials
registered extremely low opinions of the American people overall. "This is the same American populace that failed to prevent us from
deregulating the banks that almost caused a complete economic meltdown last year," Sen. Jim Bunning (R-KY) said. " Year after
year, they elect terrible officials who make terrible decisions on their behalf. The fact that I, Jim Bunning, am
a two-term U.S. senator really shows you just how far Americans have gone off the rails." "I wouldn't trust
anyone who voted me into office," he added. Government skepticism is not confined to legislators, though. A cross-sampling of
the U.S. Supreme Court found that only 1 in 9 justices believe the general populace to be ethical. Their confidence that the American
people can resist consuming the newest Burger King sandwich just because it's there or at least keep it to one a week has also fallen to a
10-year low. "They can't even fill out their census forms, for crying out loud," Gov. Butch Otter of Idaho said.
"It's only 10 questions long. We're not talking about taking the SATs here. Jesus Christ, don't get me started on the SATs." One
typical respondent, President Barack Obama, said he found it hard to trust the judgment of U.S. citizens after recent events, including
their decision to elect a president who promised health care reform and then come out against health care reform. "How can I have
hope for a nation that regularly protests tax cuts that directly benefit them?" Obama said. "Look, I'm not
always perfect at my job, either, but I think I could make a halfway coherent comment on a YouTube video if
I had to. Isn't that basically all they do? Added Obama, "At this point, the only positive thing I can say about the American
people is that I'm pretty sure they've never rigged an election in their favor."
Murray 120
Link – Ironic Man

The Onion 2005 (Why Can’t Anyone Tell I’m Wearing this Suite Ironically?)
Is it my fault none of you stupid conformists can understand how hilarious and ironic my cutting-edge fashion sense is? In 1986, I was
the first kid in the neighborhood to wear a Mr. Bubble iron-on T-shirt from the '70s. I was only 10, but I was soaring over people's
heads. In high school, I was the only guy to wear Adam And The Ants war paint to the senior prom—even though it was the early '90s.
Those fools looked at me like I was 10 or 12 years behind! In college, the trucker-hat concept was my masterstroke. Within a few years,
everybody was doing it, but by that time, I had so moved on. Well, now I'm 25, and I'm still leaving all you idiots in mysteriously
tongue-in-cheek fashion dust. About five years ago, I was growing bored with the whole neo-'80s electroclash look that I had mastered
years earlier. I figured, why not go all out and take the concept of ironic fashion to the extreme? Just do something so risky and
completely out there that it would blow people's minds. So I dreamed up the suit idea. It was like, just create the squarest possible look
and run with it. And I was hardcore about it, too. A lesser man might have just snagged a cheap suit at Goodwill, but I went all out,
choosing a conservative, gray three-button suit and having it fitted by the best tailor in town. I even had my hair cut in a short, non-
descript style parted to the side. I mean, who the hell does that? I looked like a fucking senator! Fresh from the tailor's in my new suit, I
hit all the hippest spots, just waiting for the scenesters' jaws to drop at my sheer audacity. To make sure the irony was pitch-perfect, I got
the matching shoes, the cuff links, everything—I even matched my silk socks to my eye color and the accents in my tie! I could barely
keep a straight face! But in every single bar, club, and after-hours house party I went to, I got the same reaction—everybody just treated
me like some kind of lame-o. They looked at me like I wasn't supposed to be there. I initially thought maybe they were jealous, but then
it dawned on me—they literally thought I was dressed like that for real! Ha! Couldn't these morons get a simple joke? It's like, "Hel-lo...
If you have to explain it..." I resolved then and there to stick it to the mainstream and adopt this bullshit suit as my signature look. If I
knuckled under and went back to my drainpipe trousers and Chucks, I'd just be selling out. Nope. If anything, I was gonna take it further.
I perfected the look until it was as hilarious as it could possibly be. No expense was spared—if I cut corners, I wouldn't be doing the joke
justice. So I got a leather Hermes attaché case, and I filled it with— you guessed it—actual legal briefs! And my watch? Lame-ass TAG
Heuer. Most expensive one I could find. Is that the avant-garde of hipness, or what? But people still didn't get it. Nobody cracked up
when they saw me at Yeah Yeah Yeahs shows. If anything, they seemed to avoid me. One of my now ex-friends even called me a
sellout. WTF? He worked for a fucking graphics design firm. I was standing right there in my goddamn suit, for Christ's sake. It's not my
fault if some jerks can't handle the extreme and total "fuck you" of my next-level fashion statement. I took it further. I moved out of my
Williamsburg loft (so 10 years ago anyway) and put a down-payment on an Upper East Side co-op. Uniformed black doorman and
everything. Hilarious! Then, on a lark, I applied for a job at this hysterical corporate law firm called Gorman, Gorman, Hensler, and
Stein, and—this is the kicker—I actually got the job! I figured I'd fake the law gag long enough to get my first paycheck, then totally
blow off these cheese-asses and frame my uncashed check as an irony trophy. Well, I did that... But then, when people still failed to pick
up the joke and more and more weeks went by without me getting fired, the paychecks started to pile up and I figured, "What the hell?
Might as well cash these extra ones." I had to, really, to pay for all this expensive ironic shit. But what good is all this hilarity if there's
no one else hip enough to appreciate it? On the 8:12 a.m. commuter train, everybody just assumes I'm one of them. So does my
secretary, my assistant, and every single one of my colleagues at the law firm, where I'm now a partner. I even married this clueless girl
from Connecticut—loves shopping and everything—and we have two ironic kids. I swear, they look like something out of a creepy
1950s Dick And Jane reader—I even have these hilarious silver-framed pictures of them in my cheesy corner office. But still, the humor
is lost on everybody but me. I'm probably the most fashionable guy on the planet at this point, but no one understands. God! Do you
have any idea how difficult it is being so far ahead of your time? Some days, it's enough to make me want to embrace conformity like all
the other sheep. But who am I kidding? Living on the cutting edge of irony is in my blood, man! I couldn't go straight if I tried!
Murray 121
Link – Looking Cool
Report: $14 Trillion Spent Annually On Trying To Look Cool

The Onion 2010 (March 23, Report: $14 Trillion Spent Annually On Trying To Look Cool, http://www.theonion.com/articles/report-14-
trillion-spent-annually-on-trying-to-loo,17125/)
WASHINGTON—A report released Monday by the U.S. Department of Commerce revealed that Americans spend an astonishing $14
trillion a year on countless, usually failed attempts to look cool. Looking cool, which the report defines as "the outward projection of an
appealing and often enviable image of oneself that others perceive as requiring little to no effort," appears to be a nationwide obsession.
"To put this into perspective, the amount Americans spend on cool looking haircuts is nearly 15 times greater than the total amount spent
on cancer research," said Eric Gerhardt, noted economist and lead author of the report. "Whether it's name-brand sneakers, an all-in-one
espresso maker, or a pair of hip and stylish Ray-Ban sunglasses, we devote tremendous resources each year toward our conspicuous
attempts at stature enhancement." "It's pretty much an epidemic at this point," the 52-year-old professor added before pausing
momentarily to adjust a small gold earring in his freshly pierced earlobe. The report found that, in all 50 states, efforts to appear cool
accounted for a greater portion of household expenditures than career training, doctor visits, and childcare combined. In addition,
Gerhardt said, even basic necessities such as food, shelter, and water are obtained based on perceived coolness, with people opting to
purchase expensive Thai or Ethiopian takeout food, spend more than they can afford on homes with granite countertops, and drink
bottled water for no other reason than to impress others. Despite the many trillions of dollars spent each year, the study found that
Americans, as a whole, generally fail miserably at looking cool. "Someone like contractor Jerry Ditmas of Akron, OH, for example,
who spends as much as $3,000 per annum on custom motorcycle accessories, succeeds only in looking like a bigger doofus with each
wasted dollar," said Gerhardt, adding that the advertising industry, Japanese youths, and dads on vacation account for nearly a quarter of
the $14 trillion. "This is in contrast to, say, [musician] Lou Reed, who spent just $11 on looking cool in 2009 and remains as cool as they
come." According to the report, researchers have isolated a previously unknown personality trait called "getting it," a variable that,
while not completely understood, seems to be essential to the achievement of coolness. "Those who we found 'get it,' or who we
determined 'know the score,' succeeded nearly three times as often at looking cool as those who did not," Gerhardt said. "Unfortunately,
regardless of how much money Americans spend in desperate attempts to look cool, we concluded that nearly three-quarters of the
populations falls into the category of 'lame-os' or 'total lame-os.'" This worrisome trend extends far beyond just the average citizen,
however. According to the report, a significant percentage of the $14 trillion can be traced back to the highest levels of government,
with tax cuts, most defense spending, and a number of major public works such as Mount Rushmore amounting to little more than
lawmakers' attempts to appear cool to constituents. "The Cold War was essentially one huge, pathetic trying-to-look-cool race,"
Gerhardt said. Asked about ways the $14 trillion might be better spent, Professor Ian Thorson, a sociologist at Georgetown University,
suggested the funds be used to combat poverty, but acknowledged that donating to charities was not always effective, as even those
Americans in need often spend much of the assistance they receive on trying to look cool. "The whole thing ends up being a vicious
cycle," Thorson said. "The only way this situation will ever be remedied is if people just relax and try to be themselves, you know? I
mean, that's cool, man." Added Thorson, "Right?" Thorson said his current research indicates that true coolness may in fact come from
not caring what other people think—a finding he hopes to submit to his peers for review before publishing it in a journal admired by
students and colleagues alike. A number of leading economists have already discredited the Commerce Department's report, claiming
the $10 million study was undertaken for the sole purpose of looking cool by winning a bunch of government funding.
Murray 122
Link – Movements Bad
The Onion 2009 (October 21, "Nation's Morons March On Washington State" http://www.theonion.com/articles/nations-morons-march-
on-washington-state,2832/)
With random cries of "Enough is enough," "Do something now," and "Huh?"
thousands of the nation's biggest morons descended on Washington State this week,
some 3,000 miles from their intended destination of the nation's capital. The march,
which had no discernable goal or message, and no official organizers, began at approximately 8:45 a.m. in
front of what the morons called the National Mall, but was actually the courtyard outside the Olympia Public
Library. "More government accountability, and transparency, and accountability!" shouted grade-A moron
Tammy Caldwell, 37, addressing no one in particular. "On behalf of me, and all the [morons] who came here today, listen
up, greedy Washington fat cats: We're not going anywhere until each and every one of our voices is heard." "To the Lincoln Memorial!"
added Caldwell, pointing to a nearby monument dedicated to the memory of Washington State governor John Rankin Rogers.
Following a stop at what the morons believed to be Arlington National Cemetery, protestors reportedly marched east on State Avenue,
south along Plum Street, paused bewilderedly when they failed to see the Reflecting Pool at the intersection of Union and Plum, and
then found their way back to State to begin their march over again. While authorities maintained that the gathering was
largely peaceful and most of the fires were set purely by accident, demonstrators appeared visibly angry
about a range of topics, including war, peace, food, music, money, baseball, cars, the people following them
around as if this were some kind of rally, siblings, animals, plants, colors, and movies. "Come on out of that
precious little palace of yours, Mr. President. We're right here waiting," Pennsylvania resident Kip Callahan yelled toward the marble-
columned State Insurance Building. "I didn't come all this way to be ignored. I got kids!" "No Social Security for Medicare!" Michigan
idiot Kevin Liston added. "Not in my backyard!" Throughout the day, the number of protesters grew to include not just
morons, but more than 6,000 nimrods, 3,500 dunderheads, and approximately 12,000 of the biggest fucking
dipshits known to man. In all, 75,000 of the simpletons turned out, though dozens were killed after walking out into traffic, and
hundreds more were lost after wandering into nearby Trillium Park. "I'm against things," longtime North Carolina resident
Pam Beucher said. "I'm for things." "America!" she added. "I didn't know Washington, D.C. had Seattle in it," said
Connecticut resident Kyle Hinton, an idiot. "Anyway, stop the war! No more hate! Swine flu! Iran! Pharmaceutical
companies! Illegal immigrants! Never again!" At press time the morons had been walking for 10 minutes into a concrete
wall in Kennewick, WA, where they eventually stopped to pay their respects to those who lost their lives during the Vietnam War.
"This is—," NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams said Wednesday while broadcasting video footage of protesters shouting "four
more years" at the base of Mount Rainier. "Actually, I don't know what this is." Clearly moved by the marchers' plight, both houses of
the United States Congress announced Wednesday they had begun work on a $3 trillion piece of legislation that would completely
overhaul the nation's education system.
Murray 123
Link – Evolution
The Onion 2010 (June 21, "Eons Of Darwinian Evolution Somehow Produce Mitch" http://www.theonion.com/articles/eons-of-
darwinian-evolution-somehow-produce-mitch,17635/)
ALBUQUERQUE, NM—The process of evolution, through which single-celled organisms slowly developed over billions of years into
exponentially more sophisticated forms of life, has inexplicably culminated in local Albuquerque resident Mitch Szabo, leading evolutionary
biologists reported Monday. According to baffled sources within the scientific community, the exact same mechanisms responsible for some of
nature's most spectacularly ingenious adaptations have apparently also produced a 35-year-old office assistant who has only worn pants that
actually fit him a total of five times in his adult life. "The identical processes that have given us the remarkable camouflage of the stick insect
and the magnificent plumage of the bird-of-paradise have, it would seem, also given us a man who cannot scramble an egg," University of
Pennsylvania biologist Ann Goldwyn-Ross said. "Despite evolution's emphasis on the inheritance and replication of advantageous traits, a man
walks among us today who sweats profusely in any temperature and went to see Anger Management in theaters twice." "Mitch poses a real
challenge to the whole notion of survival of the fittest," Goldwyn-Ross added in reference to the biological triumph who has never held a full-
time job for longer than seven months. "He's turning evolutionary theory on its head." Indeed, scientists said Mitch is perplexing on multiple
fronts. For instance, in studying his weird, asymmetrical gait, researchers have been unable to discern any particular locomotive advantage he has
over the more effective and less stigmatizing forms of self-propulsion exhibited by other bipeds. Researchers have also failed to determine how
the development of the nuanced communication system of language, itself a product of humanity's unique capacity for abstract thought,
ultimately led to Mitch's strong preference for the term "exsqueeze me" over "excuse me." Some have reportedly even begun to wonder if the
phenomenon of Mitch necessitates a modification of accepted evolutionary theory. "It's a given that natural selection, mutation, and genetic drift
have interacted in some elegant way to create this man who smacks his lips pretty much constantly and still listens to Papa Roach," Professor Dan
Robbins of Yale University said. "And yet, paradoxically, that seems impossible considering all the undesirable qualities evolution is supposed to
filter out." Added Robbins: "I mean, did you guys see his new haircut?" Despite initial efforts to understand how the Albuquerque native came
into being, one researcher told reporters that even a modification of Darwinian theory might be insufficient to account for Mitch. "I know this is
controversial, but we have to consider the possibility that Darwin was wrong, " said Victor Siles, a geneticist at the University of California–
Berkeley. "Nothing we currently know about DNA, no fully mapped genome, can account for the presence of someone whose apartment smells
that much like Chef Boyardee." Creationists, meanwhile, have been surprisingly muted in their celebration of a man whose existence would
seem to disprove so much of evolutionary theory. "It's great that Mitch has been so disruptive to the evolutionist camp," Jim Moore of the
Colorado Springs–based Genesis Ministries said. "But quite honestly, there's no way we can explain him in terms of a perfect or loving God,
either." "We're just going to sit this one out," Moore added. When approached for comment, Mitch himself shrugged and asked if he'd be getting
any money for this interview.
Murray 124
Link – Wanting to be Happy

You're being such a downer
The Onion 2011 ("Grown Adult Actually Expects To Be Happy" http://www.theonion.com/articles/grown-adult-actually-expects-to-be-
happy,19442/)
NORMAL, IL—According to incredulous sources, local hardware store employee and grown adult human being
Rob Peterson, 37, actually expects to be happy in life. Despite possessing a fully developed brain and a general awareness
of the fundamental nature of existence, sources said Peterson apparently continues to believe that achieving long-lasting happiness is
somehow possible. "It's almost like he thinks reaching a place of enduring contentment with yourself and your
life is some sort of obtainable outcome," friend Brian McDougal said of Peterson, who reportedly lives on Earth, has
experienced life, and is not mentally disabled or abusing narcotics of any kind. "He even gets upset sometimes when things
don't go his way, as if misery and disappointment weren't a foregone conclusion. And then, on top of that,
he'll cheer himself up by saying that 'it's all going to work out in the end.'" "I just want to shake him and
scream, 'Wake up!'" McDougal added. "Jesus Christ, he's such a downer." Sources confirmed that while Peterson has been
supplied over the years with a glut of compelling evidence that life is a zero-sum game at best—including a thwarted career as a graphic
designer, multiple failed relationships, and limited financial mobility—he nevertheless continues to cling to the misguided expectation
that he can and will experience real serenity and joy in the long term. The baffling man has also reportedly read a newspaper before,
interacted with coworkers, knows how economies and political systems work, and is undergoing the process of aging, yet has made no
effort to revise his original assumption. "What really gets me is the confidence he seems to have that one day he will
be able to shed all of the fears and anxieties that are hardwired into his DNA and the modern world will
decide to stop being unrelentingly brutal and allow him some happiness ," said coworker Miles Sagal, adding that the
delusional Peterson inexplicably presumes that this not only could, but should, occur. "Whenever he's feeling
low, he'll allude to some time down the road when he'll have it all 'figured out.' When exactly does he think that will
happen?" "Seriously, what the fuck is wrong with this guy?" Sagal added. "He's aware that he's going to die, right?" Stunned
sources told reporters that Peterson recently expressed genuine disappointment when something he hoped
would happen did not happen, despite the fact that such a scenario is an elegant microcosm of life itself. He
has also been heard to say on numerous occasions that he "just [wants] to be happy," as though returning to a state of childlike bliss were
a reasonable request and not something human beings had already tried and failed to do for many thousands of years before he was born.
While modern psychiatric science maintains that long-term happiness is possible only in the realm of fairy
tales, Hollywood romantic comedies, and the naïve imaginings of the youthful mind, experts said Peterson
has not picked up on this universally acknowledged truth and may be suffering from the severe
misapprehension that life can be what he makes of it. "Frankly, science cannot explain this man," confirmed noted
psychologist Dr. Eli Wasserbaum, adding that most people have their first realization that enduring happiness is an utter fallacy
sometime in their late teens or early '20s, when their dreams for the future endure the first fissure in the process of eventual
disintegration. "Anyone with the smallest degree of perceptiveness knows that happiness is, at best, a temporary emotional phenomenon.
Seeing as Peterson is a college-educated adult, and not a 5-year-old kid on Christmas morning, he should really know better than to think
otherwise. We're all just barely hanging on for our entire lives." "Hell, I'm a respected doctor who makes over $300,000 a year,"
Wasserbaum added. "You think I'm happy?" At press time, Peterson was still under the mistaken impression that
anything really matters at all in the end.
Murray 125
***Impacts
Murray 126
Wasting Your Life
The impact is that listening to their bullshit will waste your life
might have a chance this year. The
husband and father of two said that every time he's felt at all
heard muttering to himself that he couldn't believe he was almost 40 years old. "Twenty minutes here, 10 minutes there. It
all starts to add up," said Richman, who sat down and figured out that between stupid discussions about favorite baby names and
reviews of restaurants in cities he'll never visit, he'd wasted 390 hours of his life. " And
you know what the worst
part is? It's my fault. Here I thought being considerate to others by always listening
patiently to what they had to say was the right thing to do. Well, fuck me, right?"
According to Richman, he started
thinking about how much time he's flushed down the toilet being an
approachable person after a work meeting in which he let a coworker, David Martin, ramble on and on with
an idea everyone knew was "total shit" the moment the man opened his mouth. Richman said that a single glance at
the clock made him realize he had just spent 14 minutes of his finite time on earth not playing with his kids
or being with his wife, but listening to garbage. "It was like I stepped out of my body and saw
myself actually listening to this man's worthless drivel—but it wasn't him who looked
like a moron, it was me," Richman said. "I was nodding my head like an asshole and saying
ridiculous things like, 'Right,' and, 'I see your point, Dave,' when I should have just
said, 'Dave, your idea isn't good and you are wasting our time and you need to shut
up right now.'" By his estimates, Richman's receptiveness has resulted in 160 irreplaceable hours of listening
to grossly uninformed political opinions, 300 hours of carefully hearing out both sides of pointless
added. "It's true. That's a trip to Europe right there." While Richman has vowed to cease being open-minded to absolute horseshit,
acquaintances reflected on his approachability.
"I love Blake," coworker David Martin said. "He's
such a good listener. A lot of people are closed-minded and self-absorbed, but Blake
always makes an effort to hear where I'm coming from. The world could use more
people like him.
Murray 127
***Alternatives
Humor Good
Chinese class clown executed

The Onion 2008 (Chinese Class Clown Executed, http://www.theonion.com/articles/chinese-class-clown-executed,6109/)
BEIJING—Known among schoolmates for his spirited antics and ability to make light of almost any situation, classroom jokester Wei Xiang, 11,
was put to death by the Chinese government for drawing a mustache on an image of Education Minister Zhou Ji in one of his textbooks, sources
reported Monday. "An enemy of the state has been dealt with accordingly," government spokesman Xu Qi said following Wei's execution by
firing squad. "Let this be a lesson to other children considering wising off or otherwise wasting valuable class time." The fifth-grader previously
served a six-month term in solitary confinement at Qincheng Prison after referring to the Tang Dynasty as "the Stank Dynasty" during a history
lesson in 2007.
2NC: Humor is the greatest threat to authoritarianism. We will likely be killed but we must embrace that there are some things worth dying for,
or there is nothing worth living for.
Murray 128
FREE TASTY ICE CREAM

FREE TASTY ICECREAM - Also Ebola...
The Onion 2010 (June 15, CDC Officials Announce Free Ice Cream For Everyone, Delicious Tasty Ice Cream, And Also There Is An
Ebola Outbreak, http://www.theonion.com/articles/cdc-officials-announce-free-ice-cream-for-everyone,17611/)
ATLANTA—In a sudden, unscheduled announcement Tuesday, officials from the Centers for Disease Control revealed that they were
giving away free ice cream, had enough of the frozen dessert for everyone, and that, by the way, there had also been an outbreak of the
deadly Ebola virus in the United States. CDC director Thomas R. Frieden led the emergency press conference, during which he called
for all Americans to step right up and get as much of the tasty ice cream as they wanted, and, in unrelated news, 162 Ebola-related
deaths have been reported in 12 states. "Strawberry, chocolate, butter pecan—so many delicious flavors," said Frieden, who added that
this just had to be the greatest day ever, and how could anyone have a care in the world, what with all this free ice cream up for grabs.
"We also have sundaes and sorbets and, look at us, we're all having such a wonderful time!" Continued Frieden, clearing his throat,
"The Ebola virus attacks white blood cells indiscriminately, eventually leading to systemic organ failure as the infected individual
literally dissolves from the inside out. There is a 10 percent chance of survival." Bringing a large spoon of rocky road to his lips,
Frieden went on to explain that the CDC was still not sure how the lethal hemorrhagic fever had originated, why it was spreading and
mutating at such an alarming rate, or whether the agency was even remotely prepared to deal with the deadly pandemic expected to
overtake the country within 72 hours. The only thing he knew for sure, Frieden told reporters, was that ice cream was always creamy
and delicious, so let's not even worry about all that other stuff, and just dig in already. "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice
cream!" shouted CDC spokesperson Martha Hare, who joined Frieden up on stage and began frantically handing out cartons of the sweet
summertime dessert to all in attendance. "Those shrieks, they are definitely for ice cream. Those shrieks, they are not in any way the
result of sudden ocular hemorrhaging. Yes, everyone is having a delightful time screaming their heads off about ice cream." "Look!"
Hare continued. "Look at all these crunchy waffle cones!" According to officials, federal response teams are currently setting up triage
units all across the country and urging every citizen to "go ahead and put some chocolate sauce right on top of that ice cream now,
because within 21 days, none of this is going to matter anyway." In addition, the agency explained that unless something is done to stop
the latest strain of the virus, which appears to be transmittable through skin contact and airborne agents, close to 96 percent of the
population could be wiped out, "so, great news—more tasty ice cream for the rest of us!"
Murray 129
Do the Plan with Michael Keaton

Do the plan with Michael Keaton is 87% likely to be better
The Onion 2011 (Study: 87 Percent Of Movies Would Be Better With Michael Keaton In Them,
http://www.theonion.com/articles/study-87-percent-of-movies-would-be-better-with-mi,19268/?utm_source=recentnews)
LOS ANGELES—According to a comprehensive study released this week by researchers at UCLA, 87 percent of feature-length motion
pictures would be significantly improved by the addition of 59-year-old film and television actor Michael Keaton. The report, which
gathered film data and survey results over a 12-year period, found that simply by adding Michael Keaton—either in a showy, leading-
man part; a delicious, scene-stealing supporting role; or even an unexpected but heartily welcome cameo appearance—nearly 9 in 10
films would rate as at least "better," and in many cases "much better." "According to our results, the mere presence of Michael Keaton
acts as a catalyst by which the quality of a film rises exponentially in relation to his screen time," said lead researcher Dr. Jonathan Scott,
who has been studying Keaton intensively since the actor's appearance in the 1982 comedy Night Shift. "Ninety-three percent of
comedies would be improved by the addition of his manic, live-wire energy, while a full 72 percent of dramatic features would benefit
from his surprisingly adept touch with tender characterizations." "Overall, we were impressed by these results, although one can hardly
call them surprising," Scott continued. "I mean, of course these films would be better. It's Michael Keaton." After observing how
Michael Keaton made the otherwise unwatchable films Jack Frost and My Life 58 percent more watchable, researchers said they
determined that 100 percent of films of equal or lesser quality would have experienced similar results if Michael Keaton had been cast in
them. In addition, a film's genre had no noticeable effect on the results, with the report concluding that Michael Keaton is equally at
home in blockbuster action films like Batman, broad farces like Johnny Dangerously, and emotionally harrowing films like Clean And
Sober. Further analysis found that the film The Hunt for Red October would have been 31 percent more solid with Michael Keaton in
the Alec Baldwin role. "The remarkable versatility of Michael Keaton was a key factor in the resulting data," said Scott, gesturing to a
screen behind him playing Michael Keaton's famous "wubby" speech from the 1983 film Mr. Mom. "In fact, his mastery of his craft
posed a series of further questions to our team: questions such as, 'Is there any role that Michael Keaton can't play?' and 'Why is Michael
Keaton not being utilized more in movies these days?'" Another significant finding was that many classic films heretofore believed to be
impossible to improve upon—including Citizen Kane, The Seven Samurai, The Battleship Potemkin, and Pinocchio—would actually be
enhanced substantially by an on-screen appearance by Michael Keaton in some capacity, if only for a few precious moments.
"We determined that if Charlie Chaplin had simply turned the camera on Michael Keaton for five minutes in City Lights and just let
him go wild like in Beetlejuice, then that film would be at least 12 percent stronger than it is now," said Scott, adding that Michael
Keaton's work as a psychotic killer in Pacific Heights proves he also would have considerably aided Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. "And a
majority of movies double in quality if, while watching them, the viewer imagines the way Michael Keaton would deliver a given
character's lines." "Conventional wisdom would tell us that these figures are impossible, as Michael Keaton is far from being some great
Shakespearean actor," Scott continued. "But that's where conventional wisdom is wrong: Michael Keaton is a great Shakespearean actor.
He played Dogberry in Kenneth Branagh's adaptation of Much Ado About Nothing and he crushed it— just knocked it right out of the
park. " Researchers concluded their remarks by claiming that a number of films already featuring Michael Keaton, including Jackie
Brown, The Dream Team, and The Other Guys, would have greatly benefited from the insertion of even more Michael Keaton into
certain scenes, preferably every scene. In response to the UCLA team's announcement, actor Michael Keaton downplayed the findings.
"Okay, you guys," said Keaton, instantly making a newspaper article better simply by appearing briefly and uttering a few words. "Settle
down."
Murray 130
A/T: Dirty Word Ks
The Onion 2010 (May 4, “Supreme Court Upholds Freedom Of Speech In Obscenity-Filled Ruling)
WASHINGTON—In a decisive and vulgar 7-2 ruling, the U.S. Supreme Court once again upheld the constitution's First Amendment
this week, calling the freedom of expression among the most "inalienable and important rights that a motherfucker can have." "It is the
opinion of this court that the right to speak without censorship or fear of intimidation is fundamental to a healthy democracy," Justice
Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for the majority. "Furthermore, the court finds that the right to say whatever the hell you want, whenever the
hell you want, is not only a founding tenet, but remains essential to the continued success of this nation." Added Ginsburg, "In short,
freedom of speech means the freedom of fucking speech, you ignorant cocksuckers." The decision came Monday in response to the case
of a Charleston, WV theater troupe that had been sued by city officials for staging a sexually explicit play with public funds. Reversing
the 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals' decision, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the theater, an outcome free-speech advocates are
calling a victory and Justice Ginsburg called "a bitch-slap in the face of all those uptight limp-dicks." The ruling in City of Charleston v.
The Kanawha Players marks the first time in 220 years that the nation's highest court has taken such a fiercely profane stance. During
oral arguments, Charleston's chief counsel Dan Roy said his clients could restrict any public speech they deemed offensive, an argument
quickly dismissed by Justice John Paul Stevens, 90, who turned to his colleagues and made a repeated up-and-down hand motion
intended to simulate masturbation. "I'm beginning to wonder if you really understand what 'abridging the freedom of speech' means at
all," said Stevens, a 34-year veteran of the court known for his often-nuanced interpretations of the First Amendment. "I'm also
wondering whether you and your fat-faced plaintiffs over there need to have some respect for constitutionally protected expression
fucked into your empty hick skulls." Justice Clarence Thomas, who voted with the majority, wrote a concurring opinion in which he
made little mention of established court precedents but emphasized that he himself had viewed materials "way, way nastier than this
stupid play." "I don't know what kind of bullshit passes for jurisprudence down in the 4th Circuit these days," Thomas wrote. "But those
pricks can take their arguments about speech that 'appeals only to prurient interests' and go suck a dog's asshole." Added Thomas, "Just
suck it. Get in there and seriously suck it." Writing in dissent, however, Justice Antonin Scalia contemplated the limits of the
constitutional guarantee of free speech. "The court has an interest in protecting meaningful human communication, which is jeopardized
when every other word out of someone's mouth is 'F this' or 'F that,'" Scalia wrote. "In practice, such an expansion of free expression
becomes far too unwieldy and large to accommodate." To which Justice Ginsberg immediately replied, "Yeah, that's what his mom
said." Conservative constitutional scholars have criticized the Supreme Court's decision, calling it not only a license to provoke, but also
an act of provocation in itself, one that saw several justices repeatedly refer to the plaintiffs as "fuckwits," "asshats," and "cumsacks"
before informing them that with their appeals exhausted, their only remaining legal recourse would be to "piss up a rope or take two fists
in the mommy slot." More than 18 months after the suit was first brought against the theater group, defense lawyers said the road to the
Supreme Court was "hard as shit," but well worth it. "This is a historic victory for free speech, and I wouldn't be surprised if, a hundred
years from now, the hallowed walls of this court bear an inscription taken from the eloquent decision handed down today," lead defense
attorney Carl Huddleston said. "Particularly the phrase 'That which erodes human rights serves to erode humanity, fuckface.'"
Murray 131
A/T: Perm - every other instance

'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million
People Wonder
The Onion 2010 (January 19, "'How Bad For The Environment Can Throwing Away One Plastic Bottle Be?' 30 Million People
Wonder" http://www.theonion.com/articles/how-bad-for-the-environment-can-throwing-away-one,2892/)
Wishing to dispose of the empty plastic container, and failing to spot a recycling bin nearby, an estimated 30 million Americans asked
themselves Monday how bad throwing away a single bottle of water could really be. "It's fine, it's fine," thought Maine native Sheila
Hodge, echoing the exact sentiments of Chicago-area resident Phillip Ragowski, recent Florida transplant Margaret Lowery, and Kansas
City business owner Brian McMillan, as they tossed the polyethylene terephthalate object into an awaiting trash can. "It's just one bottle.
And I'm usually pretty good about this sort of thing." "Not a big deal," continued roughly one-tenth of the nation's population.
According to the inner monologue of millions upon millions of citizens, while not necessarily ideal, throwing away one empty bottle
probably wouldn't make that much of a difference, and could even be forgiven, considering how long they had been carrying it around
with them, the time that could be saved by just tossing it out right here, and the fact that they had bicycled to work once last July. In
addition, pretty much the entire states of Missouri and New Mexico calmly reassured themselves Monday that they definitely knew
better than to do something like this, but admitted that hey, nobody is perfect, and at least they weren't still using those horrible aerosol
cans, or just throwing garbage directly on the ground. All agreed that disposing of what would eventually amount to 50 tons of
thermoplastic polymer resin wasn't the end of the world. "It's not like I don't care, because I do, and most of the time I don't even buy
bottled water," thought Missouri school teacher Heather Delamere, the 450,000th caring and progressive individual to have done so that
morning, and the 850,000th to have purchased the environmentally damaging vessel due to being thirsty, in a huge rush, and away from
home. "It's really not worth beating myself up over." "What's one little bottle in the grand scheme of things, you know?" added each and
every single one of them. Monday's plastic-bottle-related dilemma wasn't the only environmental quandary facing millions of citizens
across the country. An estimated 20 million men and women wondered how wasteful leaving a single lightbulb on all night really was,
while more than 40 million Americans asked themselves if anyone would actually notice if they just turned up the heat a few degrees
instead of walking all the way downstairs and getting another blanket. Likewise, had they not been so tired, and busy, and stressed,
citizens making up the equivalent of three major metropolitan areas told reporters that they probably wouldn't have driven their minivans
down to the corner store. "Relax," thousands upon thousands of Americans quietly whispered to themselves as they tossed two articles
of clothing into an empty washing machine and turned it on. "What are you so worried about?"
Murray 132
Value to Life Subjective
Value to life subjective and low - area woman proves

The Onion 2010 (March 20, "Sometimes, Area Woman Just Feels..." http://www.theonion.com/articles/sometimes-area-woman-just-
feels,17072/)
Stating that she wasn't in the best place right now, and that things have been sort of you know, Belmont resident Megan Slota announced
Thursday that sometimes she just feels…. Due to a general sense of…well, it's hard to explain, the 28-year-old dental hygienist reported
that she just needed to work some stuff out, and that she would probably be a little I don't know for a couple weeks or so. "It's not
anybody's fault, honestly," said Slota, standing in her kitchen and holding a mug of tea with both hands. "Sometimes I just get like this
where it's like I'm not, I guess, whatever. We don't have to get into it right now." Added Slota, "I'm really, like, argh, I don't know."
After that thing with Dave on Thursday, people were concerned that Slota was in a weird place, which she initially denied. But Slota
later admitted that she was just taking some time to figure things out and needed a little space, but it's not like she wanted people to leave
her alone or anything like that. "I had a really good talk with Debra," Slota said. "She's such a good friend. It's good to know I have
someone like her. It's just a crazy time right now. And I've been really busy with work, too, so that hasn't helped." While admitting that
it must suck to have to deal with her lately, Slota said that she appreciates everyone's patience while she sorts all of this stuff out.
Sources close to the sort of spacey, sort of—oh gosh, what would you even call it—distracted woman confirm that it's always the same
this time of year, because of her dad. "I worry about Megan," longtime friend Alex Polson said. "Times like this, she can get a little
strange. Not strange strange, but still kind of strange where you're like, 'Huh?' But you know what? She's tough. She'll get through all
this and be back to her old self in no time." Though she's been kind of blah lately, especially at the family thing where she had to be on
her best behavior, friends and coworkers have been understanding about what's going on with her, and want to let her know they're there
if she needs help moving, or needs someone to go shopping with her, or just wants to hang out and not talk about the thing that happened
with Samantha last week. "You know, it's like when you're just," Slota said. "You feel one way but then you're also sort of, I don't
know, maybe it's just one of those things. And you don't want to force it, right? I feel like you just have to accept it sometimes, I guess."
"It is what it is," she added. Regardless of the thing that's, oh, whatever, it'll pass eventually, Slota maintained that she's forging ahead
and taking things one day at a time. Dr. Andrei Robinson, author of the book It's, Well, I'm Not Sure How To Describe It, Really, says
that Slota's condition is not uncommon. "As a therapist, I'm seeing more and more patients with problems and conditions related to Ms.
Slota's," Dr. Robinson said. "But ultimately, there's not a lot I can do for them. It's just another facet of this, whatever it is. You can't
understand the, you know, well, anything, really. It's all too much sometimes, but it's her deal. She's got to work through it. We've all
been there, right?" "I don't know," Dr. Robinson added. "Does that make sense?"
Murray 133
***The Substance
2NC Overview/Explanation
The 1NC is a performative satire of the 1AC. This comic criticism reveals holes and
inconsistencies with the logic and form of the 1AC by creating an enthymatic response with
the audience. You should not affirm the literal translation of the 1NC, but rather subtext
of the speech. This method is key to a self-reflexive politics that opens the space for
internal criticism
Holcomb 2009 (Justine Schuchard, "In the Culture of Truthiness: Comic Criticism and the Performative Politics of Stephen Colbert"
(2009). Communication Theses. Paper 51.)
Burke contends that "the comic frame should enable people to be observers of themselves, while acting. Its
ultimate would not be passiveness, but maximum consciousness. One would 'transcend' himself by noting his
own foibles" (171). As we have seen, arguably, Colbert's performances incorporate a distinct consciousness, as he observes and
evaluates his own performance alongside those in politics and media, whom he both models and critiques. Colbert's parody of Bill
O'Reilly and satiric speech at the White House Correspondents' Association dinner provide a clear comic
critique that transcends tragic frames in political media. In the first instance, Colbert the comedian performs as a ridiculous
pundit in order to show the ridiculousness of punditry, while also providing his own critical analysis of public affairs. In the second
instance, he performs as a comic parrhesiastes, thus providing a model for pundits to be bold, cut through the administration's rhetoric,
and serve the public rather than their own self interests. In both instances, he effectively balances the "shrewdness" of
criticism with the "charitable" optimism that we can do better. However, when Colbert adds a new layer to his
performance as a comedian, pundit, and candidate, he requires us to work harder to locate those points of balance which are the sites of
transcendence from the tragic frame. This, I argue, is because his parodic performances and serious critiques are now multiplied and
overlapping. Through his continued performance as a pundit caricature, Colbert the comedian comments upon
the ridiculousness of shallow, horserace-driven punditry. Through his role as a candidate caricature, Colbert
the comedian comments upon the ridiculousness of conventional campaign rhetoric. By covering his own
campaign, Colbert the comedian comments upon Colbert the fake pundit commenting upon Colbert the candidate – who also, in turn,
comments upon both Colbert the candidate and Colbert the fake pundit. Meanwhile, we have the question of "which" Colbert
actually seeks placement on the ballot. Is it Colbert the critical comedian, in which case he might be
considered an "authentic" candidate, like Al Franken? Is it Colbert the character, in which case he is an
"inauthentic" candidate, like Pat Paulsen? Colbert remains ambivalent on this. Clearly, Colbert has generated a number of
incongruities, but where, exactly, is the desired perspective? I contend that Colbert
offers perspective through
similarly numerous layers. There is not just one point of "euphemism" and one point
of "debunking," but many of both, and they intersect on different planes. On one level,
Colbert offers perspective by incongruity to the pundits covering the candidates. By parodying the pundits' ridiculous
discourse, he tells them in essence, "look at what you are doing." However, unlike his parrhesiastic performance at the
WHCA dinner, where he shows them, "that is what you are doing" as well as "this is what you ought to be doing," in this case, the latter
perspective is displaced onto another performative level. That is, by parodying the candidates' ridiculous rhetoric, he tells
the pundits, "here is what you ought to investigate, but you are not investigating." In this way, Colbert the comedian
continues his performance as a media critic, using his critique of candidates as an extension of his critique of pundits. However, he
does not appear to show the candidates, "this is what you ought to be doing"; rather, upon laying bare the
problematic realities behind their rhetoric, Colbert embraces and even celebrates those realities (the Doritos
sponsorship is a prime example).
Our performance reveals and undercuts the tragic framing of the 1AC. The tragic frame
blames problems on someone else, creating an us/them dichotomy of problems and
solutions. Instead we begin with critical self reflection as a means of opening up the
opportunities presented to us.
Burke describes differing "frames of acceptance," by which "we mean the more or less organized system of meaning by which a
thinking man gauges the historical situation and adopts a role with relation to it" (5). Those who adopt a tragic frame, for
example, view the world as good versus evil and people as villains or heroes. Conversely, those who adopt a
comic frame are ambivalent about such definitions, which tragic rhetoric may employ for propagandistic purposes. In the
comic frame, the "villain" is perhaps simply "mistaken" or "tricked"; the "hero" is offered instead, self-
Murray 134
deprecatingly, as "intelligent" at best (4-5). Burke advocates the comic frame as the more critical and
potentially emancipatory perspective. While the tragic frame is often tempting and seemingly appropriate for the
difficult issues we face (remember those who called for "the end of irony" after the 9/11 terror attacks1), it veers too easily into
uncritical, propagandistic and "mystificatory" logic (172). Burke cites the rise of anti-Semitism during
economic downturns, pushed by authoritative leaders with a tragic frame: The steps are these: Economic depression
means psychologically a sense of frustration. The sense of frustration means psychologically a sense of persecution. The sense of
persecution incites, compensatorily, a sense of personal worth, or goodness, and one feels that this goodness is being misused. One then
'magnifies' this sense of wronged goodness by identification with a hero. And who, with those having received any Christian training in
childhood, is the ultimate symbol of persecuted goodness? 'Christ.' And who persecuted Christ? The Jews. Hence, compensatorily
admiring oneself as much as possible, in the magnified version of a hero (the hero of one's first and deepest childhood impressions) the
naïve Christian arrives almost 'syllogistically' at anti-Semitism as the 'symbolic solution' of his economically caused frustrations (168-
169). Through such a problematic reasoning process, authoritative leaders and other self-centered figures imagine social issues as strictly
us-versus-them binaries, thus constituting a tragic frame. Those who employ a comic frame, however, identify and call attention to the
problems with such syllogistic rationales, which they deem sentimental and cynical. "The comic frame is best suited for making
disclosures of this sort [that is, where syllogistic rationalizations have occurred], which are necessary to counteract the dangers of
'mystification,' so momentous in their tendency to shunt criticism into the wrong channels" argues Burke (169). Rather
than
insisting there can be no more irony after 9/11, or that others (be they Jews, Muslims,
immigrants, or any other generalized group) are responsible for the problems
afflicting oneself and those deemed virtuous like oneself, the comic frame insists on
self-examination and humble reflection. "The comic frame, in making man[One] the student of
himself[Themselves], makes it possible for him[One] to 'transcend' occasions when he[One] has been tricked
or cheated, since he[One] can readily put such discouragements in his[One’s] 'assets' column, under the head
of 'experience'" (171). The comic frame is not about blaming oneself or excusing real wrongdoings by others,
but rather about stepping outside of an egocentric, polarized view in search of a dialectical, holistic
understanding of problems and opportunities.
We shouldn’t be treating official discourse with respect, we should be mocking it.

Meddaugh 2010 (Priscilla Marie, Assistant Professor of English at Millikin University, where she teaches courses in rhetoric, critical
theory, journalism, and media studies. "Bakhtin, Colbert, and the Center of Discourse: Is There No ‘‘Truthiness’’ in Humor?" Critical Studies in
Media Communication. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/15295030903583606)
I use Bakhtin’s dualistic notion of carnival to rhetorically examine The Colbert Report. Bakhtin, a cultural theorist preoccupied with
the validity of claims to epistemological certainties, saw the time of carnival as an emancipation from prevailing truths,
a ‘‘liberated communality of the people in perennially renewed rebellion against the social and spiritual
restrictions of the official order’’ (Lindley, 1996, p. 17). A democratic notion, carnival offers a social space
outside official life; as such, hierarchies of social, economic, and political structures are suspended to allow
egalitarian contact among citizens (Bakhtin, 1984b, pp. 610). Dominant knowledge, a reflection of the
‘‘center of discourse’’ of officialdom, is challenged by multiple voices on the carnival
square. Carnival, and its primary agents parody and satire, exploit paired images and role reversals, both
uniting and juxtaposing ‘‘the sacred with the profane, the lofty with the low, the great with the insignificant,
the wise with the stupid’’ (Bakhtin, 1984a, p. 123). Carnival parody legitimizes communication practices and behaviors not
sanctioned in official life: ‘‘profanation, carnivalistic blasphemies, a whole system of carnivalistic debasing and bringings down to
earth’’ (p. 124). Of particular significance to carnival laughter is ‘‘parodia sacra,’’ or the parody of revered texts and
official discourse. In the ‘‘reverse of the world,’’ sanctioned deities*government, industry, and religion*provide
fodder for carnival as cultural critic. Fletcher (1987, p. 23) suggests the notion of carnival can be expanded to include ‘‘all
cultural situations where the authority of a single language of authority is called into question, notably by the simultaneous copresence
of other languages, which can challenge it’’. This is particularly salient to the Report, where Colbert, playing multiple roles*comedian,
caricature, and critic*introduces competing interpretations of contemporary culture. I argue that the Colbert Report, a
contemporary appropriation of the carnivalesque, is a potent agent in bearing witness to shortcomings of the
political realm. Colbert as carnival challenges authoritative claims to the ‘‘center’’ of discourse *in this context,
official knowledge distributed by traditional news venues and information practices. Carnival laughter positions audiences as
insiders, in contrast to their traditional roles as outsiders of official discourse and authorized modes of
communication. In challenging the rational practices and normative values of traditional information industries, the Colbert Report
operates as a critic of the press, as well as a unique site of media literacy education.
Murray 135
A/T: No Alt
It’s not about advocating an alternative, it’s about giving the audience the tools necessary
to come to their own conclusion. This is the enthymeme created in the 1NC – we let the
audience figure out what needs to be done.
To that end, itis potentially discomforting that Colbert appears to perform only the negative, cynical qualities
of both pundits and candidates. As a candidate, he states openly that he will pander for votes and take corporate money. As a
pundit, he promotes himself shamelessly and claims the ability to influence electoral outcomes. Thus, he clearly reflects the
problematic attitudes being perpetuated in political media (so that, from this reflection, we can
deduce what candidates and pundits should not be doing), but if he provides a performative
model for transcending these attitudes, it is not immediately evident. Might we have seen this model performed later –
say, if Colbert had made it onto the ballot and participated in debates? One can only speculate on this; however, I can locate one clue in
the existing text toward a possible a site for transcendence, which is displaced onto yet another performative level. Here is the clue: In
his interview with Tim Russert on Meet the Press, Colbert noted that in seeking placement on both the Republican and Democratic
ballots he would "like to lose twice" ("Meet the Press"). On the surface, Colbert acknowledges that he cannot actually win
the election. On another level, perhaps Colbert offers the performative model in question – only it is not
directed at pundits or candidates, but at his audience. That is, it is up to his audience to carefully observe and
critique the rhetorical performances of the candidates and then perform their own act in the voting booth. If
they vote for Colbert, then their act signals a tragic acceptance of a negative, cynical state of politics, as if to
say, "All candidates are fake, so why not vote for the one who admits he is fake?" However, if they vote for
the candidate they actually believe is most qualified, having made this decision with "maximum
consciousness," then their act signals a comic transcendence from the negative, cynical image of politics
perpetuated in the media.
Murray 136
Epistemology
Our advocacy is pre-epistemology. We should be suspect of dominant discourse because of

structural problems in the way news media is produced and filtered to the masses. Before
you can evaluate the truth claims of the 1AC you must affirm a method of coming to know
truth.
Journalists, according to Borden and Tew (2007, p. 303), seek knowledge ‘‘through a discipline of verification, providing
epistemologically defensible standards for creating and communicating knowledge about the social world’’. By this criterion, Colbert’s
‘‘performance as journalist’’ does not equate with ‘‘performing journalism,’’ and neither he, nor I, make that claim. Yet, the Colbert
Report makes valuable contributions to its practice by acknowledging news as representation rather than reality. In challenging the
rational practices and normative values of traditional information industries, the Colbert Report operates as a
critic of the press, as well as a unique site of media literacy education. Understanding the boundaries of genre, of
whose interests are represented and which reality is acknowledged, has significant implications of how news products are interpreted
(Gray, 2005, p. 3). The American public experiences the majority of world events *political, social,
cultural*through mass-mediated communication. The Report’s understanding of intertexuality, of resituating
texts beyond their intended boundaries, reminds audiences that, well intentioned or not, the construction of news
is only an approximation of ‘‘that’s the way it was.’’ When considering the ubiquity and pervasiveness of the information
media in determining how citizens make sense of, and interact, with their political realities, the Report’s potential as a critical agent in
the public sphere deserves substantial consideration. Further, the Report provides an alternative language to the monolithic discourses of
the traditional news industry, becoming a kind of ‘‘fifth estate’’ (Sotos, 2007, p. 34). Colbert as carnival challenges
authoritative claims to the ‘‘center’’ of discourse*in this context, official knowledge distributed by traditional
news venues and information practices. The traditional journalist occupies an
‘‘epistemologically precarious position’’ in resisting pressures political and
pragmatic, such as deadlines, restrictions on access, and advertising and corporate
influence in fulfilling their truth telling mission (Murphy, Ward, & Donovan, 2006, p. 325). As fewer
media conglomerates increase their ownership of news and information outlets,
business sensibilities continue to subsume the traditional watchdog role of the press
(Heflin, 2006, p. 30; Sotos, 2007, p. 34). Colbert’s performance of ‘‘free’’ expression operates a safety valve in the vortex of political
and economic forces that restrain the truth-telling role of the traditional press. As a parodic bootleg of traditional news sources, the
Colbert Report articulates implicitly what conventional journalism hesitates to say explicitly. The
Report’s reliance on
irony as the primary mechanism of critical inquiry obliges participants to overlook
the explicit discursive situation in favor of the implied meaning-making possibilities.
The ‘‘unsaid’’ speaks volumes as to the fractures and failures of contemporary
institutions, challenging the hegemonic discourse that so often governs our daily lives.
Colbert as carnival provides a temporary suspension from officialdom, inviting audiences to observe and
question the shortcomings of political life through parody and satire. It does so through participation rather
than instruction, subversion rather than hierarchy , possessing a keen understanding of rhetorical situation and historical
reality. Fletcher (1987, p. 31) notes, ‘‘there are social situations and historical moments when parody is likely to flourish, and to become
the medium of important cultural statements’’. The Report counters the ‘‘epistemological megalomania’’ of official
discourse, bearing witness to shortcomings of the political realm.
Murray 137
A/T: Permutation Do Both

We have DAs to the contextual frame – the uncritical examination of politics as such is bad
(Extend Onion cards)
The 1NC was a purposeful response to an intentional 1AC choice – we are a satire of the
form and content of the 1AC. It is nonsensical to combine satire with its object.
The permutation misses the boat on the immediacy and authenticity of performance. The
perm is a coopting strategy that doesn’t recognize that there is something innumerable in
the performance. They cannot just add the 1NC to the 1AC – what we did was spoken into
being, not just advocated.
We are perspective by incongruity – the 1NC is a juxtaposition to the 1AC, not an advocacy
you can combine
In these performances, Colbert's

speech opens obvious holes in the logic of the rhetoric he parodies. "The Word"
then complicates his speech with alternative language, which helps to balance the argument and critique
popular, yet problematic discourses. "The Word" shows the audience that Colbert is incapable of controlling the world through
rhetorical framing, nor is anyone else. Thus, "The Word" exemplifies what Burke describes as "a truly liquid attitude toward speech," in
which one "would be ready, at all times, to employ 'casuistry' at points where these lacunae are felt" (231). That is, rather than take
rhetoric for granted as truth, one actively recognizes problematic language and takes steps to extract it from
its ideological comfort zone, a method of perspective by incongruity. "We believe that the result, in the end, would be
a firmer kind of certainty," argues Burke (231). Moreover, the very phrase "The Word" directly confronts the positioning of O'Reilly's
"Talking Points" as a self-centered projection of the voice of God. It is perhaps no coincidence that "The Word" is the same phrase used
to describe Biblical scripture. However, unlike "Talking Points," "The Word" puts Colbert in his place as a fallible human
being. If "The Word" indeed plays the voice of God, then the difference from "Talking Points" is that, here,
while the voice of God may speak with Colbert, Colbert does not speak for him. [CONTINUES] In his speech,
as he does on his show, Colbert made unrecognized rhetorical conventions visible using the comic methodology
of perspective by incongruity. This is evident at first on the surface of his speech performance: he was a comedian who was hired
to entertain but instead delivered a serious critique of his audience. In years past, after-dinner entertainers at the WHCA dinner have
drawn little or no attention; this time, however, Colbert's out-of-place critique shocked the media world and turned the heads of media
watchdogs. The immediate irony was apparent: comedians like Colbert and Stewart were providing serious news,
while the news industry had become a joke. This alone was an important realization and impetus for media criticism and
public discussion. But I believe Colbert's critique went further. Colbert not only made problematic conventions visible –
to stop here could be construed as cynical or "demoralizing," as Burke describes tragic critique. Colbert also
offered a way forward by performing what he presumably believed the media can, and ought, to do – that is,
speaking freely, boldly, and for the public interest. This emphasis on "transcendence" is critical in a Burkean critique; Burke
describes perspective by incongruity as "not negative smuggling, but positive cards-face-up-on-the-table. It is designed to 'remoralize' by
accurately naming a situation already demoralized by inaccuracy" (309). Colbert offered transcendence in at least two ways. First, his
bold speech was simultaneously a critique of the media and a reflection of journalistic ideals, through which he invited the media to
follow his example and showed them how the benefits may actually outweigh the risks. Second, he problematized conventional
hierarchies (especially the media versus the administration) and invited the public to subvert both on a more permanent
basis.
They are tragic humor – an attempt to familiarize satire to make it more comfortable. This
negates the value of the 1NC performance. Reject the permutation in favor of authentic
satire
Tragic humor, therefore, relies on rhetorical recognition. As with tragic speech, the simple utterance of a popular
metonym or buzzword is enough to elicit a "natural" identification and desired response , be it agreement with
the speaker or laughter at the comedian.2 One agrees or laughs out of familiarity. Conversely, comic humor
(perhaps comic criticism is a clearer description) does something else. Its laughter is born of the realization that
Murray 138
what was said is closer to the truth than what is typically stated in discourse . One agrees or laughs out of
discovery. When Colbert, through his satire, told the media elites in the room that they were asleep at the wheel, the
punch line was neither recognized nor familiar to that audience . Initially, they neither anticipated nor welcomed his
vicious joke; perhaps later they would succumb to the forced self-reflection (although, in this case, many of them did not). However,
Colbert's audience was not only the media and political elite in the Hilton ballroom. Those who "got" the
joke were members of the larger, unseen, possibly forgotten audience watching on C-SPAN and later on Google
Video and YouTube, who also did not expect to hear such words but cheered that someone finally said it right.
Thus, as Burke argues, "'perspectives by incongruity' do not belong to a cult of virtuosity, but bring us nearest to
the simple truth" (309).
The perm reveals the 1AC to have been a performance all along. That’s the point; they
were a performance who refused to admit their inauthenticity. We are a comic
performance but we’re willing to admit that.
The permutation depends on the existence of the 1NC. But if we were satire, then what are
they?
In January 2007, Comedy Central and Fox News producers coordinated a comedic coup: Colbert appeared on The O'Reilly Factor, and
O'Reilly appeared on The Colbert Report. Both interviews were meant to be humorous, and both shows enjoyed ratings boosts from the
exchange (Toff). However, even while O'Reilly plays along, his tragic frame remains intact and seems out of place
in an openly entertainment-oriented setting. In a deskside interview, O'Reilly welcomes Colbert to The O'Reilly Factor and
immediately criticizes him for pronouncing his surname with a silent "t" when as a child he pronounced the "t." O'Reilly argues that
Colbert is an elitist trying to pass as French while hiding his real Irish-American roots. However, rather than rebut that he is not an
elitist, Colbert – in character – acknowledges openly that he changed his pronunciation to compete in the same
elite sphere as O'Reilly. "Bill, you know you've got to play the game that the media elites want you to do.
OK? Some places you can draw the line. Some places you can't. You and I have taken a lot of positions against the
powers that be, and we've paid a heavy price. We have TV shows, product lines, and books. Okay?" Eventually, O'Reilly
becomes irritated and bellows, "Who are you? Are you Coal-bert or Colbert?" Colbert replies, "Bill, I'm
whoever you want me to be." O'Reilly eventually gives up and concludes the interview, reminding the
audience that Colbert "owes his whole life to me, and I'm happy to give it up for him" (O'Reilly and Colbert).
While O'Reilly downplays Colbert's appearance on his show, Colbert is giddy and enthusiastic in anticipation of "Papa Bear's"
appearance on The Colbert Report. He plays up the greatness of the occasion and, when O'Reilly arrives, acts humbled and deferential to
his guest. (Meanwhile, his set lends dramatic irony with a "Mission Accomplished" banner hanging on the wall
behind the interview table. On the surface, this message refers to the fact that Colbert's inspiration, O'Reilly,
has finally come on the show after more than two years. However, the banner is also an ironic icon of George
Bush's premature Iraq War victory speech in May 2003 ["Commander in Chief lands on USS Lincoln"], reminding
viewers that O'Reilly and other conservatives once championed Bush's problematic war policies. ) After
discussing O'Reilly's book Culture Warrior, Colbert asks O'Reilly
if he could defeat rival pundit Sean
Hannity in a fight. O'Reilly jokes, "I'm not a tough guy. This is all an act. I'm
sensitive." Colbert, feigning shock, replies, "If you're an act, then what am I?" ("Bill
O'Reilly," The Colbert Report).
The two interviews wrench both men's performances from their conventional
settings and place them in their adversarial environments. Colbert's comic frame arguably "works" in both
settings because he makes it obvious that he is acting in character . However, O'Reilly's tragic frame appears
incongruous in this humorous, obviously staged exchange. His attempt to reveal Colbert as an imposter falls
flat because Colbert is openly fake. His attempt to retain his "real," tough persona is undercut by his own
admission that he is "an act." Once again, Colbert's engagement with O'Reilly raises the critical
question: is O'Reilly really "looking out for you," as he claims, or is he simply an
entertainer looking out for his own career?
Murray 139
***Framework
Murray 140
2NC Framework
Our framework is that you should evaluate the value of the performance of the 1AC. Form
precedes content because we are unable to affect the United States federal government.
Instead, imagine this debate round was repeated a thousand times and vote for the strategy
which would create better change in the world
Political engagement is dead and the spectacular nature of the 1AC killed it
Farrar and Warner 2008 (Margaret Farrar is Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Augustana College. Jamie
Warner is Associate Professor of Political Science at Marshall University. "Spectacular Resistance: The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of
Political Culture Jamming" http://www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/journal/v40/n3/full/2300104a.html)
Numerous commentators have bemoaned what they diagnose as a perpetual malaise that hangs over U.S.
politics. Political theorists and popular pundits alike can recite a litany of problems; scandals, corruption, attack ads, and
partisan vitriol all contribute to a political culture that at best alienates people from—and at worst actively discourages
participation in—political life. Declining rates of voter turnout, political awareness, and trust in government
are frequently cited to demonstrate citizens' growing frustration with a political process that does not address their
needs or speak to their hopes for the future. By any measure, it would seem difficult to say that democracy is
thriving.2 There are many causes for our political ennui, but one of the most often cited in political science literature is the ascension
of political spectacle. For many critics, spectacle
is the antithesis to authentic political action.
Spectacle robs citizens of their individual and collective agency, dampens their
political efficacy, and transforms them into a passive audience for the histrionic
dramas that are staged for them by political elites. Moreover, some critics charge, the steady stream of
political spectacle, especially as it is made available through the advent of the 24-hour news cycle, leads not only to
apathy but also to a deadening cynicism that can eviscerate a democratic polity.
We are comparatively more important to engaging the political than the strategy of the
1AC
The Colbert Report, which debuted on Comedy Central on October 17, 2005, exhibits a number of elements that easily identify it as
a parody of The O'Reilly Factor. For example, it spoofs O'Reilly's segment names like "Talking Points Memo," "Children
At Risk," and "The Most Ridiculous Item of the Day" with "The Word," "Balls For Kidz," and "The Craziest F#?
king Thing I've Ever Heard." Just as O'Reilly promotes his books like Culture Warrior and Kids Are Americans Too on his
television show, Colbert eagerly shills for his own book, I Am America (And So Can You!). Colbert mimics O'Reilly's loud voice and
finger-pointing. However, I contend that The Colbert Report is more than a simple exaggeration of recognizable
language and gestures for the sake of laughs. Rather, Colbert's humor is a form of critical comedy providing
viewers with what Robert Hariman calls a "rhetorical education" ("Political Parody and Public Culture" 264). Hariman argues that
political parody is an essential component of healthy, democratic discourse and contends that it makes
complex rhetorical criticisms accessible to the general public. That is, for example, while only a few scholars are
likely to review my master's thesis identifying rhetorical conventions on The O'Reilly Factor, Colbert uses
comedy to make these conventions readily visible to a non-scholarly public audience and invites them to
participate in a critical discourse.
It’s not about changing the political or drowning out the dominant powers, rather it’s
about opening space for new forms of critical thinking
We have argued that Billionaires for Bush provide an especially intriguing model of political culture jamming. By (ab)using tactics
readily available within our political culture, such as spectacle, irony, and marketing savvy, the Billionaires
attempt to “jam” the dominant interpretation of a political brand —in this instance, the Republican Party—by
inserting parodic countermessages into what is often a one-way information flow. This has the potential to
force passive political spectators to become active participants in the event, decoding and reinterpretating the
multiple narratives that form the basis of the ironic performance, which is exactly the détournement that all culture jammers seek.
By creating these moments of improbability, the Billionaires for Bush hope to transform the political landscape. And as William
Murray 141
Connolly has argued, “a little vertigo is indispensable to creative thinking.”78 Three related questions, however, still linger.
The first is a question of scale and, thus, of effectiveness. There is a vast asymmetry between the immensity of the
dominant political spectacle of the Republican Party and the Bush Administration and the small, localized,
counter-spectacle of Billionaires for Bush, even if the latter's demonstrations were picked up by the national
media as they were designed to be. The Billionaires, though, believe that they are having a substantial impact
on political discourse. On their website, they address this question directly: “You're funny. You're smart,” reads the Q and A. “But
are you effective?” Their short answer is yes: "Our proven approach consistently generates critical, issue-focused media coverage. Since
January 2004, the Billionaires have garnered over 250 major media mentions in both national venues (New York Times, Washington
Post, Time Magazine, CNN, FOX, NPR, ABC, CBS, etc.) and in local markets (St. Petersberg Times, Cleveland Plain Dealer, Pittsburgh
Post-Gazette, Detroit Free Press, Akron Journal, etc)." The Billionaires go on to tout their “huge brand name
recognition; a dynamic network of 100 on-the-ground chapters; an award-winning website and on-line
community of 10,000+; a proven, scalable, Do-It-Yourself organizing model; [and] an effective messaging
vehicle that's robust and elastic enough to take on almost any issue.”79 Our answer to this question of effectiveness is
more of a “Yes, but…” After all, for all their visibility, the Billionaires did not prevent the re-election of George W. Bush in 2004. To
the extent that we evaluate the Billionaires' “success” by whether or not they are able
to turn electoral tides, then they are clearly not successful. However, remember that
the point of political culture jamming is to attempt to “jam” the monologue of the
dominant political brand so other voices can be heard, not necessarily to drown out
the dominant political brand—which would be very difficult to do. Just as culture jammers don't believe that they can
get rid of corporate capitalism by just reworking a few billboards or print advertisements, the Billionaires don't believe that they can
single-handedly stop the influence of money on the political process. However, these groups do believe that they can use
media savvy tactics to insert their voices into the increasingly one-sided political conversation .80 Their
effectiveness, in other words, should be measured less in terms of electoral gains (or losses) and more in regards to
the variety of voices able to be heard in the process.
The society described in the 1AC where rational discourse rules the land and politics can
be changed with the presentation of a solid bill is a delusion. Believing in that delusion
traps us in disengagement and cedes the political to corporations
In his famous account of the society of the spectacle, Guy Debord contends that authentic social and political reality has been
replaced by mere images or representations of that reality, yet these representations have “succeed[ed] in
making themselves regarded as the epitome of reality.”3 Spectacular culture is primarily commodity culture, representing a
point “at which the commodity has succeeded in totally colonizing social life.”4 In fact, Debord argues, “Commodification is not only
visible, we no longer see anything else; the world we see is the world of the commodity.”5 Mass media and mass advertising have
converted the most authentic of human emotions into manipulations, making real communication and connection virtually
impossible.According to many political scientists, Debord's society of the spectacle has now overtaken political, as well as social, life.
Murray Edelman argues that politicians and the media construct an inherently conservative spectacle that
systematically diverts attention from inequality and toward the dominant political brands .6 Further, as Bruce
Miroff notes, the most important office in the land—the presidency—is now crafted in the service of spectacle. The presidency
today, Miroff argues (following Roland Barthes), more closely resembles the art(ifice) of professional wrestling than
anything else; it is a tightly choreographed morality play, with a clear-cut cast of good guys and bad guys and
without much room for spontaneity.7 The empty gestures that characterize spectacular
politics thus effectively quash the agonistic struggle and compromise of authentic
politics; instead, a president is depicted increasingly as “…a larger-than-life main character, along with his supporting team,
engag[ing] in emblematic bouts with immoral or dangerous adversaries.”8 Mass media in general and television in particular allow the
spectacles of political competition and presidential leadership to merge seamlessly with commodity/advertising culture; the president
(and his supporting cast members) become products to be marketed and sold.9 As Michael Rogin has so eloquently argued, film and
television have become so intertwined with our understandings of politics that during the 1980s both the public and the president himself
ended up confusing Reagan's filmic and political personae.10 Indeed, as Jodi Dean notes, “the
deluge of screens and
spectacles undermines political opportunity and efficacy for most of the world's
peoples.”11 What makes this situation especially galling, critics charge, is that most of us are aware of the fact
that we're watching spectacles. We understand that politicians' phrasing and word choice is tested in focus groups; we
are fully accustomed to hearing political strategists talk unselfconsciously about political parties or candidates as “brands.”12 The
omnipresence of political spectacle is, in the words of William Chaloupka, something that “everybody knows.”13 This is why, for
example, Jodi Dean argues that Zizek's description of “ideology” is quite well suited to our current political circumstance: “ideology”
is not (as Marx argued) false consciousness or a misrepresentation of a submerged reality; rather, ideology is our
Murray 142
understanding that our reality is ideologically constituted, and the fact that we act as if it is not.14 In other words,
we act as if the lie was not a lie—and our acting in the face of falsehood, to a large extent, makes it true.The
result of this knowledge is damning, because political spectacle combined with our awareness of politics as spectacle
can produce a particularly intractable form of political cynicism, what Alan Keenan names the cynicism of the
“disempowered outsider.” As Keenan describes it, this cynicism is directed not at particular policies, politicians, or
institutions, but rather at “the very activity of democratic politics itself,” and can result in either hostility or
apathy towards those in power. The problem with spectacular society, then, according to its critics, is that it produces
political passivity; those outside of the political arena become members of an audience,
rather than citizens of a polity. Those who examine the growth of spectacular politics commonly criticize its anti-
democratic tendencies. “A spectacle,” Miroff contends, “does not permit the audience to interrupt the action and redirect its meaning.
Spectators can become absorbed in a spectacle or can find it unconvincing, but they cannot become performers. A spectacle is not
designed for mass participation; it is not a democratic event.”16 Or, in Alan Keenan's phrase, political spectacles
thus
reduce individuals to “spectator-voters” rather than active citizens.17 As spectators, the
most we can aspire to in our political lives is to act as competent theater critics able to
critique the performance of politics, but not the substance or content of the political
act itself. And many times, as Kathleen Hall Jamieson argues, even participation as a competent critic is stymied: the role of
theater critic is most often hijacked by journalists and reporters, who evaluate our candidates' and leaders' performances (in debate
coverage, for example) rather than the substance of their ideas.18
Only our political method solves spectatorship

In fact, as Linda Hutcheon contends, the sort of ironic performance practiced by the Billionaires is best understood not as a single
attitude or sensibility, but rather as more an event that happens between speaker and interpreter.71 Hutcheon's account of irony differs
markedly from Richard Rorty's, whose analysis of irony focuses on the possession (or not) of certain cognitive skills, and is thus the
exclusive purview of the intellectual elite. By contrast, Hutcheon's description of irony emphasizes the creation of “overlapping
discursive communities.”72 Ironic performances such as these, Hutcheon would emphasize, both draw on shared cultural
knowledge and create new cultural knowledge in their wake.73 That is to say, when political protest takes this
form of ironic counter-spectacles, it presumes and constructs a much more nuanced and interactive
relationship between “actors” and “audience” than many political theorists' accounts allow.74 Indeed, some might argue that
the Billionaires' tactics are par for the course in an era when even the biggest villain in our stories of spectacular culture—television—
has changed dramatically. Many television shows not only provide complex plots and richly drawn characters that require intense
engagement on the part of the audience (compare the current hit TV show “Lost” with the 1970s classic “Fantasy Island”) but also are
augmented by interactive web communities, fan sites and fan fiction, where “audience” members actively discuss, debate, and elaborate
upon various elements of the show.75 This is not to argue, however, that ironic spectacle in the form of political culture jamming is an
unproblematic political strategy. If irony is in the eye of the beholder (or interpreter), as Hutcheon claims, then ironic performances
always run the risk of being lost in translation.76 Certainly this is true of the Billionaires' performances. Andrew Boyd, for example,
reports an email he received which admonished: “You are not helping the president get re-elected. Shut up. You're making the
Republican Party look like a bunch of elitists.”77 Yet as many have argued, if fundamentalism—in the sense of a dogmatic
adherence to one's own identity, faith, and/or political ideals—increasingly undergirds our virulent political
culture and the pervasiveness of “ideology” (in the Zizekian sense) is the order of the day, it seems to us that a strategy that
relies only upon a literalist refutation of facts is ill-equipped to the task of multiplying the sites of political
engagement. The Billionaires for Bush understand both the limits of the literal and the uses of spectacle for political engagement. In
creating an ironic political spectacle that requires audience interpretation , the Billionaires problematize the
dichotomy between actor and audience (or citizen/spectator) that critics charge necessarily results in political
passivity.
Murray 143
Engage PTX Uniqueness – Masses

Modern macro-level politics is not marked by rational discussion about the costs and
benefits of specific bills, rather it is characterized by a discourse which appeals to base
desires. When health care was up for debate the Republicans resorted to Death Panels
instead of weighing the economic gains and losses from the bill. So too will immigration
policy be debated at the level of desire. The Tea Party grows stronger every day because
the left is unwilling or unable to challenge that discourse. Conservatism lingers, and only a
politics of desire can save us.
Atlantic Sentinel 2010
(“America’s Not So Original Islam Backlash”, 8-14, http://atlanticsentinel.com/2010/08/americas-not-so-original-islam-backlash/)
Both in Europe and in the United States, there is a crisis of confidence among intellectuals and
representatives of traditional power structures about the superiority of their culture and values. In Europe, this
lack of confidence is older and harkens back to the post-colonial guilt and cultural relativism of the 1960s
which led a whole generation of political leaders, mostly on the left, to turn a blind eye on the mounting
frustration experienced particularly among the lower classes with a seemingly endless influx of migrants.
These people, who traditionally voted for social-democratic or Labor parties, saw their neighborhoods change, sometimes deteriorate;
their worlds literally turned upside down because of urban renewal projects; low incomes jobs being shipped overseas, all the while their
political representatives reveled in the wonders of globalization. It seemed to them as though the politicians who claimed
to defend their interests simply didn’t know, let alone understand their problems. Since the turn of the century, this
constituency of largely working class voters has turned to more radical solutions. They supported Jörg Haider in Austria, Pim Fortuyn in
the Netherlands, Jean-Marie Le Pen in France, People’s Parties in Denmark and Switzerland, and more recently, Geert Wilders. What
these political leaders and parties shared were blunt anti-immigration policies, a nationalistic tone and a
fierce agitation against the establishment. Although readily identified as “far right,” most actually maintained fairly socialistic
economic positions, opposing, for instance, raising the retirement age and favoring a certain measure of protectionism to secure jobs. In
most Western European countries, these anti-immigration platforms are in the process of being institutionalized as part of the political
landscape. With the exception of France, all aforementioned parties either have been or are expected to become part
of governing coalitions. They subsequently temper their rhetoric while working to enact real solutions, not banning the Qur’an or
deporting criminals whose parents hail from Arab countries but imposing immigration controls and tougher prison sentencing for what is
otherwise low level crime. In the United States, a similar crisis of confidence is developing though it is both more
recent and more defined. The Tea Party phenomenon is the most noticeable expression of a mounting
discontent among a majority of Americans with what Newt Gingrich calls the secular-socialist machine that is the Obama
Administration. Many Americans fear that their country’s traditions are being squandered by the current
government in favor of European-style socialism. In reality, America has been a welfare state for many
decades and even most Tea Partiers supports its most pervasive of programs: Medicare, Medicaid and Social
Security. Like the European anti-immigration parties, Republicans in the United States today may strike a
nationalistic tone, denouncing the Democrats’ policies as “European” (i.e., foreign) but they usually won’t propose
to curb on entitlements. They understand that what’s driving their base is what’s driving disenfranchised voters in
Europe: fear, of the future and the unknown, and, perhaps even more so, anger. Politically, it’s much
more expedient to try to capitalize on such emotions than offer sound policy
alternatives. In fairness, there have been several Republican legislators who dare to voice bold, libertarian solutions to America’s
pressing budget woes and evermore expansive government. They are urging Democrats as well as their own party to discover anew the
virtues of austerity and fiscal balance in government and letting the free market reign. But overwhelmingly, Americans, like their
counterparts across the Atlantic, agree that there is a place for government in nearly every sector of the economy, no matter the rhetoric.
In essence, the differences between the major parties in the United States are still slim. So when health care
reform came to Congress, most opposition members retorted to scare tactics, warning of “death panels” and
denouncing their pro-choice colleagues as “baby killers.” With immigration reform looming, Republicans,
again, rather simplify reality than face the inevitable necessity of changing America’s current immigration
structure. By framing the War on Terror as a clash of civilizations and by warning that immigration reform will “open
the floodgates” to admit a stream of malevolent, job stealing Mexicans into the country, Republicans are
thriving on a nationalistic, increasingly isolationist current of populist fury that is also fiercely anti-establishment.
Within a few years, no matter their popularity today and likely electoral successes in the near future, that could easily come back to
haunt them, as it did in 2006 and 2008.
Murray 144
Engage PTX Uniqueness - Hypperreal

We control uniqueness. Politics is the hypperreal – the person you vote for in an election is
a fictional character designed by the media. Congress is an ongoing drama and the
President’s primary job is making you THINK he is doing his duty. Haha, duty – BUT NO
TIME TO LAUGH ABOUT IT NOW
Colletta 2009 (Lisa Colletta is Associate Professor of English at the American University of Rome. "Political Satire and Postmodern
Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart" Journal of Popular Culture)
This kind of irony is especially evident in the social and political satire we see on television, but in a more subtle form it has come to be
the defining aesthetic of politics itself. Politicians perform their roles with a smirk and wink aimed at a television
audience, knowing that saying something is true is the equivalent of its being true, that appearing is the same
as being. They play a role we all expect them to play while they act in their own self-interest, and the media
reports on the competing roles of the performers as if they were the story—not the effects of their political self-
interests. Using the narrative and imagery of the most cliche´d of television shows, we have had a president, as satirist
Stephen Colbert asserts, ‘‘who stands for things, not only for things, but on things: things like aircraft carriers
and rubble and recently flooded city squares. And that sends a strong message: that no matter what happens
to America, she will always rebound—with the most powerfully staged photo ops in the world’’ (‘‘White House
Correspondents’ Dinner’’). When political activity is reduced to a photo op and staged like a television show, it
becomes part of the same imaginary, unreal discourse that television itself is, with, unfortunately, very real
consequences. However, the staged quality of postmodern politics suggests that it really does not matter who
is in power, because the opposition is just as fake as the party in power. It argues that the choice is really between
fakes, which is no choice at all, and that only the very naı¨ve would think that they can really affect change. In this context, the ironic,
sophisticated voter is encouraged to ‘‘let the powerful rule, because the powerful always rule’’ or risk seeming hopelessly gullible
(Wilkie 609). As Rob Wilkie has noted, this logic leads to a cynical lack of engagement and a stifling of real and
meaningful debate; it is simply another way of enunciating democracy itself with a wink and a nod (609). Just
as we can feel superior in our ironic awareness of the unreality of television, as we watch four hours of it a day, we can also feel savvy in
knowing ‘‘that true democracy is always ironic,’’ as our democratic freedoms and those of others are eroded (609).
Another example of this is news polls

But if public opinion polls, when conducted according to strict empirical standards, are known to be accurate reflections of voter
sentiment at a moment in time, what is wrong with reporting about them? Tom Rosenstiel argues that, while some polls are
precise, insightful, and ultimately useful for in-depth political commentary, many polls are not, and often
their news value is merely a means to a more capitalistic end: marketing value . That is, organizations capitalize by
placing their name as the name of the poll, such as "the Los Angeles Times poll" (Rosenstiel 699). And, in today's twenty-four-
hour media world, the proliferation of daily tracking polls quickly and easily feed the demands for content.
Meanwhile, cost-efficiency measures have left news organizations staffed with fewer, less experienced
reporters who lack the training necessary to give in-depth analyses of polls and interpret which polls are actually
reliable. "The
combined effect of these trends in polling is providing citizens with more
facts about the daily ups and downs in the horserace and tactics of American politics
but a weaker understanding of the deeper structural meaning of elections or the
mandate that they give the victors to govern" (700).
Murray 145
A/T: Traditional engagement good
Our advocacy is a pre-requisite to their politics: we do not foreclose engaging the political,
but the sequencing between jamming and engaging is key
The third question takes the first objection one step further. Isn't
political culture jamming just an amusing form of
selling out? Isn't it easier just to go with the flow of our spectacular political society rather than resisting it
with truly active and “authentic” participation, like the more traditional forms that we teach in our Introduction to American
Government classes: running for office, (unironically) supporting candidates for office, joining a
political party, working for or giving money to a campaign, voting, “honest”
nonironic demonstrations and marches, writing letters to the editor and to our elected
officials, and finally, engaging in rational, unambiguous, working-toward-consensus
discussion? We certainly do not want to claim that these traditional forms of participation are ineffective or outdated. In fact, we
would argue that they are still the principle means for mobilizing mass political resistance. Given that
political parody is, by definition, completely parasitic on what is being spoofed —both substantively and temporally
—it neither can nor should be the main mode of political participation. We do want to suggest, however, than more than
a bit of the critique directed at spectacular politics—and the accompanying laments over declining mass political participation—is
perhaps colored by nostalgia. Nowhere is this more clear than in laments describing our (presumably recent) “disenchantment” with
politics.81 We find this language of “disenchantment” a common but confusing characterization of the current democratic predicament.
Have democratic politics ever been a wholly “enchanted” or “enchanting” activity where citizens could act authentically? Hasn't
political life always been the site of a terrible kind of rationality, the place where—at least according to either Dahlian pluralists or
Waltzian realists—self interests collide and vie for dominance? Moreover, was the urban party-machine politics in the North, or the
brutal dictates of Jim Crow in the South, ever a source of charm or captivation for any but the most cynical (or the most naïve) of
political actors?82 Indeed, for much of American history, political life has revolved around economic, religious,
gender, and race elites imposing their self-interested decisions on various publics. The description of contemporary
politics as “disenchanted” is especially unclear when it is put alongside the critiques of “spectacular” politics. Enchantment, in Jane
Bennett's words, “move[s] you from the actual world to its virtual possibilities.”83 And spectacular politics—think of the parties'
elaborate national conventions, celebratory campaign commercials, and triumphant speeches on aircraft carriers—do nothing if not aim
to transport us into an alternate reality. Spectacular politics, in short, rely on enchantment: political figures become
larger-than-life approximations of themselves; good and evil are personified in human (or nation) form ; and
engrossing moral dramas get played out for an audience of millions. While these spectacles—or these celebrations of politics and
candidates as commodities—surely can contribute to citizens' cynicism about the political process, like Bennett we are suspicious of
narratives that read spectacular politics (or for Bennett, advertising culture) as doing only that. Our claim, then, is this: to ignore
political culture jamming in the hopes of returning to some idealized form of
authentic political action is to ignore the tools present within the society of the
spectacle. The Billionaires for Bush work at the level of representation, using spectacle as a boomerang to encourage bystanders to
question what they're seeing and hearing and to actively think about political life. Like many of the other political culture jammers
we have mentioned, they carve out a space for self-conscious, ironic performativity that is explicitly not nostalgic
for the “authentic” political action of some mythical, bygone era. In this way, the Billionaires for Bush and other
political culture jammers cultivate a critical appreciation for political spectacle; they help citizens practice the
arts of translating irony and making sense of the conflicting (and often non-literal) messages that are a necessary
part of agonistic democratic politics. These kinds of skills, we believe, are crucial for citizens today.
Murray 146
A/T: Training for the Political

Satire solves better – teaches us to critically engage media
Waisanen 2009 (Don J. Waisanen, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. "A Citizen’s Guides to
Democracy Inaction: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Comic Rhetorical Criticism" Southern Communication Journal Vol. 74, No. 2, April–
June 2009, pp. 119–140)
This is not to endow Stewart and Colbert with limitless capacities. They do not vote daily in a legislature or build houses for the
poor. They are only a couple of contributors, albeit distinctive ones, to the vast domains of American politics and civil society. Yet just
like rhetorical critics in general, they demonstrate that there is a necessary place for communication criticism that
can concurrently analyze, evaluate, and even entertain in public life. Stewart and Colbert give us hybrid
comic equipment for dealing with the conditions of contemporary media and politics. Moreover, their intertextual
innovations teach us to be more cognizant of the rich opportunities for perspective construction on any given topic or in any rhetorical
situation. Comically framed perspectives by incongruity were at the apex of Kenneth Burke’s theories of how human beings can best
relate to and build community with one another. He invested morally in the idea that, ‘‘mankind’s only hope is a cult of comedy’’
(Burke, 1966, p. 20). Stewart and Colbert are models for the way in which playfulness can create space for civil
political engagement. They teach their audiences to identify the logomachies of contemporary politics and
media, which are always lurking in the symbolic nature of human affairs . As such, there is rhetorical and humanistic
value in their practices. We might reasonably surmise that Stewart and Colbert would agree with Burke’s (1955) advice that criticism
is best when the world is approached with a kind of ‘‘smiling hypochondriasis’’ (p. 273). Ethically directed,
but never foolproof, this scholar concurs.
More evidence
June 2009, pp. 119–140)
Third, far
from a politics of ‘‘inertia’’ (Hart & Hartelius, 2007, p. 264) and passive, nihilistic resignation, Stewart and
Colbert’s comic strategies are active, reflective engagements with public texts. There is a remarkable degree of alert
reflexivity in their news commentary that greatly contrasts with the spirit of certitude informing much media discourse. There is neither
unthinking dogmatism nor an unrelenting skepticism free from communal concerns in their approaches. Rather, Stewart and
Colbert’s communications are ‘‘essential for modern critical consciousness,’’ in a democracy that itself
thrives on the checking and balancing of flaws in the system (Hariman, 2007, p. 274). Stewart and Colbert certainly
destabilize pieties. Yet beyond critique, their comic strategies are constructive in that , as Demo (2000) argues of comic-frame
rhetors in general, they ‘‘shatter one system of pieties, or frame[s] of reference, [while] they ready
audiences=viewers for another’’ (p. 152). Ultimately, the broadly oriented critical comic strategies that Stewart and
Colbert employ build knowledge about public affairs.
Murray 147
Framework – Heroic vs. Humor

Role playing is the heroic – you get a chance to externalize yourself onto a mythic figure.
Our humor inverses this process and humbles the problems of the status quo to encourage
action necessary to effect change
Whereas O'Reilly defers to his presumed audience as patriotic, hard-working, God-fearing, honest
Americans, Colbert satirizes the marketing intentions of such an appeal by turning it into obvious patronizing
and pandering. This is also ironic because Colbert's character hails his audience as like-minded, self-important
conservatives who take him seriously, while in reality his viewers know that his show is a comedy and the
joke is on him. And yet, Colbert's sarcastic pandering to his viewers hints that they do not deserve to be
pandered to if, as he observes, they behave only as media consumers, not active citizens. Through a Burkean lens,
we can describe this parody as humor downplaying the heroic. Burke writes, Humor is the opposite of the
heroic. The heroic promotes acceptance by magnification, making the hero's character as great as the situation he
confronts, and fortifying the non-heroic individual vicariously , by identification with the hero; but humor
reverses the process: it takes up the slack between the momentousness of the situation and the feebleness of
those in the situation by dwarfing the situation (43). Under the guise of praise, Colbert's manifesto issues a
critique of his audience's own level of civic participation, letting them know that
simply laughing and agreeing with him is not enough to effect change in the
problematic discourses he critiques.
Murray 148
K2 Democracy
June 2009, pp. 119–140)
Stewart and Colbert’s strategy of satirical specificity performs essential democratic functions by directing
critical accountability toward the suasive, mystifying merger terms in politics and media. Comics highlight for us
potential gaps between what is and what should be (Mintz, 1985). Through satirical specificity, Stewart and Colbert exemplify Klumpp
and Hollihan’s (1989) idea that excellent rhetorical criticism is grounded in sound, moral critique: ‘‘Illuminate the mystery, bring it to
consciousness, and you introduce the possibility of change’’ (p. 93). Colbert and Stewart are rhetorical critics who analyze
and evaluate the use of terms that evade answers, hide interests, or gloss over the details of highly
consequential policies or public actions. In short, they attack the substance of much political language to
illuminate the workings of discourse, while simultaneously engaging alternate moral claims and standards for
practicing communication. Beyond their critical appropriations of form and style, and assessments of language and content,
Stewart and Colbert generate scenic comparisons to bring the social constructions, situated environments,
and attitudinal atmospheres of different political worlds sharply into focus . They lastly employ the comic
strategy of contextual clash to reframe political and media discourses toward conscientious ends.
Murray 149
Critical thinking > predictability

Predictable humor prevents change
Through Burke's theory, Colbert's

comic criticism is a tool for identifying and exposing the processes by which a
speaker's rhetorical shortcuts – whether in sober speech or jokes – bypass critical reflection for the easy
gain of audience approval. Whereas Colbert's speech used comedy to break out of a
limited frame of discourse, Bush's comic routine fit neatly within that frame and a
taken-for-granted identification of "appropriateness." Burke describes this identification not as
"irrational" but "non-rational": "and so it is with many human processes, even mental ones, like the 'identification' that the non-heroic
reader makes with the hero of the book he is reading" (171). To many viewers, readers, and other media consumers, identifying with the
recognizable and familiar seems natural and commonsensical. To the speaker seeking to persuade, this is a desired effect. And yet, for
Burke, this is not to say that all persuasion is bad. The comic critic, too, seeks to persuade. To call such processes "irrational" is to desire
their complete elimination. But we question whether social integration can be accomplished without them. If we consider them simply as
"non-rational," we are not induced to seek elaborate techniques for their excision – instead we merely, as rational men, "watch" them, to
guard ourselves against cases where they work badly. Where they work well, we can salute them, even coach them (Burke 171). The
difference between tragic and comic persuasion, here, lies in the question of what is perceived as
recognizable and familiar. Whereas Bush and Bridges wanted the audience to recognize Bush's
mispronunciation of "nuclear" and Cheney's shooting incident, Colbert wanted the audience – especially the
media establishment – to realize Bush and Cheney's mismanagement of the Iraq war (to name just one
controversy), and in turn make this recognizable and familiar to both the administration and the public.
Murray 150
Debate is key
Our audience extends beyond the debate round. Even if the debate doesn’t leave the room,
what we do here will resonate outwards
Colbert's speech not only recognized this limited discursive space, it also transgressed it. His performance
operated outside of that space entirely, insisting on a broader view of the dinner event and its implications for journalism. If
his own performance was carnivalesque, he did not place the media as "low" and the administration as
"high"; rather, Colbert represented a third group: an interested public that felt disenfranchised just as much
by the media establishment as by the Bush administration. He also recognized a group within that group: the new,
alternative media sphere known as the "blogosphere," which some in the mainstream media viewed skeptically or competitively. On
behalf of these citizens, Colbert suggested that the mainstream media embarked on a joint "high" partnership with the administration
at the expense of the people, who were ironically and problematically cast as "low," even as the
administration proclaimed the virtues of democracy for and by the people. Whereas the conventional
media/administration inversion was returned to order by the next day, Colbert's inversion was just beginning – as video
footage of the speech took off online and spawned an open-ended public dialogue that the mainstream media
was largely unable to control. However, as Colbert suggested, this uncontrollable inversion was not necessarily tragic.
Murray 151
Demystify
Waisanen 2009 (Don J. Waisanen, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California. "A Citizen’s Guides to Democracy
Inaction: Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert’s Comic Rhetorical Criticism" Southern Communication Journal Vol. 74, No. 2, April–June 2009, pp.
119–140)
Stewart and Colbert use satirical specificity to demystify and reorient public discourse. They illustrate what it is to
find one’s way through, as Burke (1969b) describes, ‘‘a fog of merger-terms where the clarity of division-terms is needed’’ (p. 109). He
argues we should ‘‘look for ‘mystification’ at any point where social divisiveness. . .is obscured by unitary
terms’’ (p. 108, emphasis added). Burke (1957) asks us to consider using ‘‘correct magic, magic whose decrees about the naming of
real situations is the closest possible approximation to the situation named’’ (p. 4). Through satirical specificity, Colbert and
Stewart detail alternate conceptions of public discourse and chip away at the mystifications in politics and
media. Through satirical specificity, Colbert and Stewart engage in a kind of anti-‘‘ideographic’’ criticism (see McGee, 1980).
Rather than finding comfort in the grand abstractions of political life (e.g. through words like ‘‘family
values,’’ ‘‘equality,’’ ‘‘freedom’’ etc.), Stewart and Colbert deflate mystifying ideographs with localized
references. In doing so, they critically appraise vague rhetorical claims. Stewart and Colbert’s specificity reframes public affairs in
terms of everyday, vernacular frankness. Moreover, they
expose abstractions that public actors employ to
gloss over the important details of policies and political actions. Stewart and Colbert thus use a
humorous specificity with a valuable social purpose. Satire is used to debunk ‘‘the substance of a social or cultural icon
or phenomenon’’
Murray 152
Culture Jamming Good
Farrar and Warner 2008 (Margaret Farrar is Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Augustana College. Jamie Warner is Associate
Professor of Political Science at Marshall University. "Spectacular Resistance: The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of Political Culture
Jamming" http://www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/journal/v40/n3/full/2300104a.html)
If one agrees with these assumptions about spectacle, irony, cynicism, and passivity, the outlook for future
political engagement then appears bleak. At the end of Amusing Ourselves to Death, a very discouraged Neil Postman
wonders what—if anything—we can do to resist the deadening effects of spectacular media in general and television in particular. He
offers us two rather disheartening answers: one he considers “desperate” and the other “nonsensical.” His desperate answer is
education.26 To battle the dumbing-down of our civic culture, we really need to smarten our kids up. His “nonsensical” answer is more
remarkable, although he dismisses it out of hand almost immediately. Here he argues that perhaps one answer to the television-
induced spectacular malaise might be “to create television programs whose intent would be, not to get people
to stop watching television but to demonstrate how television ought to be viewed, to show how television
recreates and degrades our conception of news, political debate, religious thought, etc.”27 He suggests that
something along the lines of Saturday Night Live or Monty Python skits might arouse our analytical faculties from their flickering
stupor. But is Postman's answer really that nonsensical? We argue that it is not. In fact, an intriguing model of the utilization of exactly
this kind of “nonsense” has emerged from the core of Debord's spectacular society: culture jamming. According to Mark Dery, the term
“culture jamming” was first used by the band Negativland to illustrate forms of anti-capitalist, anti-consumerist media sabotage.28
The name now applies to a plethora of groups who use a wide variety of tactics to destabilize and challenge the
dominant message of consumer capitalism from within. Instead of simply using non-spectacular or non-
ironic factual information, rational argumentation, legal strategies, and traditional political tactics to oppose capitalist
institutions directly, culture jamming turns the commercial techniques of image and emotion back on themselves
through what Umberto Eco called “semiological guerrilla warfare.”29 Culture jammers like Kalle Lasn agree with critics like
Debord and Postman that today's spectacular culture can encourage passive cynicism: "We face more and more opportunities and
incentives to spend time in cyberspace or to let the TV do the thinking. This is “unreality”: a mediated world so womblike and seductive,
it's hard not to conclude that it's a pretty nice place to be. In that world of unreality, it's easy to forget that you're a citizen and that the
actual world is an interactive place.30" But Lasn disagrees that Keenan's “disempowered outsider,” who feels nothing but hostility or
worse, apathy, towards politics and politicians, is the only possible reaction to contemporary political culture.31 The encroachment
of spectacular politics also suggests new, creative ways to participate, as well as tactics that invite active
reinterpretation of events, rather than passive spectatorship . According to Lasn, the primary goal of many culture
jammers is détournement, a French term borrowed from the Situationists of the 1950s and 1960s. Translated literally as a “turning
around,” Lasn defines the concept as a “perspective-jarring turnabout in your everyday life,” which is instigated by
“rerouting spectacular images, environments, ambiences and events to reverse or subvert their meaning, thus
reclaiming them.”32 Or, more pointedly, jammers “create with mirrors”: they replicate while
simultaneously inverting hegemonic messages.
Murray 153
***Links
Link – 1AC as Character (Then Who am I?)
O'reilly as character, parody as farce

Holcomb 2009 (Justine Schuchard, "In the Culture of Truthiness: Comic Criticism and the Performative Politics of Stephen Colbert" (2009).
Communication Theses. Paper 51.)
And yet, through Colbert's biting critique of O'Reilly comes an ironic sense of love for him as "Papa Bear." Colbert
acknowledges
O'Reilly as the reason he exists – literally, since without O'Reilly Colbert would not have him to parody.
Likewise, this parody suggests, O'Reilly depends his own "villains" in order to have a
talk show, which means he has an incentive to persuade viewers of their continuing
threat. Colbert's humor offers a comic reframing of "villains" as "tricked" or "mistaken," and "heroes" as
"intelligent" beings at best, but by no means godly. From this perspective, we see that O'Reilly is neither a hero to
his fans nor a villain to Colbert's fans; in truth, he is another television performer, doing his job in the media
business. This comes to the forefront especially when Colbert and O'Reilly appear on each other's shows. Colbert, who
openly admits he is a fake character, performs easily on both sets. O'Reilly, however,
still attempts to assert the "realness" of his persona and tragic views – and essentially
gets caught in the act. He jokes defeatedly, "This is all an act. I'm sensitive." To which
Colbert replies, "If you're an act, what am I?" Ultimately, Colbert's parody of
O'Reilly tells viewers: O'Reilly is not a villain, but you should watch him carefully,
for he is no hero, either. Likewise, Colbert is an entertainer, not a hero – you should
watch yourself carefully when watching him.
Murray 154
Link - Threats
During the time of carnival, acquiescence to hierarchical mechanisms of social control, all formal structures
of terror and veneration*and subsequent associated protocols*are suspended on the carnival square (Bakhtin,
1984a, p. 122123) The Report’s segment, the Threatdown, decrowns the culture of fear promoted by the
government and magnified by the media. The segment, announced by sirens and a flashing bull’s eye, uses hyperbole
to satirize hyperbole. In one segment of the Threatdown, Colbert examines the alleged dangers of the tropics. At the top of the
roster, ‘‘Sand!’’ is apparently hazardous, as Colbert warns, ‘‘It’s always proved inadequate building material for my castles.’’ Then the
Report posts a story on CNN.com that announces, ‘‘Sand More Deadly Than Sharks.’’ Apparently, within the last decade, 16 individuals
have ‘‘fallen’’ to their deaths, injuring themselves in holes dug in the sand. Colbert then calls on the Discovery Channel, whose
projected graphic promotes ‘‘Shark Week,’’ to instead broadcast ‘‘Sand Week.’’ As such, he satirizes contemporary media
tradition*magnifying the alleged ‘‘threat’’ of sand by multiplying media exposure. Another apparent tropical peril, ‘‘Coral reefs!’’
makes the danger zone. Colbert posts an article from Yahoo!News reporting, ‘‘Herpes Virus Killing Coral Reefs.’’ ‘‘According to
microbiologists at Plymouth University in England, most of the world’s coral reefs are riddled with herpes . . . Who’s been fucking the
coral reefs?’’ exclaims Colbert. The elements of carnival are clear; satire, incongruity, and the profane. Yet the sum
of the performance is distinct from the parts, indicting the culture of fear appropriated by authority and
amplified by media culture. For example, in discussing the stimulus package, Colbert states
that the ‘‘Democrats are taking a page from the Republicans’ fear book.’’ The
Report then shows a montage of video excerpts from multiple news sources claiming,
‘‘Carnage across nearly all sectors of the US economy,’’ ‘‘Economic devastation,’’
‘‘Economic meltdown,’’ ‘‘If we don’t pass this thing, it’s Armageddon.’’ The juxtaposition
and tempo of the clips increases in speed until the montage reaches a crescendo of farcical proportions. Upon returning to the studio, the
audience is witness to Colbert hiding under the desk as he whispers, ‘‘Oh my god. The end is near. Jesus, I’ll meet you at the Arby’s
where I suppose we will both be working.’’ His emphasis on pathos, emphasized by vocal quality and affect display, mirrors the reliance
of political discourse in its appeal to emotion. Yet, Colbert’s performance, a balance of electronic exploitation and physical humor,
reveals the mechanics of fear in the absence of officialdom. Fear
has always been an effective stimulant in
political manipulation, given new status as a rhetorical strategy since the September
11 tragedy. Hiding behind the facade of rational discourse, the politics of fear
privileges official proclamations of public policy. The monolithic rhetoric of officialdom
effectively silences other salient concerns. The Threatdown, however, decrowns such authority by parodying
political and social constructs of contemporary anxiety. Colbert’s choice of Threatdown
topics*coral reefs, flamingos, sand, polo ponies*simultaneously suggests that we
should be afraid of nothing and everything, revealing the arbitrary nature of crisis.
This is illustrated by Colbert’s concept of the ‘‘gut-o-meter,’’ ‘‘the latest weapon on the war on terror,’’ which measures the ‘‘gut
feeling’’ about terror threat levels going up. The Report shows a cartoon of a balding man whose stomach expands with his fear of
terrorism: gut-level ‘‘maybe;’’ gut-level ‘‘I think so;’’ and gut-level ‘‘I am almost positive,’’ spoofing the capricious nature of
government terror alerts. Carnival laughter shifts fear from the center to the periphery of the
carnival square, encouraging participants to challenge national crisis as construction,
not certainty. As Colbert’s real life persona states in a Parade interview, ‘‘ ‘Not living in fear is a great gift,
because certainly these days we do it so much. And do you know what I like about
comedy? You can’t laugh and be afraid at the same time*of anything’’ ’ (Kaplan, 2007).
Murray 155
Link – Threat Con Emthymeme

Example would be saying “china is developing ASATs” and implying that would be violent without any evidence saying they are for offense.
Similarly it would be assuming china would use them for offense and then preemptively striking them.
In this short statement, O'Reilly paints a vivid picture of American traditions and innocence under threat . He
alludes to villainous categories: secular progressives, the liberal media, gays, drug pushers, and euthanasia
supporters. He then names The New York Times and reporter Adam Cohen as specific "evidence" of these villains in action.
Because they challenged his viewpoint in a manner with which O'Reilly disagrees, O'Reilly frames this as an
unprovoked, personal attack on him and argues to his viewers that these villains are poised to attack them,
too. O'Reilly reiterates similar arguments and repeats similar names and phrases in his recurring discussions of the "War on Christmas."
Through this repetition, O'Reilly solidifies a long, yet memorable list of rhetorical cues for his viewers. After watching even a few
episodes of The O'Reilly Factor, one only has to hear, for example, the phrase "New York Times" uttered to
"know" that something sinister is afoot, according to O'Reilly. Burke notes the dangers of such taken-for-
granted cues in rhetoric. He writes, "If you call a man a hero or a bastard, and mean it, it is unnecessary for us
to seek, by tricks of exegesis, the 'moral weighting' of your term. Your attitude is made obvious, since your private use
of the word corresponds to its public connotations. On the other hand, you may use words which seem neutral, but in
actuality possess hidden weighting" (Burke 236-237). This latter concern is especially evident in O'Reilly's speech. When
O'Reilly deems certain people heroes and others villains, he is speaking as a matter of opinion. However,
O'Reilly couches these opinionated labels in lengthy presentations of seemingly neutral facts. That is, for
example, when O'Reilly states that the New York Times has reported a story, his implied meaning is that a
corrupt, farleft organization is actively conspiring against American values .
Murray 156
Comic perspective good
119–140)
Parodic polyglossia, satirical specificity, and contextual clash are comic-frame strategies of incongruity that permit a communicator to
be multivoiced, to deflate abstractions and mystifications, and to symbolically span a variety of situations. Stewart and Colbert’s comic
strategies are more than simply techniques for creating entertainment— they are tools for rhetorical criticism with sociopolitical
application. Stewart and Colbert practice a socially engaged ‘‘ephemeral’’ rhetorical criticism (see Campbell, 1974),
daily analyzing and dissecting public discourses, while reminding or instructing their audiences about moral
democratic possibilities. To thus deny that Stewart and Colbert make a positive contribution to democracy would be to deny the
very task of rhetorical study—the critical examination of suasive public texts. As such, Stewart and Colbert are comic rhetorical critics
who have much to teach their viewers about healthy public spheres and civil society. There are several implications, or ‘‘enduring’’
contributions to rhetoric, offered by these critical comic strategies. First, these comic strategies encourage the critique and
innovation of perspectives in public life. They set in motion pluralistic communication and awareness and
summon accountability toward politics and media. Stewart and Colbert’s (re)significations of voices, discourses, and
contexts create a multiplicity of angles in which their targets and audiences are called to be reflexive about themselves and
society, as fallible and mistaken, but not evil (see Burke, 1984a). Stewart and Colbert are thus exemplars of civil
argumentation. They do not push their terms to perfection but keep options open through critical and sympathetic play. They teach us
that a public sphere is healthy to the extent that participants can engage in vigorous debate and reflective
advocacy, take the perspectives of others, and make critiques in a playful rather than combative manner .7
Second, comic strategies such as satire and parody can play a vital role in public life by connecting aesthetic to
rational-critical concerns. Habermas (1989) excludes aesthetic matters from his writings on the ideal speech situation. His critics
note that within his scheme ‘‘‘writing poems and telling jokes’ are secondary to authentic illocutionary acts’’ (Aune, 1994, p. 129).
Stewart and Colbert combine poetic imagination with concerns for a better politics, demonstrating that illusory boundaries do not need
drawn between entertaining and rational approaches to deliberation—a finding echoed by Baym (2007a, 2007b). Stewart and
Colbert connect everyday culture to the public sphere—making important political matters immediate,
relevant, and engaging.
Murray 157
A/T: Nihilism
Farrar and Warner 2008 (Margaret Farrar is Associate Professor and Chair of Political Science at Augustana College. Jamie Warner is Associate
Professor of Political Science at Marshall University. "Spectacular Resistance: The Billionaires for Bush and the Art of Political Culture
Jamming" http://www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/journal/v40/n3/full/2300104a.html)
The second is the absence of any overt and positive political agenda in acts of political culture jamming. Aren't Billionaires for Bush
simply another, albeit funny, version of the attack ads and partisan vitriol that has contributed to our cynicism towards politics? We
would argue that the vertigo of which Connolly speaks, the moment of improbability is a positive political event, if not
an agenda. Political culture jamming is not simply negative and it's certainly not nihilistic. The dominant
message is “jammed” so dissident messages, especially those bubbling up from outside of the larger power
structure, can get through. As Bruce Miroff and Michael Rogin have argued, those in power are experts in using
techniques from the advertising culture to manipulate the citizen/consumer, drowning out dissident voices in
a barrage of sound bites, talking points, and patriotic theme music. Political culture jamming allows the
citizen/consumer a way to stop the barrage and quickly insert an alternative message, a message just as, if not
more, spectacular than the dominant one. And because the Billionaires for Bush specifically choose to employ
an obvious and public irony, that dissident message is accessible to a wide spectrum of people.
Murray 158
A/T: Humor Bad

We aren’t humor, we are satire. The difference is that humor creates a laugh as an end in
itself, but satire creates a laugh as a means of opening up the political
Colletta 2009 (Lisa Colletta is Associate Professor of English at the American University of Rome. "Political Satire and Postmodern
Irony in the Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart" Journal of Popular Culture)
Satire is a matter of period. It flourishes in a stable society and presupposes homogeneous moral standards—the early Roman Empire
and eighteenth-century Europe. It is aimed at inconsistency and hypocrisy. It exposes polite cruelty and folly by exposing
them. It seeks to produce shame. All this has no place in the Century of the Common Man where vice no longer pays lip service to
virtue. The artist’s only service to the disintegrated society of today is to create little independent systems of
order of his own. (304) Leaving aside Waugh’s distaste for ‘‘the Common Man’’ and the complex of associations he meant by this
term, his observations about satire are quite true. Not only does satire depend upon a stable set of values from which to judge behavior, it
also rests upon engagement, the satirist and the viewer need to feel that something could possibly change. If this is not the case, then the
satire exists only to further itself; it becomes self-referential, ‘‘independent systems of order,’’ breaking down faith in the efficacy of any
kind of activity other than criticism. Satire is defined as a form that holds up human vices and follies to ridicule and
scorn. It is ‘‘an attack on or criticism of any stupidity or vice in the form of scathing humor,’’ and it is also a critique of what an author
sees as ‘‘dangerous religious, political, moral, or social standards’’ (Cuddon 202). M. H. Abrams notes that satire
‘‘differs
from the comic in that comedy evokes laughter mainly as an end in itself, while satire
‘derides;’ that is, it uses laughter as a weapon, and against a butt existing outside the
work itself’’ (166). Although it dates back to Greek and Roman times, satire became especially popular during the
Enlightenment, that Age of Reason in which it was believed that folly could be corrected by using art as a mirror to reflect society.
Trusting in the reason and rationality of humans, artists felt that when people saw their faults magnified in a distorted reflection, they
could see the ridiculousness of their own behavior and then correct that tendency in themselves. In both Horatian satire, which is
somewhat genial and mocks imperfection while finding amusement in it, and Juvenalian satire, which is characterized by invective,
insult, and withering attacks, the primary objective is to improve human beings and our institutions. Satire is therefore a hopeful
genre; it suggests progress and the betterment of society, and it suggests that the arts can light the path of
progress.
Murray 159
Satire Good – New Possibility
Colletta 2009 (Lisa Colletta is Associate Professor of English at the American University of Rome. "Political Satire and Postmodern Irony in the
Age of Stephen Colbert and Jon Stewart" Journal of Popular Culture)
The fact that there was a very real effect to Stewart’s nonironic critique is perhaps a comment on the ambivalence of the satiric mode
and suggests the limits of its efficacy. Freud said of jokes and laughter, ‘‘We are not in a position to distinguish by our feeling what part
of the pleasure arises from the sources of their technique and what part from those of their purpose. Thus, strictly speaking, we do not
know what we are laughing at’’ (121). If we do not always know what we are laughing at, it may be difficult for a satirist to marshal the
energy of laughter for a specific purpose. Stewart’s appearance on Crossfire had an earnestness to it that his humor does not have, and,
indeed, could not have, or it would not be funny. However, it is his humor that makes him popular and gives him enough importance to
be taken seriously, and this is profoundly important. One of the pleasures of humor and laughter is that it has no moral valence. Humor
is an openness to different interpretations of meaning and value, and, as Freud argued, it is a time-out from the demands of rationality.
Satire is an attack on vice that exploits comedic strategies; it partakes of both the pleasures of humor and the
moral confidence of social critique, so it is necessarily ambivalent. Therefore, its efficacy as an agent of immediate
change cannot be guaranteed, if indeed it ever was, but its ambivalence might ultimately be its most powerful attribute.
Because we live in a world where unchallenged adherence to moral certainties is deadly, the need for citizens
to be thoughtfully and critically engaged has taken on a new urgency. Instead, though, our primary source of
information is a medium in which issues are reduced to their simplest outlines and sound bytes and sold as product in a fight for ratings.
Satire, through its irony, complicates and problematizes the way we see things, and therefore it can challenge
viewers in unexpected ways. As a result, the informed satire of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert can, arguably, be considered
some of the most bracing and engaging commentary on the television landscape. Though there is good evidence to suggest that
postmodernity has killed irony and satire, I am not willing to say that our culture is no better for having satirists around. All theories of
humor essentially come down to incongruity, the sudden recognition that the world is not what we expected it to be. Awareness of
incongruity—if it is viewed with enough distance—creates laughter, and as Freud suggested, moves us into an appreciation of aesthetic
form rather than to action, which is, of course, the primary criticism of satire’s efficacy. However, in a state of suspended
activity, we may be forced to see things in a new way and to acknowledge alternative possibilities. This, in
turn, could make viewers more tolerant of those who approach things differently, and thus inspire them to
action that they have not yet considered.
Murray 160
Clash of Contexts
119–140)
Sitcom writer John Vorhaus (1994) states that ‘‘Clash

of context is the forced union of incompatibles. . .. [It] takes
something from its usual place and sticks it where it doesn’t fit’’ (p. 48). Clashing context is often the result of
‘‘abnormal people in normal situations’’ or ‘‘normal people in abnormal situations’’ (Libera, 2004, p. 8). Mintz (1985) finds part of the
essence of stand-up comedy is in the ‘‘creative distortion’’ of expectations achieved through ‘‘incongruous context’’ (p. 79). Taken to
a sociopolitical level, contextual clash (as I’m constructing the concept) also forces one to see their very situatedness
in a particular material environment and attitudinal atmosphere. This comic strategy allows Colbert and
Stewart to increase their polyglossic rhetoric. Berger (1997) notes that, ‘‘the comic conjures up a separate world,
different from the world of ordinary reality’’ (p. x, emphasis in original). These separate worlds bring into focus
the reifications of communicative environments, as Stewart and Colbert denaturalize normal situations, and
naturalize abnormal situations. Stewart and Colbert weave together incongruous contexts to multiply linguistic and vocal options
in their discourses on politics and media.
Murray 161
A/T: Onion isn’t Qualified

Qualifications are arbitrary – instead we should encourage the audience to mobilize
Colbert’s ridicule of the media industry is frequent, targeting stories that either miss the mark or belabor the
obvious. In discussing a front page New York Times article, ‘‘Romney Political Fortunes Tied to Riches He Gained in Business,’’ he
exclaims, ‘‘Great scoop, New York Times! What’s next, an expose on how the ocean is salty? Call the Pulitzer organization!’’
Colbert’s dual roles as comedian and critic disputes the agenda setting process of legitimate , even prestigious
news organizations whose selection of stories at times confirms the notion of ‘‘news lite.’’ His interview with
blogger Josh Wolf, who went to jail for refusing to turn over video of protesters in San Francisco during the
G-8 summit, provides debate as to journalism as performance or profession. Colbert: You’re a blogger, not a member
of the press. Wolf: Define press. Colbert: Newspapers, television, and occasional magazines, depending on
what I think of them. Wolf: If Katie Couric has a blog, does she stop being a member of the press? Colbert:
No, because she is connected to a television show, and therefore, you know, through electricity, the transitive
property, her blog is like a TV show. Wolf: So what about Thomas Paine? Would he be a member of the
press? Colbert: No, he was before TV. Colbert’s satiric definition of the press, ‘‘depending on what I think of
them,’’ is not entirely without merit. Media scholars note the arbitrary nature of news practices and
productions (Baym, 2005; Borden & Tew, 2007; Feldman, 2005; Musa, 2006). As a commodity, standards of news
fluctuate, reflecting the socioeconomic status of audiences , the economic growth of the nation, as well as technical
developments in the industry. But again, the Report challenges the epistemological investment that news consumers
make in information products that so often governs their daily lives. Through his exchange with Wolf,
Colbert appropriates inquiry as opposed to declaration in ‘‘naming news.’’ He invites the audience to perhaps
consider news as dialectic between process and product.
Murray 162
A/T: Wrong Forum
Right Forum
How does Colbert's comic critique help us going forward? What is now at stake? Colbert's work reflects the recent evolution and
trajectory of mediated culture, which continues to evolve, move forward, and expand. This presents both problems and opportunities for
democratic discourse. One key problem is that as mass media becomes more massive, it is not necessarily more
diverse. Most mainstream media outlets are now controlled by a few national and international corporations.
While cable television viewership has gone up (Pew), local newspapers are dying out – to name just a few, the Rocky Mountain News,
Cincinnati Post, Seattle Post-Intelligencer and Detroit Free Press have all recently shuttered their print operations (Gillin ). Others,
like the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, are making troublesome changes to survive, from scaling back
circulation to printing less news in a more "efficient" fashion (Roughton). As the mainstream media industry is
consolidated and news narratives are constructed by fewer voices, we risk also the consolidation of our
framework of the world – more national, less local, and less diverse. Within an increasingly limited
frame, tragic personas and ideological performances are better enabled to flourish
unchecked. As we look toward the next stages of media culture, we must conscientiously protect, and teach to others,
the critical tools necessary to identify and challenge such discursive closures. The comic frame is one such
tool for providing alternative, critical views and fostering new discursive opportunities. It can and should be performed on
many stages: in political satire and comedy news; in independent publications and online media, by critical
journalists working within the mainstream media industry; by media consumers acting as citizens, and on
other unconventional stages not yet realized – although none of these stages should be taken for granted as
necessarily comic or progressive. The key is to be ready and willing to identify the tragic and comic frames that shape our
discourse. Where they are problematic and obscuring, we can reveal and challenge them. Where they help us think and act more
critically, as Burke says, we can coach them, even salute them.
Murray 163
A/T: Not Funny
Saying we aren't funny misses the point - you didn't get the joke
These opinions are certainly acceptable and plausible from conventional, left-versusright, my-opinion-
versus-your-opinion perspectives. However, by focusing on the binary debate over "funny" versus
"unfunny," pundits on either side limited themselves within a tragic frame, which appears incongruent with
Colbert's comically framed critique. Rather than realize Colbert's criticism as a catalyst to transcend the
problematic "truthiness" of their punditry, many commentators simply positioned Colbert as a conventional
comedian and thus focused on his (in)ability to get laughs. Thus, it appears to many viewers that the
mainstream media – even some of those who proclaimed it funny – did not get the joke.
Murray 164
Humor > Telling People Things
Humor is more effective than direct criticism because it opens space for new approaches
while direct criticism forecloses possibilities
Dadlez 2011 (E. M. Dadlez has published two books in the philosophy of literature:
Mirrors to One Another and What’s Hecuba to Him? She has published in a number of
professional journals in aesthetics and ethics and was a trustee of the American Society for
Aesthetics, 2008–2010. "Truly Funny: Humor, Irony, and Satire as Moral Criticism",
MUSE, SRM)
The difference between humor and indignation or outrage is not so great for a superiority theorist, if only because of
the shared and palpable involvement of contempt. Each targets a vice in the property ascription it makes, though the latter
characterizes the property in question more broadly and simply as a defect among other possible defects, and the former characterizes it explicitly
as a moral flaw. The difference between humor and indignation for an incongruity theorist is, I think, more interesting,
and may even suggest an advantage that humor can on occasion have over indignation when it comes to matters of
moral criticism. First, as has been indicated, indignation or outrage involves a property ascription that directly targets the
vicious or morally questionable. Humor, for incongruity theorists, does not. And that means that there is a distance
that humor affords and that outrage and indignation lack, something that permits those who are amused to adopt an
unexpected and novel pers”pective on an issue, to see it with new eyes, or in some surprising new way. On an
incongruity reading, then, the novelty of the perspective, the unexpectedness of the presentation, may go some way
toward undermining preconceptions and settled dispositions of response . This is something that a familiar wallowing in
indignation, more often than not in accord with [End Page 13] settled preconceptions of what constitutes vice and immorality, seems rather less
likely to accomplish. To put it another way, humor, on this reading, may provide a perspective unfamiliar enough to make
one aware of something as a failing that one had not hitherto regarded as a failing, thus creating an avenue for an
indignation that settled property ascriptions would previously have made untenable. The kind of reorientation and
distance that a focus on incongruity provides could, though we certainly can’t assume it always will, reconfigure
patterns of response.
Satire is more effective than direct criticism – forces us to come to the conclusion on our
own
Dadlez 2011 (E. M. Dadlez has published two books in the philosophy of literature:
Mirrors to One Another and What’s Hecuba to Him? She has published in a number of
professional journals in aesthetics and ethics and was a trustee of the American Society for
Aesthetics, 2008–2010. "Truly Funny: Humor, Irony, and Satire as Moral Criticism",
MUSE, SRM)
It is possible, for instance, that stout supporters of capitalism might at least sometimes be given pause by Colbert’s
“that’s the free marketplace, mister!” when they wouldn’t be affected by political diatribes intended directly to elicit
their outrage. In other words, it may sometimes be easier to notice a down side to unrestricted competition when one
is startled into considering the deficits of someone who mindlessly supports it. Superiority theory would tell us that Colbert’s
character engenders amused contempt, as well as an enjoyment of our own perceptiveness in seeing through an inferior character. Incongruity
theories would tell us that Colbert’s saying one thing and meaning quite another positions us, in light of this
dissonance, so as to adopt a different perspective on the old, familiar meaning. This is a process that might, on
occasion, do a bit to change our own perspective.

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Evazon 2012-2013 Allegory of the Squirrel

***ALLEGORY OF THE SQUIRREL***

Scorpion and Frog

Fox and Grapes

The Cat and the Bell

Everything is falling apart

2NC Everything is Falling Apart

2NC Eternal Return

Deleuze, 1962 [Gilles, Nietzsche and Philosophy]

Link: Democracy (Generic)

Link: Human Rights (Include the Other)

Link: Human Rights (Transcendent Value)

Treating human rights as an unquestionable justification ends in a forced conversion to

As Schmitt says: Only

Link: Human Rights (Cred Bad)

Link: Human Rights (Protect the Weak)

Link: Accepting Islam/ Tolerance

Link: Emergency Politics

Link: Status Quo/ Timeliness

Link: Suffering Bad

Link: Engage the State

Nietzsche questions idealization in ethics: On

Link: Ascetic Ideal

Alt Solves Democracy

In fact, Nietzschean conceptions of agonistics and nonfoundational

Alt Solves Ethics

A/T “Make State Anti-Statal”

A/T: Caused the Holocaust

And as for the "superman" thing, rather

A/T: Nietzsche = Domination

A/T: Ethics of the Other

A/T: Alt = Violence

In the light of Nietzsche's appropriation of the two forms of Eris, it

A/T: Gotta Include Group X

***1NC Fiat Double Bind

2NC Information Dissuasive

2NC Cannot Engage the Political

Micropolitics Key to re-engage agency

2NC Individual  State

2NC Link – Plan

2NC Normative Fiat Bad

2NC No Levers of Power

***1NC Apocalyptic Predictions Bad

A/T: Case Outweighs

Impact is the sum of all existential risks

A/T: Perm do the Alt

A/T: Other Instances

2NC Predictions Overview

progressives have ignored that the strategic dimension of

politics is inextricably connected to questions of critical educationand pedagogy, to what it means to

A/T Aff Choice

A/T Moots the 1AC

A/T Policy Education

Link/Impact – Research Method

Their research methods result in a total war against unspecified enemies.

Link – Sovereign War

Impact – Turns Liberalism

**A/T: Fear Good (MUST READ)

A/T: Fear key to VTL

A/T:VTL Inevitable/ Can’t Measure

A/T: Discourse Irrelevant

A/T: Util Good

Utilitarian calculations never happen within a vacuum – implicit in their argument is an

ALLEGORY OF THE SQUIRREL