In 8th grade humanities, we’ve been debating a few different topics in class lately:
Capital Punishment
Just like as I did in the radical parties project, I volunteered to be in the group advocating for the view contrary to mine. I along with Tati, David, Tatso, had to advocate in favor capital punishment to the other half of the class.
If you don’t know me, I’m an ardent critic of the death penalty. Yet just like when I was pretending to be a Tea Partier, I tried my best to be the devil’s advocate. I tried to convince my opposition that only because of the ‘convoluted appeal system’ in the US was the cost for keeping an inmate on death row greater than that of keeping them for a life sentence. If the number of appeals a person on death row could make was reduced, I argued, then the cost would be much less. I tried to convince the opposition that the threat of capital punishment would scare would-be criminals away from crime. I took all sorts of tactics.
But after a while, I got a bit tired of being the devils advocate. I argument morphed into a satire of the pro-death ideology. Among other things, I jokingly suggested the idea of installing in Times Square a video billboard playing a live video stream of inmates being executed—to educate the public about the consequences of their crimes. My satirical contributions probably contributed to sending serious discussion spiraling away, for which I regret them. After all, I know how much I hate it when I’m trying to have a serious discussion and it’s jokeytime for someone else.
But I think I’m done (for now) being the devil’s advocate.
Another debate that we did was on the US intervention in Libya. I, along with Charlie and a few others, argued to the rest of the class that intervention in Libya was the duty of the United States because of the tyrannical actions of Mummar Kadafi slaughtering his people.
Unfortunately, Charlie and I were pretty much the only ones who were really interested in the topic, so there wasn’t much debate.
