We all engage in casual forms of debate almost constantly, and free argumentation is so integral to our daily decision-making that it’s only natural for it to be the foundation of a free, democratic society. Throughout American history, public debate has remained consistently central. Debate shaped the nation’s founding documents, like the Federalist and anti-Federalist papers written for public audiences. The first nationally televised presidential debate was in 1956, and it set a decisive precedent for the electoral process. In 2024, ABC’s debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris reached over 67 million viewers, reflecting the consistent American value of direct and rational argumentation (although few would describe this debate using those terms). Enthusiasm and effective argumentation have historically been expected of politicians who want their priorities to be taken seriously.
As the ubiquitous influence of the internet and social media has fundamentally altered American society, public debate has become so palatable and accessible that it has lost its core qualities. In essence, debate requires a certain standard of participants. This is not to imply that those without conventional educational backgrounds should not play a part in democracy. I’m a young undergraduate with extremely limited life experience myself. However, both participating parties should be genuinely enthusiastic about the discussed topics, and the audience should enter intending to critically engage with the argument. Modern debate, as it is adapted to social media, doesn’t uphold any standards of truth or commitment to depth or precision. Instead, it has abandoned its ideals so completely that it no longer serves and supports a fruitful democratic society. Voters who engage exclusively in this new style of debate, which has become more and more common, are more detrimental to our democracy than those who ignore politics altogether.
Before continuing, there is an important distinction to be made between public, political debate and academic debate. As an academic discipline, like as a component of speech and debate, its purpose is to foster critical thinking, research, and argumentation skills. Debaters are evaluated based on their ability to support a predetermined statement, not on their ability to choose the claim they believe is most correct. On the other hand, public political debate has been a widely respected mode of political movement for thousands of years, dating back to the earliest well-documented democracy: Ancient Greece. Public debate should aim not to serve the participants, but to inform the audience for whom they perform.
If debate is to be in the best interest of the audience, it requires a fundamental level of trust in the debaters to hold themselves to a standard of truth and accountability. Until now, this was the status quo; outright lying was more politically detrimental than helpful to someone’s case. For example, a single false claim by Gerald Ford in the 1976 presidential debate arguably caused his narrow loss to Jimmy Carter. Only around 5 years ago, in 2020, did live fact-checkers become an associated part of such high-profile debates, and presidential and vice-presidential debate analysis began to categorize dialogue by the extent of the lies they involve (true, somewhat true, true but misleading, or false).
This growing pervasiveness of lying in American politics stems from the polarizing effects of social media. The most popular social media algorithms reward sensationalism, promoting “Us vs. Them” extremist mindsets in echo chambers. Once you’ve entered one, truth diverges from fact and converges onto your preexisting beliefs. This occurs across the political spectrum, turning otherwise apolitical voters into unwitting zealots. Additionally, it is so easy to get involved in online public debate — leaving comments here and there, making a TikTok if you feel inspired, or posting a text post on your story — that the average person doesn’t think too hard about vetting where they got their information, which adds fuel to the fire. They often impetuously parrot views that they see online as their own, recklessly spreading half-baked ideas. We don’t hold regular people to the same ethical and academic standards that we should of politicians and journalists, so by repeatedly engaging in these debates, we’ve come to accept misinformation and disinformation as an unavoidable part of political discussion.
Tolerating this has lowered the standard even for prominent politicians and journalists, and it’s extremely dangerous. Ford’s mistake and its consequences represent how debate used to operate on a consensus of universal and nonnegotiable truths. Without this basis, debate devolves into arguments about facts. The normalization of lying has changed the way we perceive and pay attention to debates – with an ear not for the arguments they’re making and the analyses they make, but for the claims they present. Trump’s famous assertion in the 2024 presidential debate that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs” was so ridiculous that it may have been ultimately harmless, but his and his Vice President’s other fabricated claims about illegal immigrants, especially concerning jobs and the housing market, have significantly influenced policy and public sentiment. Spending the majority of your time disproving statements is a humiliating ritual that the left has now been consistently forced to do. This may have led to the Democrats’ pivot to focusing on countering Trumpism, and consequent failure to emphasize meaningful policy. Either way, their participation in these debates legitimizes negotiating over fact, bringing its own sort of harm.
On one hand, making political information accessible is a positive societal goal, and social media does that. On the other hand, it has done so in a way that oversimplifies political discourse to cater to short attention spans. We are no longer primarily concerned with sit-down, deliberative content, like live news broadcasts or lengthy talk shows. Historically, most people would only turn on the TV or read various op-eds if they were interested enough in politics to devote a lot of precious time and energy to it. This had its pros and cons: those who were engaged were actually informed, but a lot of voters were passive and oblivious.
Social media algorithms, which are designed to amplify provocative content, spoon-feed users politically charged media whether they intend to engage in it or not. As social media becomes increasingly entrenched in American society, Americans see more political content that they would not have pursued on their own. At first glance, this is a positive development; Americans are becoming more informed and politically aware than ever. Unfortunately, there are very few political matters that can be adequately summarized in 30-second clips, and merging politics with entertainment ultimately trivializes it.
In order to be informative and productive, debate needs to be precise in the matters it attempts to cover. But this takes time, and short-form, entertainment-focused debate rewards styles that are punchy and attention-grabbing. They’re often uninterested in engaging with nuance and center emotion over logical reasoning. Charlie Kirk, a right-wing social media star, rose to national fame for using such aggressive debate tactics. He was known for cultivating quippy “gotcha” clips to post on TikTok and Instagram that racked up millions of views and riled up both fans and opponents. He often used the same dramatic phrases multiple times. For example, he sarcastically used the phrase “North African lesbian poetry” at least four times in the past 2 years. But it worked, albeit tragically. Kirk became such a focal point of national attention and political heat that he was famously assassinated in the middle of a debate at Utah Valley University. After his death, he was revered as a free speech martyr, to the point where the White House lowered its flags to half-staff in his memory.
Even before his death, Kirk’s commemoration as a legitimate political figure reveals a societal disregard and disrespect for the old standards of debate. The debate that now captivates Americans doesn’t have to present any sort of rational argument that stands up to intense dissection. The point of debate was to scrutinize; this new form is pretentious, polarizing, and counterproductive. People can now believe that their views are informed and justified without ever seeing them intelligently discussed at length. Modern debate has become a mess of uncontested cherry-picking and echo chambers masquerading under the guise of intellectual participation.
Once we did away with the exhausting hurdles of truth and accuracy, while boiling complex topics down to easily digestible, entertaining segments for a mainstream audience, we lost key pillars of beneficial debate. Widespread consumption and engagement in this new type of political discourse is irresponsible and contributes to uninformed voting behavior, which is more destructive than not voting at all. Voters should consider the way they interact with political debate, not only with those on social media but also between distinguished figures. They should stop passively consuming debate as entertainment and only engage in it when they are willing to give it the full effort and time it deserves. Only when we reject the allure of simplicity and convenience in return for real, dedicated engagement can we return to a civil and informed political landscape.
Featured Image Source: The Huntington News
