No one was afraid of debating Kirk, it was just largely a waste of time. A few people were able to shut him up long enough to get their points in and those are fun to watch. But Kirk really wasn’t a debater; he was a gaslighter. Let’s walk through a typical Charlie Kirk debate.
1. Charlie would often share the Gospel. Now I’m not going to criticize that because Paul said we should celebrate when the Gospel is preached regardless of motive. And I won’t say Charlie didn’t have good intentions in sharing the Gospel. But it seems Charlie would leverage that for his own purposes. But we’ll get to that later.
2. Charlie invites someone to debate him. This typically begins with someone stating some objective fact about how Charlie’s political ideas were wrong or hypocritical.
3. Charlie interrupts the question to try to remove the important facts so he can rephrase the question under his own terms. This is a form of the strawman fallacy. Instead of addressing the valid question, Charlie changes the question to one he can give an answer to that no one can argue with, then claims victory over the original argument that he never addressed.
4. Charlie inserts his far right talking points which are typically laced with racism and misogyny. “We only have this problem because of gangs (read “blacks and Hispanics”), etc.
5. When Charlie is called out for his hate filled rhetoric he goes back and says he can’t hate the people he has been tearing down with racism, sexism, and a host of other -isms because he just shared the Gospel with them. This is more gaslighting.
That’s a simplification but it’s a valid paradigm of Charlie’s “debates” from what I have seen.
Now back to the question. Why go and debate someone when he is going to try to gaslight you into thinking he’s answering your question when he isn’t, subject yourself to hateful rhetoric, then you get to hear a crowd of sheep applaud because he says that despite gaslighting you, minimizing you, and marginalizing you that he actually loves you?
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1. Charlie would often share the Gospel. Now I’m not going to criticize that because Paul said we should celebrate when the Gospel is preached regardless of motive. And I won’t say Charlie didn’t have good intentions in sharing the Gospel. But it seems Charlie would leverage that for his own purposes. But we’ll get to that later.
2. Charlie invites someone to debate him. This typically begins with someone stating some objective fact about how Charlie’s political ideas were wrong or hypocritical.
3. Charlie interrupts the question to try to remove the important facts so he can rephrase the question under his own terms. This is a form of the strawman fallacy. Instead of addressing the valid question, Charlie changes the question to one he can give an answer to that no one can argue with, then claims victory over the original argument that he never addressed.
4. Charlie inserts his far right talking points which are typically laced with racism and misogyny. “We only have this problem because of gangs (read “blacks and Hispanics”), etc.
5. When Charlie is called out for his hate filled rhetoric he goes back and says he can’t hate the people he has been tearing down with racism, sexism, and a host of other -isms because he just shared the Gospel with them. This is more gaslighting.
That’s a simplification but it’s a valid paradigm of Charlie’s “debates” from what I have seen.
Now back to the question. Why go and debate someone when he is going to try to gaslight you into thinking he’s answering your question when he isn’t, subject yourself to hateful rhetoric, then you get to hear a crowd of sheep applaud because he says that despite gaslighting you, minimizing you, and marginalizing you that he actually loves you?
Charlie Kirk wanted people to "prove Me Wrong". Why is it liberals are afraid to ask that question?
Answer (1 of 180): Because Charlie Kirk wasn’t interested in an exchange of ideas or learning other perspectives. His paycheck depended on him declaring himself “proven right” no matter what by using deflection, straw man arguments, gish-galloping, talking points and other techniques used to try...
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