It's like trying to decide how to build a system/business while also trying to work out what to build/what problem you're solving. At some point, to actually do anything, you have to pinch off the space of all possible problem requirements/business objective/etc.—not permanently, but long enough to start building! You certainly can't coordinate a large team to do it when the goal itself is changing. You have to draw a line around something and saying "we're doing this", and then focus on how to do it.
In ML terms: If you don't commit to a goal for a while, then every time you encounter uncertainty in whether you're accomplishing your current goal, it will "backpropagate" to increase uncertainty in the goal itself. This can easily become unmanageable. To make any progress, you need a series of forward passes (attempting to do things) and backward passes (revising your idea of what you're trying to do.) Balancing these is a skill, and is highly contingent on what you're doing, runway, etc.
Applied to debating with critical theory, this means: if you constantly cast doubt on the entire framework of modernity, you can never come up with a useful answer about any particular thing in the immediate present. Every potential harm or pain backpropagates to indict the entire system. These harms are rightly considered indictments of the system—but in the real world, unlike in a debate, you still have to act.
I haven't done debate myself, but these same problems come up in internet discourse all the time, and it seems clear that you need to some equipment to handle this tendency to make any progress. What's necessary is the ability to designate "responsibility", i.e. leadership.
In college I had a deep interest in critical theory, but I recall most of my time with it spent simply thinking: reflecting on the ideas and critiquing them myself. We didn't exactly debate the ideas, either - it was more akin to collaborative analysis of their strengths and weaknesses.
As you suggest, I think allowing this ebb and flow made the experience a more fruitful one.
I feel like the notion that words have a "correct" spelling, and memorizing that is turned into a competition that is often televised and broadcast and highly promoted to all middle-school students in the US, is probably political in nature. At least one should probably question why it is we even have spelling bees, the history of spelling bees, the structural questions, the constitution of the game itself as it relates to the worship of the Word (Ἐν ἀρχῇ ἦν ὁ λόγος, as they say), and the place of the Word in the organization of society. But those are only a few things you could ask.
A debate student, when asked to argue about the place of spelling bees in our society, might generate these very arguments. A young student who is winning a lot of spelling bees probably wouldn't, and they'd get laughed out of the auditorium if they couldn't answer and then started arguing that spelling bees were racist or something like that. I think your point is moot.
I was exactly the kind of student who loved to "deconstruct" this sort of contrived activity in high school. but frankly, now that I have the perspective to understand how insufferable this behavior is, I regret it. just let people practice the skill they want to practice in a fun competition. you don't have to participate if you think it's dumb.
Any debater making these arguments on the affirmative side almost certainly includes an argument answering this question when they are doing it.
As this story is presented, a lot of these feel like non-sequiturs. Not wrong, and not not worth discussing, but not in the spirit of the debate.
> “Before anything else, including being a debate judge, I am a Marxist-Leninist-Maoist... I cannot check the revolutionary proletarian science at the door when I’m judging... I will no longer evaluate and thus never vote for rightest capitalist-imperialist positions/arguments... Examples of arguments of this nature are as follows: fascism good, capitalism good, imperialist war good, neoliberalism good, defenses of US or otherwise bourgeois nationalism, Zionism or normalizing Israel, colonialism good, US white fascist policing good, etc.”
If there's no way to defend against an argument because it's Objectively Correct in the eyes of the judges, that isn't debate, it's a lecture with extra steps. It's like being able to on stage and win by screaming "SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!" and nobody being able to counter it. If this is a competition, it should outlaw winning moves that can't be countered.
A theory that can explain everything is a terrible theory and explains nothing. Responding to your critics that they don't get it because of racial ad-hominem attacks isn't a defense.
Factual statements have criteria that would disprove them. There are experiments that would support a flat earth if that were an accurate reflection of reality. There is no such criteria for critical theory. Fail to find structural forces? You've simply been conditioned to ignore them. Explain away differences using a robust model? You're simply not being an ally.
Critical theory is not science, it's sloppy religious nonsense.