Often, instead of arguing about the topic, people will instead demonstrate their opponent's rhetoric as harmful (and then tell the judge to vote against them to discourage further harmful rhetoric). It's really easy to argue that the real world impacts of harmful rhetoric outweigh the importance of the actual debate topic.
This leads to people preparing and memorizing increasingly long (3-6 minutes if you read quickly) criticisms of certain types rhetoric. For example, I memorized a 4 long page, scathing critique of capitalism (where we would demonstrate it as the cause of the issue the debate is trying to solve). Each round, the only part we would have to change is how their rhetoric emboldens capitalism (for example, when they advocate for an inadequate solution to the climate crisis, they are masking the underlying issue, capitalism).
We would then contend that the judge should vote in our favor to endorse our message (usually an explicit call to the establishment of a dictatorship of the proletariat).
This next part sounds fake, but I promise it's true. We were debating the daughter of Sheryl Sandberg and she came to watch (this was in a classroom, and there were ~4 people watching as it was just a prelim round). The judge was an experienced debater (meaning they'll accept debate about the impacts of rhetoric). So we got to argue for 40 minutes in front of a famous billionaire that the only way to save the environment was, and I quote, "violent socialist revolution". The daughter claimed we were being hypocritical by asking my partner "Didn't you pay to enter this tournament?" He responded honestly that our team captain covered his entrance fee, as he was broke at the time. We won the round, and Sheryl Sandberg's daughter did not advance to elimination rounds.
Definitely not the vibe I got from Trial of the Chicago 7. It seemed to repeatedly shit on American institutions as oppressive (portraying the courts as racist and the charges as an attempt to stifle political opposition, not to mention calling cops bloodthirsty pigs). The end didn't seem like troop worship at all, seemed much more like "this is how many Americans are fucking dying while you prosecute those trying to save them". Would've been way cooler if they read a list of Vietnamese casualties as well though.
Maybe I would've interpreted the film differently if I didn't already view American institutions as oppressive.