Thanks for the thoughtful response. My thoughts in reaction to your points go all over, and since I have some other stuff I’d like to do with my Saturday, I’ll let them go until later.
One quick thing though: I think that as a group we’ve let a few people who are willing to post the “loudest” influence the way we do things, at times to our detriment.
It’s something we’ll have to grapple with (protecting minority rights/voices/desires in a majority-rule structure) and I don’t have an easy answer for it either. But my suggestion, just to get things going and move the ball forward, would be to try the simplest way and see how it works.
Well the ganging up posts in the 2020 thread are pretty consistently directed at Mayor Pete (or whatever candidate) and people have often gone out of their way to try to not be aholes to his supporters.
This thread seems like a couple of storms in a teacup and I find it hard to understand what people are getting so incensed about (I include the meltdowns on both sides over NBZ’s one day ban).
I guess things are coming to a head in the US (and here in the UK) and stress levels are rising, but I’m not sure what you want from this site apart from a greater diversity of opinions (which many of us would welcome - I find it fairly tedious to see the same comments over and over again in the Trump thread after the bot’s posts).
NotBruce issue doesn’t really have anything to do with tolerating different views. That other poster who got banned or driven off did though. The conservative dude. I forget his name.
wrt conservative opinions and the absence here thereof - it’s becoming harder with each passing year for people to hold these views in good faith in the face of mounting climate change and the failure of neo-liberalism, and I doubt there are many true conservatives who are prepared to argue the toss to the bitter end without obfuscating or avoiding dilemmas.
The numerous debates I’ve had irl over the past 3-4 years have all ended in silence from the right as they can’t bring themselves to admit that all they’re interested in (despite making noises about defence and law and order) is more short-term money for themselves regardless of the bigger picture, and are unable to convincingly deny it any longer.
This is largely because the conservative view has shifted much further to the right (as per the chart above).
I have explicitly told some conservatives that I will respect them if they admit they would prefer a confirmed pedophile who supports their preferred policies over an honest liberal who doesn’t. After all, I am willing to admit that I am the same way. Give me a pedophile who will get M4A done and properly address climate change over any honest conservative (if such a creature as an honest conservative even exists).
Disclaimer: This post should not be considered as advocating or condoning pedophilia. I just have a firm idea of what my priorities are.
“There are few genuine conservatives within the U.S. political system, and it is a sign of the intellectual corruption of the age that the honorable term ‘conservatism’ can be appropriated to disguise the advocacy of a powerful, lawless, aggressive and violent state, a welfare state for the rich dedicated to a lunatic form of Keynesian economic intervention that enhances state and private power while mortgaging the country’s future.”
Which I think is right. And I think that I’m someone who has a conservative temperament but what passes for conservatism in USA#1 isn’t something that any rational person can support. Which sums up the decades-long problem with American politics: that the Republicans aren’t conservative and the Democrats aren’t liberal. And a healthy political system probably needs both real conservatives and real liberals, both of which are actually trying to address the issues of the citizens.
Agreed, more-so in consideration it seems impossible for some people to let go of the label. We have several people on Unstuck and abroad who could reasonably be called conservative, but because the Conservative party with a capital C has become so reprehensible, the people who still use that term to describe themselves tend to be people so tribal that the tribal association is all they need to resolve what for the rest of us is an unavoidable and irreconcilable cognitive dissonance.
I really don’t see the harm in NBZ’s posts. It’s not as though he’s making credible violent threats against people. He’s not posting from a grassy knoll waiting for Trump to lower his smartphone. We don’t hold any legal responsibility for his actions on this forum or outside of it. His posts might disturb some people but those people are free to ignore him. Like literally there is an ignore feature here for members that people consider distasteful. Personally, I scroll right over them. They don’t provide much worthy of responding to and are pretty vanilla.
There’s a line that exists between fantasies of violence and actively planning or threatening to perform specific attacks. The former can be disturbing to some. Those people can use the ignore feature. The latter are criminal matters and would be worthy of disciplinary action.
I agree with your last sentence there jman. We have trusted cuserounder to enforce the rules and he should act in the way he sees fit even if it causes disagreement among some of us.
