I don’t think you’re being a JAQ fuckhead, but I don’t see many if any complexities with respect to what is at issue here. “The world is swirling all around us” therefore what? People should be free to use this platform to pontificate about the political utility of another 9/11? To seriously or not seriously suggest we troll white racists when innocent white cops are murdered? To advocate the use of the language of ethnic cleansing to talk about anybody? It sucks that we have to sanction an otherwise good poster, but I find it just about as disconcerting that people don’t seem to see the line as clearly as I do as the posts themselves, but like I said in my screed, maybe I don’t know the community that well.
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If 60% of a community thought content I considered dangerous, irresponsible and a call to violence was okay I wouldn’t use it to launch my podcast?
I think your last point is worth emphasizing. I read the same NBZ posts as you yet while you were appalled and thought they clearly crossed the line and warrant temp-ban/perma-ban, I personally thought they were “fine” and did not warrant any mod action (including deleting the posts, PM’ing him to tone it down, etc.).
It just goes to once again show that two reasonable people can have very different reactions/viewpoints. And to show for the millionth time that it is important to not think that everybody else is just like me. 
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I immediately thought of this thread when I saw these two stories on the Seattle Times home page this afternoon.
https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/crime/kent-man-who-threatened-trump-family-gets-5-years/
Just examples of the fucked-up world we live in (growth of neo-Nazi and other hate groups) and the reactions it can cause (the mentally ill guy making threats).
Look obviously noted that you are not endorsing the posts. My take on the danger issue is that while I agree it’s pretty small, I definitely resent to even have to think about it. Any poster who comes on here and makes posts that make me or anyone else wonder if they’re a danger or possibly encouraging violence should be warned and then banned. Some people are looking at the poll and saying look a clear majority don’t even think what he said is ban worthy, seeming not to appreciate that a relatively large minority is not at all cool with this kind of posting. Maybe this kind of issue shouldn’t be a majority rule type thing, but a minority right type thing – of course this would need to be discussed and voted on.
But as I’ve already said, the danger element is just one reason, what was the real world danger of the derpy racist posts on 22?
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Everybody is going to feel differently about the gray areas, although that is very clearly a joke (no such thing as a well placed meteorite). If you had said you were rooting for a well placed shooter, and had a posting history of saying things like that, then yeah you should refrain from it if you weren’t banned already.
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This is cuses’ forum. We’re just posting in it
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Leaving this here for no particular reason:
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I don’t care whether Bruce gets axed or not, I don’t pay enough attention. His posts don’t bother me but I can certainly understand why others would be bothered. I’d hate to see Cuse get demoded…he wont though. I’ve lurked the politics forum on 22 for over ten years and he is one of the best all around posters - which is why we have this thread.
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Voted, now grunching:
I draw the line at specific threats of violence.
I appreciate the thought, I really do, it’s a shitty political atmosphere; but I take it as just a thought, in that I don’t know whether you are or are not ultimately trying to persuade me that this pattern of posting should be tolerated here.
There’ll be times
When my crimes
Will seem almost unforgivable
I give in to sin
Because you have to make this life livable
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Ok, but one way or another a concrete decision needs to be made and the person enforcing that decision (cuse) deserves to know whether he has support or not and probably deserves a bit of a why, although a lot of people have been chiming in about that so that’s good.
But the internet is for closers. In other words, we’re here in the story
And yet, that awful tiger, those shrieks, that blood!
Her decision had been indicated in an instant, but it had been made after days and nights of anguished
deliberation. She had known she would be asked, she had decided what she would answer, and,
without the slightest hesitation, she had moved her hand to the right.The question of her decision is one not to be lightly considered, and it is not for me to presume to set
myself up as the one person able to answer it. And so I leave it with all of you: Which came out of the
opened door,–the lady, or the tiger?
Lol, I will be taking Lady or the Tiger out of my repertoire. I think? I read it in 8th grade, and only remember it for the device of leaving the ending for the reader to decide. I just reread it, and unless there’s some esoteric reading of it, it really leans into some straight up comical 19th century racism and misogyny.
The more we reflect upon this question, the harder it is to answer. It involves a study of the human
heart which leads us through devious mazes of passion, out of which it is difficult to find our way.
Think of it, fair reader, not as if the decision of the question depended upon yourself, but upon that
hot-blooded, semi-barbaric princess, her soul at a white heat beneath the combined fires of despair and
jealousy. She had lost him, but who should have him?
Yikes
Late-night crew approves this message!
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Same. The fact that a lot of posters whose opinions and character I respect are a-okay with this is extremely disconcerting.
This is true. JT started a thread, IIRC, asking NotBruceZ to tone it down.
I agree that if we start to publish content and push it out to the world and try to get eyes on it and make some impact, the worst content anywhere on the domain (currently NotBruceZ’s posting) will be used to discredit all of it. That’s just how that stuff works, especially when the right wing is involved. So if we want to use this place to create a platform like that (I certainly do, but maybe the majority does not), we should be mindful of it. Anyone who publishes content on our site could be asked to justify anything that’s allowed to exist on the site.
I mean, the way the world works is that you can’t really quantify it until it’s too late. I don’t know what the worst case danger is, and I don’t know the likelihood of it coming to fruition. But that combination would give you sort of an expected value of the danger. To me, when there’s potential violence against innocents, any avoidable risk is unacceptable.
I definitely feel that this kind of talk shouldn’t exist, and lowering our discourse to that level is not only morally wrong but a strategic mistake as well. I think the goal for some of us is to try to use this place to impact people/things outside our little environment. Now, if the majority would rather just have their isolated corner of the internet and don’t want others to be using it to push content out, then I guess that aspect doesn’t matter.
Keep in mind that ~95% of what is swirling all around us that is objectionable morally is coming from the right if we’re talking about violent rhetoric. It’s an important distinction in that most people who are susceptible to acting on that stuff on the right have already been exposed to it. However, very few people on the left have been exposed to that kind of rhetoric from their own side… So while it may be swirling all around us coming from the right, the calculus in terms of leading toward political violence from the left changes when the rhetoric comes from this side.
And in terms of public discourse, it also changes if the same rhetoric is being hurled back. It changes who we can win over, it changes who we can turn out, and it changes the reaction on the other side. So regardless of whether 300 or 30,000 people are reading it, I think we should do our part to eliminate rhetoric that is unacceptable to us.
I mean, the vast majority of us are not having trouble keeping it inside the lines 99% of the time. People can also express that they’re having shitty thoughts and discuss it without posting the way he is.
I don’t think there’s much of a comparison between what you said, which is sort of gallows humor, and what he’s been posting. A post about a meteorite wiping out too really corrupt/shitty candidates has a 0.0% chance of causing a meteorite to hit them.
I don’t think we even have to be that thoughtful. There are plenty of ways to vent aggressively that don’t cross a line.
Thank you.
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I agree that we should go through a process like that. I’d like to see input from the other mods regarding the escalation steps in particular, and then the community as a whole.
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Lol if you want this place to grow then you probably need to nix the gatekeeping and cliqueish attitude that runs rampant in this place.
IDK. It’s still wishing they died imo.
Also, I have to imagine that the constant calls for Trump to keel over and wishes of death immediately after tweets are going to put this place on a list far sooner than anything NBZ has said. Not that I don’t think those things sometimes.
Well to be honest with you I wish Trump was dead, and there are very few people in the world I’d say that about because it’s not a good wish to have, but it’s clearly different to calling for murder.
On the other hand in a hypothetical civil war I guess it would be perfectly fine to call for his head on a pike.