Nah. He won’t be banned unless someone outs him as a sock. Being a pusillanimous turd who strives to pwn the libs with weak gotchas, whatabouts and bad-faith arguments isn’t enough to get you bounced out of this club.
Why be stingy - both.
[Moderating]
Just a reminder, but complaints about the moderation belong in ATMB, not the Pit. I’m leaving the thread open, since it mostly turned out to be about either HurricanDitka being a bad person, or BPC needing a nap, but that only lasts so long as it doesn’t veer into “The moderators here suck,” territory.
[/Moderating]
The moderators here don’t suck as much as they used to!
— Uke, ex-moderator
Able, sure, but you don’t (or at least shouldn’t) lose moral standing by declining to make a futile effort. Erosion exists as a force of nature, but that doesn’t mean you have to bang your head against the rock.
Now, if you don’t actually care about your opponent but are playing to the audience, have at it, of course.
Ain’t that the truth!
-Czarcasm, ditto
Hey, remember the time UncleBeer passed out drunk on the sofa, and Alphagene stuck his hand in a pot of warm water, and then Gaudere dragged him out onto the lawn and Manhattan convinced him that he was covered in pristine morning dew?
We didn’t get much moderating done back then, but damn! We had good times.
Ah, the typical right wing rhetoric where they accuse their opponents of being “just as bad” and being intolerant of different opinions. While carefully avoiding saying what those “opinions” are, because* “Just because they hate most of humanity and want to persecute or kill everyone else doesn’t make them bad people” *rather spoils the apologia.
And arguing on a message board doesn’t make me “no better” than slavers, tyrants, murderers, rapists and torturers. Which is what the right either are, or want to be if they aren’t yet.
You don’t “win arguments” with the right; you work around them or overwhelm them. It was the Civil War that broke mass slavery in the US, not reason; it was the threat of force that broke segregation. And it was the threat of law enforcement that made same sex marriage legal. Never reason, never appealing to their nonexistent morality or compassion; it’'s only ever force.
And yes; “right wing”* has* been synonymous with evil for as long as the concept has existed. All that ever changes is what exact variety of evil they are pushing, from royalist tyranny at the start, to religious hatred, to slavery, to sexism, to plutocracy, to racial hatred.
By the way, Der Trihs, I join the others who think you should post more. Just dial it back a little in the regular forums. 
Der Trihs, I can never tell if you actually believe the crap you spew or if you’re just a troll against the minority here. I tend think it’s the former and that you are legit. Stay passionate my friend! And take a few deep breaths now and then.
Interestingly, the right has managed to be an unmitigated bastion of evil despite the fact that many/most of its members weren’t evil themselves - just beholden to group rule and groupthink. My sweet sainted mother is against Teh Gay because, and only because, her religion told her to be, as one representative example.
Of course in modern times the american right has become so noxious that many of the moderates have started to distance themselves from it somewhat (though not necessarily enough to go liberal). The hardcore right is less and less defensible, and that’s saying something.
Link, pretty please?
The troll won’t do either.
What argument?, the point of demonizing people is to feel righteous about being hateful, it’s not an argument, it’s a psychological copping mechanism.
Idle speculation: has anyone checked to see that he isn’t a sock? I’m sure the commonality of initials is entirely coincidental but on the other hand it wouldn’t be the first time someone got too clever with a sock name.
Both, really.
I mean, I don’t know if HurricaneDitka is a bad person IRL but he’s a raging asshole on this messageboard. And naps are good.
Only because you asked so nicely:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=21698997&postcount=142
I don’t think this addresses the OP’s concern. He’s not asking why he should make posts. He’s asking how he’s supposed to respond in a thread that has gone to shit because one of the posters is actively engaging in a dishonest manner or is engaging in bigotry, when calling out the dishonesty or pointing out the bigotry gets him in trouble
The idea that he needs to respond lest he cede ground is exactly the problem. It is what HurricaneDitka (or any other board provocateurs) is counting on. They rope you into a chain of responses, so you get angrier and angrier, which they can exploit. They can either catch you making bad arguments (because anger clouds the brain) or they can actually provoke you into breaking the rules.
The solution is not to let them rope you in in the first place. Don’t buy that bullshit that you have to respond. In this case, it’s actually easier: there are several other posters who are also arguing against him, who have your back. None of those lurkers is looking at HD and thinking “he’s right.” There is one of him and several opponents, meaning he should be putting out the most effort.
You have a good eye for noticing traps and tricks. So,–while I would normally never say this–look at what I do. I call out the traps, but I don’t wind up getting Warned for it. I take my time with my posts. I treat GD like the moderation hates me, and look for any technicality they could use to get me. I weave in and out of threads, not sticking around long enough to be pulled into the trap of getting too angry to respond well.
My initial reaction may in fact be quite angry. When I see a certain poster do his shtick of claiming that liberals can’t stand dissent and acting like this somehow proves the liberal wrong, often with clear attacks on the poster’s character, my initial response is to call them a dishonest shit who thinks he’s better than everyone else while actually being rather bad at argument. But nothing like that comes out in my post. I just once again repeat how they have to actually prove their point, and that it’s reasonable to discount BAD arguments.
Here’s the thing. That poster, or HurricaneDitka, or anyone else, are not my “rival.” That’s making them way too important. Hell, I have HD on ignore. For what I do, I get enough out of just reading people quoting him, and even that I may skip at times. Seeing how few posts are actually removed when I do this is also great for reminding me that I’m not in it alone.
That’s my advice. It’s not as simple as “it’s not that important,” as suggested by other posters. Clearly it is to you. But do remember you’re not in it alone, and that they want to make you so mad that you break the rules. Take your time, and remember that you don’t need to actually stay actively involved in any one thread. The posts will still be there if you check in only once in a while.
And, finally, actively consider how the mods might consider your post to be a violation, and write around that. Write a first draft that’s all super angry, then throw it completely out, and try to convey the important bits without the stuff that gets you in trouble.
It also slows down your posting, which also makes it harder to get you trapped by a provocateur. And, by the time you’re done, you kinda want to leave the thread for a while.
Which is pretty much what they are afraid of, in this case.
As Der Trihs points out, they are afraid to use facts and logic against HurricaneDitka because they tend to lose the argument. HD doesn’t come into the Pit where they can scream at him. Therefore, all they have left is to report every fucking thing he posts and hope to push the boards in the direction of identifying any dissent from “Trump is a Nazi” as trolling, and silence him so that lurkers don’t ever run the risk of hearing any other position.
The problem is not that they are making their case for lurkers - it is that HurricaneDitka is making his.
Regards,
Shodan
What a lot of words to say “don’t feed the troll.”
So says Shodan, cite free, who thinks it’s appropriate to refer to black people as the N word. No one endorses consistent defenders of rapists and bigots with an unmatched confidence like our very own Shodan. Hail!
Are you talking about the HD that moves the goalpost so much, he had caster wheels installed? The HD that stops replying to someone when they point out how wrong he is? The HD that finds the most minute error in an argument that doesn’t change the opponents argument and then picks on it like a 10 year boy working on a scab? The HD that thinks McVeigh was probably a good guy?
We must be talking about different HD’s.