Sad to see you go, Bone. When I stepped down, I had a spiritual exhaustion that kept me off the board and even mostly offline for nearly three years. (And I wasn’t even targeted for anything.) Dealing with so much negative energy? It’s draining.
I hope you spend the vast quantity of free time you now have available on something that gives you more energy and more zest. But I also hope that you keep kindness in your heart for this place because despite the rancor, the sneering and the lack of perspective that can sometimes drag this place down, it is a community. And you have a place here. You belong here.
And I hope to see you here again, when the time comes.
Or do what I’ve done in the past: take a week or two off, then ease back in by only reading MPSIMS, then a little Café Society, then a post or two about Mister Ed or Surf Music…
Maybe stay away from the more political forums til after the election.
All in all, you were an important part of this place. I’d hate for that to end.
I never read enough of his posts to get a gut feel for his politics other than support of the second half of the second amendment. The bones I have to pick were at times he seemed to run interference for Ditka, and sometimes seemed to close threads because conservatives were getting their asses kicked. In fairness, he did issue warnings to Ditka.
Even in a sign off thread some people feel the need to take parting shots at Bone.
There is this neurotic presumption that some liberals have that anyone that disagrees with them are not decent human beings.
This may be the 10th thread I’ve seen where people are highlighting the degradation of standards around here and it is largely because liberals will not call out other liberals. They nit pick conservatives (even when they make fairly good arguments) but just let sloppy thinking or bad arguments by “their side” slide. The moderates and conservatives have done a better job of calling out other non-liberals, the few that are left anyways.
It has gone from a place where we argue fight ignorance to a place where we argue to win arguments.
And I’ll measure our tolerance for opposing views against that of any other messageboard, right or left. I think you’ll find this is about as far from an “echo chamber” as you get on the internet.
Mind you, some people are quick to ascribe any disagreement they encounter as pure partisan hatred, even when it’s a legitimate response to their personal posts. This allows them to avoid any accountability for their own weak arguments or ill-judged comments.
Sorry to see you go. I never thought of you as a conservative; in fact I’m having a hard time thinking of any conservative position you advocated for other than gun rights. But regardless, I always thought you were a valuable poster.