Huh? Why would we treat prisoners with respect? We treat them humanely, but respect is a level beyond that which most prisoners do not get or deserve. Respect is earned.
LHOD appears to be talking about bigots. I don’t see how respecting them helps us at all. It just creates a less welcoming board to the targets of said bigotry. Yes, it’s nice to have conservative viewpoints, but we can’t help that conservatism is leaning more and more towards accepting bigotry.
Sure, there is some bigotry that comes through mere ignorance, and it’s good to debunk that. But the type that is assholish is the kind that is either willfully ignorant or actively malicious.
I definitely think it’s a good thing that we’re cracking down on that more. I like the current rules of GD. I like the misogyny rules. The trans rules could use a tweak here or there, but they’re much, much better.
I definitely think we lost more people because we kept putting up with the bigoted assholes than we did actual bigoted assholes. I look back, and the posters I truly miss are not the ones who stirred up shit. It’s the ones who got tired of it.
It’s the ones coming here with both barrels blazing, being confrontational, loud and abrasive that get the flak. Look at @Max_S. Cheerfully, openly a Republican, yet a valued member of our community. He isn’t an asshole, but can put out his viewpoints concisely and civilly. I also liked Bone and I miss his voice here.
I think this is a large part of it - as you said, the trait of someone who would come up with out-of-the-box topics for discussion, or think outside the box, is someone who would be harder to corral into a “keep-everything-on-the-straight-and-plain-and-narrow” parameter of rules for a message board.
There sure are a lot of asymmetries along those lines, aren’t there? I don’t think I have ever seen a single solitary post by a RW’er (on any forum virtual or real) where they express their concern and puzzlement that a friend or relative went “full Biden/Democrat!” Nor do they seem the least bit curious as to why someone would support liberal policies. Have you had any of your RW friends/family ask you, “Why in God’s name do you support liberal policies?” [The more religious may indeed invoke the deity there, tho that’s beside the point]
I think there’s the mistaken impression that respect (in cases like on this message board) has to do with accepting the merit of an argument. It does not. I can be respectful of a bigot and at the same time give their “arguments” no merit.
Respect is about how you deal with a person not what you think of their arguments.
If someone comes on this board and starts on on 9/11 truther stuff. You can absolutely tell them their argument is nothing but hogwash and is not accepted on this board without calling them an idiot.
Many many posters on this board seem to have trouble separating the person from the post.
And many many posters on this board seem to think it’s ok to be disrespectful to people who’s viewpoints they find distasteful. I do not.
Maybe, but I’m not sure that’s ever been this place. Whether a view deserves respect is, I think, on a continuum. Someone hangs a noose on a construction site, I don’t feel the need to show a ton of respect to their statement of their views. Someone lays out a case for why a specific approach to phonics instruction will result in superior teaching, even if I disagree, I’ll respect their views.
Similarly, how someone expresses themselves matters. I got in some arguments with folks about whether old depictions of monsters in D&D had racist undertones. Compare these two posts, both of which disagreed with me. The first was disagreeing that orcs, in a specific painting, were drawing on traditions of racist depictions of Black people.
The second is disagreeing with me that the person who wrote about orcs was doing so in a racist fashion:
Both posters disagreed with me. I corresponded at length and courteously with one of them. The other one I pitted. Can you guess which was which?
It took you all of five posts to start condemning Conservatives and Republicans. You literally have threads with titles of “Republicans are the party of evil”, and threads wishing death on the same.
Twenty years ago, there was great discourse on this board. Now, you can’t even mention you’re a republican or conservative without people instantly jumping on your ass. Threads have been tried where they’ve asked for such viewpoints, promised not to get flamed… yet it doesn’t work. It forced me to keep my mouth shut. Ten years ago, you could no longer have a discourse - it immediately became a “you suck! no YOU suck!” argument. Nobody listened or tried to discuss.
Now, I don’t even try to look at those threads anymore. I’m happy to discuss TV and movies, but nothing of even a remotely political nature.
And it makes me sad that I have to do that.
I’m hanging on to the view found in the OP. That’s the board I loved and remember. And I’m hoping it comes back.
This is a false equivalency. Just because the Party may be different now than it was, doesn’t mean that your average run of the mill conservative individual is. In fact I’m probably more progressive on many topics today than I was 20 years ago…but when painted with a broad brush…you know.
Right, and no one is pitting you, you’re not being chased away.
The Republicans and Conservatives who have followed the party over the edge are the ones who may no longer feel welcome. We have many posters here who used to identify as conservative or Republican who gave up on the party and are happy, productive posters here.
