Objection to Warning in the Leave the Birth Rate Alone Thread

[HMS_Irruncible]

@MrDibble

Always has been, even when the mods were giving posts questioning the mental competence of entire races of people or the sanity of the entire trans segment of society a pass just because they were seen as “polite” (by the privileged) . So no, “thoughtful” right-wingers are not any different from the rest.

Yeah, interestingly scientific racism is on the list of banned topics for that reason, because it’s straightforwardly nothing but a way to smuggle in some white supremacy tarted up in the dispassionate academic language of data and studies and charts and statistics. It’s always thoroughly discredited but “let’s look at the data” serves as nothing but a sufficient wedge to get people’s guard down and entertain white supremacy.

“The birth rate” is I think a little different. I think for the most part (or at least for most Dopers’ part) they’re not consciously trying to soft-sell white supremacy, but they are unwittingly laundering some racially motivated messages from elsewhere. The putative effect is the same, it ends up creating pressure against reproductive freedom and immigration in the same stroke.

Of course the solution to falling birthrates is to get women back to being baby factories, of course this undercuts the idea that we actually need and benefit from immigrant labor, if we can get creative about policies to help us reproduce our own workers (weirdly nobody seems too worried about whether too many Black babies are being produced, and there are some disturbing implications about why a ballooning Black population is seen as a manageable situation).

The hand-wringing over “the birth rate” isn’t quite the repeat offender as scientific racism (at least not yet) but it very much is scientific xenophobia and misogyny, whether the participants realize it or not, and it should be on the shortlist for inclusion in the “tired topics” list next to scientific racism.

[DrDeth]

Excellent moderation in this case.

[ParallelLines]

Apologies, this was intended to be sent as a DM, and I was too frank in my expressions. Since I caught it this late, I won't remove it to preserve context, but it is more emphatic and less temperate than I would be comfortable with. Again, apologies to all.

@BigT, I’m replying to you this way, because I am sick of trying to give a wider perspective and DT and others not considering that they are looking at a rather narrow one.

Seriously, you have NOT seen the messages he sends us directly, and when he replies in ATMB he makes his claims and accusations WITHOUT ever quoting any context. And I’ve proven repeatedly his accusations are so far off from the factual that I’m giving him substantial benefit of the doubt in saying he’s saying it out of passion rather than malice or an attempt to paint himelf as a martyr. He has said, all but in these words, that his correctness is more important than the rules. And, he may be correct in a lofty, idealist sense. But we can’t run a community that way.

His… ugly side is actually there if you look. And not just in the Pit. This is the latest example of it, and possibly tame by some of the things he’s said in the past. I’m not going to link it, but if we (P&E mods) were trying to railroad him into a suspension (which we’re not) the list would be loooooooong. Heck, if I was going to try to attack him, I’d have Warned him for a thread a week ago where I told everyone to stop a hijack, and he continued it RIGHT after said note - this was 10 days ago. He was warned for being offtopic 30 days ago. He has 5 WARNINGS in less than a year.

We did NOT moderate him for breaking the rules, though again, I just gave an example where I could have. He is being moderated as any long time poster who has major patterns of poor behavior who has skipped dozens of warnings because we always gave him notes because of tenure, and each time it gets slightly worse.

Aside - I did read the Pit thread, and went “OMFG, if you guys read what he’s said to us, or some of the posts he’s thrown out, you wouldn’t be so sure.” And even if we often agree with his feelings (all the active P&E moderators are left of center) he is absolutely destructive to reasoned discourse in the more tightly moderated forums.

But it’s fine if you disagree, again, I don’t blame YOU for his behavior, or for defending him in the narrow window of a singular post of his. The irony is of course, the P&E mods have been working our tuchus off on a way to give more control back to the Posters (cause this is a metric ton of work) and finally it should go live in the next few days, modloop permitting.

So, give it a few days and see our answer yourself. I think many posters will be pleased, and despite us giving him the warning, none of us are actively trying to get him suspended. But his private communications and the relentless accusations of us and the board being Right Wing Enablers (over 5 accusations by last count) has certainly burned off a lot of goodwill - thankfully we have thick skins!

[Ruken]

I hadn’t seen the thread and just read it now. Moderation started poor with this failure of a modnote:

@What_Exit

Moderating:

It appears the debate is about the birthrate itself. You’re edging close to Jr. Modding with your last sentence. Please don’t. We review these threads fairly quickly to see if they should stay in Great Debates or move elsewhere.

FFS let’s please not discourage people asking OPs what kind of discussion they were hoping to have, especially when the OP didn’t frame it well on their first try.

It devolved from there. Der_Trihs’s posting history, about which I have no opinion, and his DMs are neither here nor there wrt whether the individual posts were on topic. And they were far more on topic than later posts, e.g., @puzzlegal being sad about US immigration policy.

[Skywatcher]

@crowmanyclouds

We can take Starving Artist and ClothaHump off that list too . . . unless dismissing child rape and using racist slurs are a recognized part of the definition of conservative.

Don’t forget the thread that Clothy started as a counter to SRIOD

Stupid liberal idea of the day

So many to choose from… Let’s start with a classic example of the jackass Nanny State mentality: Wiffleball? Freeze tag? I’m surprised the legislature didn’t mandate that kids all be wrapped in cotton padding 24/7 until their 18th birthday. A perfect example of government “fixing” something that was never broken, and doing so in a massive stupid manner.