I think a lot of us do, sadly.
I can’t help but wonder how long a right-wing version of Der Trihs would last here upon engaging in mirror-image language: taking stuff exactly as far, and not one inch further, while repeatedly broad-brushing everyone on the other side as having a purely evil motivation: in the same number of threads, and with the same vitriol.
Years, in many cases. One difference that was pointed out earlier, is that DT generally posts once or twice and doesn’t overstay a thread. That sort of behavior is anathema to trolls
We had a poster a few years ago talking nonchalantly about murdering illegals, and they’re still here, so not exactly the same but way worse.
There are enough unhinged anti-abortion rights ranters intent on demonizing the opposition.
It doesn’t help to have equally unhinged rants issuing from the other side.
Wondering about things that are so obvious seems like a waste of time 
Link?
He’s our token radical leftist.
He tends to label every right-leaning issue in absolutes and doesn’t seem able to understand many of those voters come from small towns and rural communities who are concerned about their ways of life changing from liberal decree. To him, they’re all united in an absolute block of right-wing extremism dedicated to annihilating his sacred cows. They don’t like to be called those names, so that kind of labelling isn’t going to change their minds.
Every race has conservatives. That’s something the left doesn’t understand. They can’t conceive that the historically-oppressed would vote Republican.
From Severe Hijack, about US borders, moved to pit
There’s more but I think that sums it up neatly.
As for Der Trihs, I think the “mentally tone him down by a solid margin and he starts to make sense” idea is sound, except:
I recall once a very long time ago a mod saying that he got passes where other posters would get warnings because his over-the-top nonsense was so well-established that it was kind of on everybody else to not engage. It was a dumb idea then and it’s a dumb idea now.
It’s actually from a webcomic, Schlock Mercenary. One of the characters was a typical “Star Trek red shirt,” whose name was “Der Trihs.” The joke was that he kept surviving stuff that, based on nominitive determinism, should have killed him.
I thought it meant he was leftist, as in red is the color of communism.
Well, there is a rule, that’s been pretty long-standing, that you can’t say, “people who believe X are terrible people” if there are people who believe X in that thread. That’s like an indirect insult.
That’s the reason we hedge our language with “some” and “many” and admissions of generalizing and so on and so forth.
Der Trihs breaks this rule pretty often.
But I’m guessing a lot of other people do too. Maybe I do, sometimes, too. I’m not sure.
Thanks–I was having trouble tracking that down. It’s pretty fuckin rich for someone who shrugs and calls for murdering families crossing the border to complain about anyone’s extremist politics, much less to accuse our board of hypocrisy for allowing a leftist to be extreme. Say what you will about @Der_Trihs, I’ve never seen him so blithely call for mass murder as Waldo has repeatedly done.
Yeah, Waldo’s a sociopath. He’s not on my ignore list* but he rarely contributes anything positive.
*Unlike Babs, who I gave up on a while back as not being worth interacting with.
We’ve had multiple conservative posters who pulled this off, flying under the radar for as long as a decade or more. They hung on because some people had a weird idea that they were “better than that”, or having a bad day, or we need “intellectual diversity” even if it’s toxic waste.
But eventually they got popped, which will also happen to Der_Trihs at some point. People who post in a certain controversial rut will eventually get banned for it, you simply cannot accumulate that many false reports without eventually doing something to deserve real warnings, at which point you’ll be judged as more trouble than you’re worth.
There’s being right, and then there’s being over-the-top confrontationally right even when it’s off-topic, and making everything about the deepest darkest plans of the bad guys whether it’s relevant or not, and this last bit will get him eventually.
Look at the quotes above (and read the linked thread if you really want to lose your lunch): TOWP is one of those posters who somehow hasn’t gotten banned for saying things far worse than DT ever has.
Edit: I’ll add to this, without commenting on it, that at the time I pushed to have “invaders” banned as hate speech when applied to undocumented immigrants. The thread in ATMB was shut down with a final comment by Ed Zotti who, instead of recognizing this hate speech, implored us all to consider the possibility that our opponents weren’t entirely wrong.
Thanks! What a disturbing read.
Oh wow. Not only wildly racist and murderous, but profoundly stupid as well.
His time will come, just give it a decade or so.
I imagine he (Waldo) was not sympathetic to East German border guards shooting people in the no-go zones next to the Wall. Nor NK guards shooting people in the DMZ no-go zones.
But here in the good old USA? Open Fire!
What a human turd.
Looking back on it, that thread was kind of unfortunate, because it was very obviously a motte-and-bailey where the pit-tee had the letter of the law on his side, and others were hopelessly trying to challenge it. “The spirit of it is wrong” is not a challenge to the text unless/until it becomes a (successful) legislative effort.
I wish more people had leaned into the stronger challenge that people shouldn’t be executed on sight at the border simply for being suspected of an administrative documentary violation, no more than people should be shot for driving with expired tags or making errors on their tax returns. That’s purely a choice, and to my knowledge nothing says the border has to be defended by lethal force against people who are merely suspected of illegal crossing. That’s just a preference of monsters.
But things being what they were, the troll was quite well-fed that day and clearly relished the meal.