With all respect, that segment did nothing to further rational discussion. I do not see how yelling hateful things from across the isle is a 'great piece'. The way forward is finding common ground.
OP was ostensibly making a completely unrelated point. The word "need" was referring to the relationship between the original topic of discussion and the snarky aside that OP dropped into it. There was no need for there to be a political component to make that point. It didn't add anything to the discussion. Obviously people are downvoting my comment, so people don't think that I was contributing to the discussion either, but I thought it was worth a shot to try to discourage the kind of comments that I believe degrade online discussions. I think I made my point in a pretty civil fashion, and that's the end of it as far as I'm concerned.
Totally, it's the low hanging fruit of the political discussion. Someone says something that should change, instead of attacking the argument they point and yell look they aren't perfect!!! We can't listen to them.
The same point could have been made with a completely different tone.
You cannot have meaty discussion amongst people with diverse points of view from diverse backgrounds without an expectation of civility and respect. If that isn't enforced, then minority viewpoints have no hope of being taken seriously. It becomes an echo chamber and the oxygen gets sucked out of the community. This can also drive away your most valued contributors and/or make their contributions toxic in a way they can't stop.
There is all kinds of problems with saying that it is okay to express a valid point in a nasty fashion.
It's not great to go about name-calling like a schoolchild if someone brings up misgivings about a topic you seem to have decided has no room for discussion.
You are right, I was reacting to a pattern of argument, which is not the point that I should have been focused on. That creates more noise over more important issues.
Maybe people should stop using inflammatory and ambiguous words and actually bring up those points then. Taking shortcuts is not working and is just causing flamewars.
Who said anything about disagreements, much less outrage, though? The context was cutting out noise, and muting is a more effective version of skipping your eyes past it. Some topics just get spent and become boring.
Parent brought up a politically charged topic to the extent nessasary to qualify an otherwise false statement. In doing so, they took care to avoid the heart of the polical issue.
What more do you want? To allow charged topics to infect more and more otherwise non charged topics, and bring every conversation down to their level?
This crosses into ideological flamewar of the kind we're trying to avoid here. Would you please not do that? Thoughtful discussion is the idea, not denunciatory rhetoric.
It sucks that the conversation always gets hijacked by people who should not be throwing stones, and ends up being a "debate" where there shouldn't be one.
So let’s call them out on that, briefly, then get on with the argument.
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