Left: The Republican party has a guy in Congress who said: "White nationalist, white supremacist, Western civilization — how did that language become offensive?". This is really bad. Another stalwart of your party just called him to sympathize. This is also bad. Why do all the racists seem to be on one side right now? Why is an avowed white supremacist like Steve King still serving in Congress, and why are all Republicans not denouncing him? This seems like a big problem.

Right: I take issue with your tone and choice of words. This is the real issue we should be discussing.

It's quite interesting though and not fully clear that the bullying and name-calling are the inevitable outcome. It's not the case that moderation isn't allowed so it's just a case of getting moderation that sufficiently prevents the bullying, personal animosity etc

It is tricky with politics more than anything else. Doesn't mean it can't be done and the 2+2 approach did result in a Politics forum that was probably the best on the internet despite any problems. Now something new may emerge while the old forum is free to thrive on it's own.

I'll even be nice in the deadest of ends because Arsenal are down 3-0 and I'm done watching...

What policies of HRC would have been "infinitely more damaging" than kids in cages? What would have been worse than pulling out of the Paris accords? What would have been worse than emboldening white nationalists and the resurgence of violence from this group? What would have been worse than a conservative supreme court that has ruled against marginalized individuals? What would have been worse than attempts to repeal healthcare?

Not in this universe.

Not doing those things, ldo

I can understand how you might have felt that HRC was more damaging than Trump on election night. If you continue to watch Fox News, you may be able to envision without any degree accuracy some alternate reality where the world would be worse if HRC won.

But you now have the benefit of hindsite and can compare the last two years of Trump with the conduct and speech of any other modern president. Viewing Trump's term as anything but an unmitigated disaster is unreasonable. He is surrounded by crooks, scumbags and unqualified family members. He has no ability to accomplish policy through legislation. He has no presidential or leadership qualities. He is a complete moron lacking any diplomacy skills, especially compared to other world leaders. Perhaps most important, he has no desire to learn how to be or act Presidential.

I dont see how you could identify any instance were HRC would have been worse than our current situation.

You said only 2 people who barely post did, not the regs. I pointed out that were wrong. Not sure what you are babbling on about with all this whattabout OOT and whattabout misogyny, but it was a nice try I guess.

A main purpose of my recent posting was to make it clear that way more moderation was necessary. Now that I understand that wont be happening I wont be back(why would I or anyone want to put up with all that abuse?). Also, I expect I'll be posting to the rest of the site less as I don't want to contribute to a site that provides, whatever their intent, a venue for abuse or an echo chamber for ideological bigots.

I know some will reply, "oh, tired of being dunked on?" or some other made up silliness.

Yeah, campfire, i went back and looked at the search and saw a who's who of the regular posters using the term Huckabeast. Notwithstanding that I personally believe her vileness and public figure status makes her fair game to comments about her looks and weight, Suzzers attempt at revisionist history is a complete failure.

By any chance are you in the states playing Buzztime Trivia right now? A “Chez” has finished top 20 two games in a row

Zica, you did a good job of standing your ground and weathered the "you must be a racist or too ignorant to realize you are a racist" trolling by Slighted and name calling by Suzzer, after they failed to dunk on you with their superior logic and reasoning. I am sure all the name-calling defectors will be back despite the "adequate" moderation by wookie and Jman.

I don't think it's certain there wont be far more moderation once the dust settles. As I understand the 2+2 way it's as far as possible not to interfere with the moderation of each forum. It's not anti-moderation but anti interfering with the moderation of each sub-forum. Clearly it sometimes fails.

btw I'm also in the far more moderation camp.

I agree with suzzer. This is blatant gaslighting. This event was VERY WIDELY discussed before it occurred, especially in the Charlottesville area. It is inconceivable that more than a few people in attendance were confused about who the organizers were, or what their agenda was.

And yeah, if I were a Republican, and I happened to wander into that event because I thought the organizers were going to discuss taxes, the Affordable Care Act, Supreme Court nominations, or some such thing, I know what I would do once I heard the chants and saw the signs -- sprint away while praying that I hadn't been captured on video.

Agree because (I assume) many of the regs were poker players and the avg IQ was higher than your typical reddit etc. poster by a pretty wide margin.

However just because the topic was politics, does not mean it should have been difficult to have a better moderated forum. The mods mostly shared the far-left views of the regs, so they obviously gave far too much leeway to those they agreed with. I'd assume their thought process was that conservatives were just being "rightfully called out".

I am not arguing with you as I know you are in favor of more moderation... I'm just pointing out the issues that led the site to be a very unfriendly place for anyone with a centrist or conservative viewpoint.

The politics forum started as a right wing place. It was arguably center right pre 2016. This is quite the revisionist history.

I'm not. I'm at home in London very much enjoying the night's footy.

The point is the post in question served as a catalyst only, no one who admins this site gives a **** about the content of that post or the civility of the politics forum. They were merely covers to try and shut up the liberals. This is obvious to anyone who uses any other forums on 2+2 where there has always been worse behavior tolerated by if not actually contributed to the reds.

So what's the point here - that a bunch of posters in the Politics forum called SHS Huckabeast - then the politics forum had a reckoning about it and policed their own? Granted. If that was remotely grounds to nuke a forum BBV, OOT, NVG, SMP and most others would have been gone a long time ago.

The original point was about 2 posters who don't post much. Ins0 called them the cool kids. They were not. campfire, it wasn't clear to me that you were trying to mash the two issues together. Nor should they be imo.

Feel free to address the point that the right-wingers who suddenly care so much about ugly and fat-shaming women are typically on the exact opposite side of the equation and lash out at SJWs constantly for doing similar. Seems pretty convenient to me for them to become temporary SJWs on this specific issue.

What names did I call zica?

Also omg if you think some of zica's arguments are solid you're nuts. Go back and read the whole line about not wanting to be contradicted or asked to provide proof on a politics forum and the nonsensical replies.

zica literally used a hypothetical about calling immigrants lazy as an unfair grounds for calling someone a racist, then backed away when I pointed out that yes in fact it was racist, by saying he never called anyone lazy. Even though he made this post in this thread:

I never called immigrants lazy. If I did, it still wouldn't be racist. But I didn't, so it's not. o_O

The point that zica is disputing there is not whether he suggested that some immigrants are lazy, it's whether he was equating laziness with being brown-skinned.

One of the moderation problems I've been thinking about -- and I'm not sure exactly how to deal with it -- is the need to encourage people to both engage in good faith and to extend a presumption of good faith to others whom they disagree with strongly, a kind of political version of the principle of charity.

I think that this has been a problem in this forum, and there are posts in this thread which are illustrative of it too, although mostly not egregiously so in my view. But it's not an easy problem to solve, and nor do I think the solution to it would involve forbidding people from calling various ideas racist, for example. I think if conservatives and liberals are going to have conversations about immigration, then undoubtedly those conversations will involve concerns about xenophobia and racism expressed by liberals. To try to shut that down would just be shutting down the conversation by presuming that the conservative view was correct, which isn't a great way to have a dialogue.

So I don't think conservatives should expect liberals to set aside those concerns. On the other hand, imagining a hypothetical politics forum where a primary goal was to encourage meaningful debate across the political divide, I think liberals participating in that forum would also need to be willing to accept that some conservatives who support immigration restrictions have motivations beyond racial animus as well, and to be willing to grant some provisional benefit of the doubt to posters expressing pro-immigration-restriction viewpoints. Not to be glib, but lately it seems like a good starting point might just be not immediately equating any such stated position with that of white supremacist groups.

One way or the other, I think actually productive dialog more or less requires some minimal presumption of good faith, and people who think that is not possible at all probably just can't really participate in a forum intended to encourage dialog. And of course the onus would be on moderation to make sure that actual bad faith posting was heavily moderated.

Balancing all of this seems challenging to me, and likely to make everyone mad, unlike the previous regime which only made a smaller subset mad :P

But that's kind of what I've been thinking about.

Good luck nailing that down - it shifts.

The original point was about heehaw claiming "lazy" is code for "brown" about people trying to get into the country. Which he took exception to.

Then he used that as an example of a personal insult, when apparently it wasn't directed at him?

Then when I pointed out it is racist to call immigrants lazy, he back-tracked and said he never said that.

My head hurts.

Sure.

But do we have to take each point in a vacuum - or are we allowed to look at the source? Trump started his campaign by comparing Mexicans to rapists. He said there were fine people on both sides in Charlottesville. He took out a full page ad in the NYT wanting to throw the Central Park 5 in jail even after DNA exonerated them. Anything Trump says about immigration should be taken in that context imo - as coming from a racist.

If someone is a hardcore Trump supporter - that context also matters too imo. If they defend the Mexican rapist comments or the Charlottesville comments (etc) - that is illustrative about their motivations on immigration policy.

I'm going to be very leary of "merit-based immigration" coming from a side which clearly also wants less non-white immigrants.

Here's Bannon blaming Asians for taking American jobs with H1-B: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/steve...b010565aae420a

Shouldn't he be fine with that under merit-based immigration? Civic society = western civilization - any way you slice it. And super lol at Bannon caring about American Hispanics and blacks. Spare me.

Everyone can-and should-be able to begin the debate with the premise that both sides want America to succeed/thrive (i.e. everyone has the same goal). Obviously, there is intense debate around the policies meant to get US (at the end of the day, we're all in it together) there, but we all want the U.S. to be better tomorrow than it is today.

If you start with that basic premise, I don't think a little respect is too far out of reach.

I'm not saying that zica is doing an impeccable job arguing his position, and I think he would have done better to have avoided that characterization to begin with. And I probably have skimmed over it a little bit, so maybe he's twisted himself around since then. But I think I understood what he meant in the post you quoted. My impression is that -- at the very least -- he's sincerely trying to argue his views and probably sincerely does not think those views are based in race, which is why he's annoyed that he thinks he can't discuss his views without being (somewhat indirectly) compared to neo-nazis.

I'm willing to extend him the benefit of the doubt on the fact that he is not actually intending to advocate for white supremacist views, at least until he gives me a reason not to do so, and I think a better conversation would take place if others did that too. Part of debates between people who disagree is finding ways to make arguments that start from premises which both parties can share. The premise that all opposition to immigration is an expression of overt white supremacy doesn't work very well as a shared premise.

On the other hand, if zica wants a forum where people would be prevented from expressing the view that a lot of anti-immigration sentiment is driven by concerns about racial demographic change, then he would likely not be satisfied even with my vision, because I don't think that would be reasonable either, and I think there is ample evidence for the truth of that claim regardless of his individual beliefs.