You've entered Phase Two: becoming embittered and obsessed with him, to the point where you can't not pop up when he's mentioned and do your passive-aggressive Civility And Discourse schtick.

Or that's just really so silly. And I've no idea when you ever thought I gave a **** what he says about me.

I didn't say P7 was one-sided. I said you were. You'd have to pay me to read P7 so I don't really know what goes on in there. I said recently it just seems like one part a tool to keep wil contained and one part total hot garbage but well named likes it so maybe I'm wrong. As best I can tell he might be the only redeeming thing about the place but I fully admit I am ignorant, just what I have seen suggests it's holistically awful.

I can't respond to the rest of your post because I honestly don't undestand it. If I believe people who think everything's about the the BruceZ fiasco then there's nowhere left for me to? Uh, OK. May...be?

Well, with my broken english and being technically illiterate I never stood a chance.

So apparently Dvaut's krypotinte is gibberish. If you want to pwn him, just tell him that he believes people who think everything's about the the BruceZ fiasco and that there's nowhere left for me to.

I generally agree that people should have thick skin if they are going to discuss politics on the internet. I'm not sure why Clovis cares what Fly thinks of him. Just put him on ignore if he pisses you off.

That said, I would note that "have thicker skin" and "get a sense of humor" is the inevitable response of the literate alt-right whenever anyone claims to be offended by their antics. I'm not sure what to make of that observation.

yeah except that it's clearly untrue that i'm one-sided but whatever, I wont pay you to risk your prejudice

Even here I preferred out brief chat about automation to all this nonsense but somehow the nonsense always seems more popular. I'm sure I'm as guilty of that along with everybody else. It's a bit like the attraction of fast food.

I don't want you to think I ignored this, and I should have had amusing comeback an hour ago, but I can't quite get there. At least I know I touched a nerve wrt to your terrible reads. For a second there I thought you were just letting that **** roll off your back.

Of course. So then you have to apply some context and other information rather than again put on the poor man's Feral Child act and make some context free judgement: "the alt right meme machines frogs say mean racist things, FlyWf also says mean things, both are mean and done for entertainment, who can judge?"

So let's go through it:

The targets of Fly's ridicule are people who post stuff on the internet he disagrees with.

The targets of alt-right ridicule are blacks and women and Jews.

I'll leave it to you which observations to make from here. Yet again when you get there, consider that you compared humor where in racist frogs target blacks as the object of the joke whereas Fly targets chez and you really just tried to draw a moral equivalency. Which I think is sort of what I was saying about white privilege. You figured out the "cruelness is every where on the internet" then threw up your hands to figure out how to separate the targets of Breitbart and Fly's targets.

But when Trumpkins say "have thicker skin" they mean "accept our racism without complaint", when Dvaut says it on 2+2 I think he means that when one of us is wrong, or the butt of a joke, we should be capable of taking it on the chin with a little grace and a sense of humour.

Dvaut is exactly right . Most people on this forum/the internet are fine with insults or a certain level of discourse until it turns on them. There are certain people who then have a level of introspection, or others like chez who make an entire forum as a safe space. Clovis had a meltdown and that's too bad, But *shrug*

Also I'm gonna go all DEGENERATE PARTISAN LEFTIST again: but that as the targets of the cruelty, meanness and jokes tend to be collective and larger in scope and historically victim to all sorts of other ****ty behaviors like black people, or female journalists who cover male hobbies, or Jews -- that's plainly a good bit morally worse than when the victim of meanness is one anonymous white guy on the internet. And we are right to conclude that! We have all the information we need. We don't just say "welp, both are jokes, both seem a little uncivil, WHO CAN DECIDE? I give up?"

And then from there that the only reason white guys on the internet hyperventilate about Fly is because they are sheltered from the normal cruelness and petty insults the rest of the world is consistently exposed to. Most because they didn't even get to Rococo's point to even check if the internet is full of people trying to disgrace each other (it is), but even when they did, they sort of were completely ill-equipped to figure out what makes Pepe and FlyWf different.

I don't really mind if personal attacks are allowed or not. I'm happy to trade insults with the best of them if it's allowed.

All with grace and humour of course.

I really was going to leave this alone but the responses to my post have been so awful as to confirm my worst suspicion of this forum.

I have been constantly mocked for months for tone policing the thread but somehow magically now "I only care when turned on me" and "I haven't cared when others have been mocked". Not sure how both of these are true but I guess, like the alt-right, we no longer give a **** about truth.

It is laughable and a pathetic sign of an inability to be self-reflective to pretend I "had a meltdown" or that I cant take Flys posts. I have been a regular poster here for years for ****s sake! As pointed out it was not just FLY.

Dvaut your position that there is a lot of hate and bad discourse in the world so we should all just add to it is appalling. I simply wont accept that there is no room for nuanced discourse and we should all just accept that because minorities are treated poorly we should all treat each other poorly too or that as a white person I should be happy to add to the base level of discourse because other people suffer from it too???? I guess that's your thesis?

It's clear now most of you honestly think the left is going to win by out-awfulling the right. I hope it works. I really doubt it, but I hope so since it appears to be the prevailing view.

P.S. Oroku your contention that I was arguing Palin is not racist is impressively disingenuous and the perfect symptom of my larger point.

I believe we call that a straw man.

If nuanced discourse means we should be giving Palin the benefit of the doubt you really do need to find another politics forum. One more befitting of your fair and balanced outlook.

I don't think Fly criticizing you is either hate or necessarily bad discourse and that what you were subjected to (a measure of disrespect and ridicule) -- plenty of people are able to let that roll off their back without making a spectacle of themselves.

My thesis is:

- Fly's rhetoric is unexceptional
- people who are subject to ridicule and debasement can figure out how to deal with it in a myriad of ways without melting down about it; and white guys melting down over it is suggestive of a subjective cultural norm violation far more than an objective rule of civility being broken
- to Rocco's point, I muster far more sympathy for the victims of crude behavior when they are likely to have been victims to all sorts of other ****ty behavior both on and off the internet, systemic or isolated, and I find the practice of heaping it far more contemptible if the purveyors are targeting the weak. If you want to reclaim some dignity, it's that I assume you are otherwise living well off of 2p2, and you likely enjoy some levels of comfort and the glories of being a white person. That is, my default assumption is that almost every single one of us is a middle class or above, probably white person with a passion for a gambling game or with tons of free time to fritter away on the internet arguing and so I have very, very little pity for the victims of rudeness here, nor do I find the practice some great villainy whereas I might be quite alarmed or distressed by similar behavior in completely different contexts which don't or very rarely apply here. PM me if you are in fact a gambling addict, facing extreme economic privation, mental illness, or some other hardship beyond being talked down to and maybe I'll reassess.

If my default assumption about you is close enough to the mark and the only real complaint here is that Fly shamed you then, no, I don't care about your trivial plight.

This is the saddest part of this whole thing. If you were trying to engage in real debate, even a little, rather than find another time to call someone you hate a racist, it would be clear (as I explicitly stated ffs) that my point had NOTHING to do with Palin. I hate Palin.

It was that, I clearly an obviously mistakenly thought, we are suppose to be the side of reason and evidence and arguing she was obviously trying to signal an allegiance with white supremacist was laughable. She is obviously a racist, so how about we wait for the inevitable time she does something obviously racist to call her out?

My point was about OUR behaviour and not Palin. But please go on thinking I am some kind of GOP stooge or wallflower or I can't take FLY because I think we can "go high when they go low".

And I'm pretty sure Dvaut and others have already laid out for you the plethora of evidence and context needed to reach our conclusion. You can lead a horse to water...

Anyway man, all the best with meltdown. I gotta go workout, it's deadlift day! I love deadlift day.

I'd be curious how your thesis squares with the fact that I have been mocked repeatedly for tone policing the form when the debate had nothing to do with me?

Is it just this time I cant take the breaking of a cultural norm?

It's not possible that I think raising the level of debate is a positive goal? Only that my white privelage was hurt and I'm a wallflower?

I want to be crystal clear about this. Is your position that Palin purposely tweeted the 14 words because she was making a conscious and concerted effort to signal her support for the content of the phrase and the people who regularly use it?

It's like a Trumps' Royal Family. Who had the keys to the black box?

It's not that bad really. Bees are different though. You definitely don't wanna get on their bad side.

If you can honestly post this then there are only two possibilities; I am either horrific at explaining my position or you are not reading my posts.

But bees die when they sting you, so it's kind of fair enough, you can respect that you must have done something to warrant it. Wasps are like letterman JDs playing mailbox baseball OTOH.