Posted on 04/01/2005 4:26:00 PM PST by Poohbah
First, this is NOT an April Fool's joke.
I am leaving Free Republic.
Over the past two years, civility and thoughtful discourse has vanished from this site, replaced with demands for ideological conformity that are straight out of Stalinist Russia or China's Great Cultural Revolution, and unrelenting uncivility if said conformance is not forthcoming. This trend began with the California recall election, where certain posters were allowed to flame the living beejezus out of those who didn't wholeheartedly support Tom McClintock, or thought that he wasn't running a campaign capable of winning. It extended into the Keyes campaign last year, where any critique of Keyes' campaign strategy was shrilly flamed, despite the obviously flawed execution of his campaign.
(Aside: one person who flamed me during the Keyes mess later said that he hadn't intended to start a fight with his remarks that accused me of homosexuality, pedophilia, and other evils; I was instantly reminded of the time I had to bail one of my Marines out of the local lockup. "Honest, Sarge," this Marine told me, "I didn't mean to start a fight when I called that Army Ranger a faggot." My response was not [and still isn't] suitable for public consumption.)
Since then, the Terri Schiavo case has pushed FR over the edge. We had posts calling for people to ensure that "accidents" to befall Schiavo and Judge Greer. We had posts praying that Iran would soon develop nuclear weapons, so that they could destroy the United States. And until the FBI started making arrests, those posts were allowed to stay up, completely abnegating Free Republic's standards.
We had people on both sides of the issue point out that the Schindlers were associating with some people of extremely low character, and that our uncritical embrace of these parties would not rebound to our favor. Rather reasonable attitudes to take, actually; but the loudest of the loud were in no mood to think.
My personal favorite was the following exchange:
The issue is not legality, but public opinion. Which will not be helped in this case if the pro-Terry side becomes associated in the media with Christian Identity, white supremicists, neo-nazis, racists and/or anti-semites.
Diva Betsy Ross made a valiant attempt to...ahem...whitewash Christian Identity, but it didn't work.
To top things off, we had people embracing as some sort of conservative icon, to the extent of posting a fundraising link.
I always thought that conservatism valued thinking over feeling, careful contemplation of facts over wild-eyed repetition of every damn rumor to come down the pipe, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. For a while, Free Republic met those criteria in spades.
Those days are long gone, and I have serious doubt as to whether or not they're coming back.
I know that many of the usual suspects will cheer this on, as their longtime nemesis is leaving them the field.
Be careful what you wish for; you are in the process of getting it. You may succeed in driving the folks who disagree with you from the site; but you will end up being just another collection of shrill voices in Bedlam. When everything is an over-the-top scream, no one will be heard.
Farewell.
No, it needed to be said. That's why I grinned.
What gets me is trying to read what seems to be on the surface an interesting thread only to find pages and pages of single one liners. Useless banter, most of it, with little or no comment about the subject.
A gal at work sent me a few good ones...
10. Generally speaking, you aren't learning much when your lips are moving.
15. If you tell the truth, you don't have to remember anything.
18. Good judgment comes from bad experience, and a lot of that comes from bad judgment.
20. A closed mouth gathers no foot.
22. There are two theories to arguing with women. Neither one works.
24. Never miss a good chance to shut up.
It was a rough period, but that happens once in awhile. I got sick of the Nazi pictures every 5 seconds myself, that that as a rabid Terri supporter and hater of MRS.
Guess what.....in a month, nobody will even remember this episode.
That is why I think people who leave over this are taking an ONLINE DISCUSSION FORUM way, way too seriously. It is the nature of the beast for occasional massive drag-out fights, even on "better" forums.
Slowly but surely, things settle down.
LOL, ain't that the damned truth.
Anytime! (for someone with kitty in their name)
Click on the link below if you want to see a good reason to stick around FR.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1375857/posts?page=1
Great point. And, thanks for the reality check.
You can kiss my unadulterated moderate-republican arse.
I haven't left -- you still have to put up with me! :) I am just tired of all the vanities that were allowed to stand and the venom from posters that are new and their calling for anarchy. The old timers I am used to -- different type of poster -- irritating but at the end of the day I am not mad at them because I can hold my own! The Nazi references were uncalled for and should be beneath this site.
Think it was allowed to go too far and the mods had a horrible time trying to keep up. Even wrote them and told them they were doing a good job which they were under the circumstances. If the vanities had stopped it would have helped a lot but they are still going on this evening.
"Some other time sweetheart."-DCPatriot
It's not my fault you lost your nerve.
Five months of snow
Two days of Spring
The snow is gone
The Opuses sp? bloom
April Fool's Day may be fun for many, but I am sure that I am not alone in having tragedy associated with this day.
You do not want to know more.
Guaranteed.
Then please hurry, so us nutty extremists can run out the next normal, oh-so-reasonable poster.
I got ripped when I posted a comment saying the comments comparing her to Christ were out of line.
Oh, and then at the end of last week when I said enough, it was time to just let her go instead of putting her through the suffering of recovery....because that close to death, that is what it would have been....and then have some judge rule her off the feeding tube again next week. It just seemed to me that time was up and she needed to be allowed to go even though I agreed with folks that MRS was a piece of crap. But boy, when I said it was time to let her go, the hounds released.
You'll be missed brother. A voice of reason has surely been lost with your departure. Take care my friend.
The anti-FREEPERS weren't "anti" when they were here and the ones who weren't banned, post here AND on LP and the other anti-FR sites still.
Not a single person on the WPPFF posts ONLY to that thread and they haven't absented themselves from the rest of FR at all.
You will not that the proprietor's "Facts don't matter" has a certain meaning, when taken in context. What Jim said was, "It was wrong to kill her. No other 'facts' matter." The general thrust of the thread is whether or not PVS is justification for terminating a human life.
How is this for ironic?
The pro-euthanasia freepers are committing freepicide en masse.
Weird. It's like Heaven's Gate.
Its comments like that, combined with certain posters' teflon coating, and alternatively the wholesale banning of those teflon coated posters' "enemies," that leads to the very types of misperceptions I noted in my post, and further doubt when a Mod protesteth otherwise.
If anyone else posted threats and insults on a thread like Sinkspur just did, they would be permanently banned.
So lotsa folks, erroneously, think there might be a double standard when it comes to certain teflon coated posters, that's all.
Of course, that's just my opinion. YMMV.
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