People would flame.
And the mods would holler.
Now . . . it really feels like the mob has taken over.
It really ain't all that different from 1999.
The year before the primaries is full-contact season.
Think back. In 1999 there were no mods.
Jim didn't have the mods till some 3 years later, if memory serves.
J
I’ll probably say this several more times, but I’ll start here. When I say “you” here, it is the generic “you” for everybody who cares, not “you” specifically Dominic Harr.
There is an inflated sense of importance surrounding this thread, in my opinion, as well as to being “banned” from this site.
This thread is just a discussion, like any other. People get overheated because they want to, and while i think it’s unproductive anybody who doesn’t like the vitriol in this thread could go to any of hundreds of other threads.
People who stay here to get abused are doing so out of choice. (here I mean this thread, not this site).
Being banned from this site isn’t like being shot dead at Virginia Tech, or being killed in Iraq, or being divorced by your spouse, or getting cancer. It’s just a place to talk about stuff, and if you are stupid enough to not be able to figure out how not to get banned, you just have to find one of another millions of places you can talk to people.
Or, you could analyse your history, figure out where you went wrong, civilly grovel to the owner, and get yourself re-instated, if being here is so important.
And when someone posts to you with some comment that seems offensive or attacking, you can choose to ignore it, or respond to it, but you can remember that your self-worth is yours, that the guy on the other end is just some schmuck sitting in his underwear typing on his laptop while watching CSI Miami. We are all just people communicating, and it’s a shame after many of us have spent 40 years or more on this planet that we are so bad at it.
So when I see an overwrought “I’ve been here since the beginning, and we all had long-time friends and now they are GONE”, I have to now think to myself — where did they go? When JR bans someone, does their existance get swept into thier bit-bucket? No.
Weep not for people who you could e-mail to any time you please, who you can converse with on any forum in the world EXCEPT this one, and who are no more “gone” than you or I. Weep instead for your friends who are REALLY dead, REALLY gone.
JR’s right. The damage to this nation if conservatives abandon the cause could be drastic, could change the course of history forever.
But banning some freeper who stands in the way of that possibility? That’s really NOTHING. A speck in the sea of trouble. Call your friends on the phone, buy a plane ticket and go visit them if you miss them. Get an account on WideAwake, it’s easy and they are all over there.
I hate driving 55 mph on the highway, and I often don’t. But if a cop pulls me over, I pay the ticket because that’s the rules and I understand how to follow them and they aren’t going to kill me. And if I’ve got 10 points already, I don’t scream past the cop at 90 mph and then curse him for attempting to pull me over and then call him names and question his judgment for ticketing me. Then I can’t drive anymore.
But here you are just kicked off the web site. Still, you can follow rules, they are simple.
Nobody is getting banned just for liking Rudy, or just posting pro-rudy stuff, or even arguing FOR Rudy. But JR would be within his rights to do so. Maybe there is a “double standard”, but there has always been. Conservatives get a lot more leeway here to bend the rules than liberals. We zot a liberal troll in 5 minutes, but even a newbie with a vanity first post can survive if it seems clear they have a sound conservative thought.