Posted on 02/12/2016 10:04:27 PM PST by Optimist
Over the past several months, Free Republic has begun to show an ugly side of its members. Although admittedly comprised of many strong-willed, opinion-charged individuals presenting thoughtful, conservative insights into the topics of the day, this forum has begun to show a seamier side as the Trump-Cruz-Rubio-Carson 2016 Primary heated up. You all know what I mean. Many of you have either been at the giving or receiving end of EMOTIONALLY-charged attacks against various candidates or even individuals as their supporters.
Herewith a few thoughts I would like to share:
Well, this is what happens when one (Ok, I) become frustrated with the ad-hominem attacks against so many good people both on this site, and otherwise supportive of conservatism and the rise of a conservative Republican Party. We are all decent, America-loving conservatives who are driven to strive for what is best for returning this country to its pride.
Please Freepers, make your best case, and trust that whoever eventually runs against the Demobeast will, with God's light, be the right person for the job.
Let the flame-war begin, I have donned my suit! And God bless.
I would LOVE to see a report on the average age of Freepers.
Surely we are not comprised of just grumpy old men.
;)
I agree with you though, things aren't that wild here, now. Other primaries and even some other issues (Schiavo, Miers) created more animosity than this primary.
Unfortunately, there is an incredible amount of the latter. Those sweeping generalizations, those howled innuendos and half truths are circling the globe and it is grossly irresponsible to post such without vetting it instead of blindly accepting it and repeating it as gospel because it slams 'the other guy'.
I have no qualms about calling someone on that crap, especially when a couple of links away (original article, their source link)there is all the information they needed to see the sweeping allegations were either unsubstantiated or out of context, or both.
While I admit I am more likely to call someone on that when it is aimed at my candidate of choice (so far), it just isn't right. It demeans this forum, and even worse, it hampers the process of figuring out who is most likely to stick to what they have said they will do when elected.
We have seen plenty of those who get elected and forget every Conservative notion they ever had as soon as the acceptance speech starts.
I seriously doubt this nation will be straightened out in my remaining lifetime, but would like to go to my Creator having done my minuscule bit to sort things out and head this country back in the right direction.
That is one heck of a lot harder to do when the signal to noise ratio around here is getting ridiculously low.
Like your suit can i have one. great post. i would like to create an auto bot that would highlight every logical fallacy uttered on this site and every other site. the joy we have here is to take all of this and continually learn. how to listen, react and articulate our opinions. vitriol, nasty, invective are part of free speech. it’s also why we have the application of redemption, grace, truth, love, i think you can’t have one side of stuff (hate etc) without the other. we choose the other.
“But, yeah, it gets pretty disheartening to see the ad hominem attacks, piling on, bumper sticker slogans, vulgarity, vitriol, and immaturity when we should be arguing the facts and the policies.”
I think we have more active DU trolls than usual. You can tell by their posts they came here to trash the place. You could find almost the same posts over at DU.
>> [liberal] material ... is now being summarily accepted as gospel
Yeah, that’s annoying.
Actually, there is one thing about this campaign that I am very concerned for . . .
Several of the candidates are getting WAY too close and touchy feely with the public, dangerously so.
So in that aspect, with these tensions guing on, I feel like it is 1968 again. There are nuts out there of different shades of the moon minds, look at some of those end of the world Glenn Becker bots for example. Or some Sirhan Sirhan Palestinian, or an Islamic nut job, or a Feel the Burn commie, or some fan of Kim Jong Un who thinks the Great Leader was insulted, or some religious fanatic saying Jesus told me to, some Black Lies Matter POS loser on drugs and Dem debate talking points, Nation of Islam or someone from that Church Obama use to go to thinking it is time for the chickens to come home to roost, God forbid, pop pop pop pop bang.
It was a Jeb supporter who called me a four letter word name.
All I ever remember saying about Jeb is something like,’Jealous much, Jebby?’. I can’t stand the man and never discuss him. He hasn’t a chance, anyway.
I don’t know how long that filthy name he called me was up on the forum for all to see.
To my dismay, the moderators didn’t even bother to delete it.
I had to report it as ‘abuse’.
Maybe it’s as the original poster said, ‘some moderators just give some the thumbs down’.
Sometimes those charges are true. FR represents a diverse range of ability and fundamental honesty. It would be a mistake to insist on PC vs. each other on this forum.
I do agree that one can respectfully point out difference of opinion, but at some point, when sides become entrenched, discussion itself becomes pointless. Opposing sides have not exhausted their energy, so out comes crap.
Excellent post
These things gotta happen every five years or so, ten years. Helps to get rid of the bad blood. Been ten years since the last one.
That’s a big part of why I’m more annoyed than usual. After all the moaning over the years that we could win if we’d just nominate someone committed to conservatism instead of nominating a McCain or a Romney, what is happening? We’re on the road to nominating someone who will probably turn out to be worse than either of them.
I was a Duncan Hunter supporter in 2008. He had already dropped out by February 2008. At least my candidate is making a better run at it this time. I’m on a knife’s edge on whether I’ll be able to bring myself to vote for Trump in the general election. If I do it will be the hardest vote I’ve ever cast.
People are idiots.
Normally disagreements on FR about candidate choice are merely tactical, but not this time.
I think the main cause of nastiness on FR this campaign season is that the selection of GOP candidates, rather than presenting the usual contrast between RINO (to be universally vilified by FReepers at least until the “lesser of two evils” stage at the general rolls around) and one or more conservative/American-nationalist candidates, has introduced a polarity between American-nationalist sentiment (leaning to Trump) and conservative sentiment (leaning to Cruz) (conservative in the American sense that in Australia is still called “liberal” because it values free markets and limited government, and even on FR is sometimes called “classical liberalism” when the poster wants to remind other that the American usage of “liberal” is based on a leftist propaganda coup, rather than reality).
Full disclosure: I’m a Cruz supporter, though only half-heartedly for a number of reasons that don’t bear on the topic of this thread.
Darling, have you seen my meds?
In my opinion, that War began right here at Free Republic in 2005-2006, when we almost single handedly destroyed the Bush-McCain Amnesty and stopped the Harriet Miers Supreme Court nomination.
There are a handful of FReepers calling Trump a “pedophile”, “adulterer,” “pathological liar” and constantly setting up threads to fight battles we’ve fought over and over and over again on FR, and who, of course, also post the constant bile from places like Red State.
If the Mods shut down such threads and warned individuals, things would calm down. The problem really could be resolved by simply targeting a few of the most problematic posters, which the Mods could simply pick out by going to that anti-FR website where most of them are wailing at this moment!
I think if we Trump supporters would judiciously use the report abuse when the anti-Trump people descend into slander instead of challenging Trump on policy, it might improve. I think the mods have a, “stand back and let the debate flow” attitude, and in many cases won’t act unless someone complains.
Great post!
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