My first impression when I read your post, Frank, was a powerful sense of deja vu. Perhaps I should say "mirror-image" deja vu. Several months back I posted a message in Community about the declining civility here, and how it mirrored the polarization and bitterness in the outside world. At the time I perceived it as "Rightists Gone Wild". Back then, it seemed as if things were all going your way, and you (collectively) seemed to let it go to your heads...got a little too big for your britches, so to speak.
What goes around comes around, and the karmic books do eventually balance. Are you really surprised that people who were being metaphorically shoved off the sidewalks by gangs of swaggering conservatives are now taking the opportunity to shove back?
I'm afraid I don't have much sympathy, and I'm restraining the impulse to gloat. I'd rather see if we can make this a positive lesson. Back when I wrote my essay about civility, I could only pose a hypothetical warning about consequences, about tit-for-tat, and retribution. I didn't get anywhere at the time, but maybe now that it's being painfully demonstrated, we can all finally get the point. If we can't resist the impulse to slap somebody around just because we can, then we'll suffer consequences, if not right away, perhaps many months later. Collectively we suffer because the community we have here is hurt by this behavior.
My thesis months ago was that we're all being manipulated by politicians to feel partisan hatred; that the HabitableZone was merely a reflection of conditions in the outside world. Watching the campaign unfold and discussion here perfectly mirror the campaign rhetoric, I believe that even more strongly. Let's stop being pawns for politicians, and try to bring some of the objectivity and skepticism we value over on Space Sciences to bear on the political discussions in Current Events and Offtopic. Can we stop being suckers? Will we let scumbag politicians destroy the HabitableZone?
It could go either way. Zoners possess free will.
deja vu
The whole thread (56 posts)
- Okay Tony
- the concept of change is always perceived as a threat to conservatives.....
- re: Okay Frank, seriously
- No, Frank, you are simply of the LEFT BEHIND
- Hmmm??
- How to respond, how to respond
- deja vu
- What goes around, comes around.......
- re: Okay Tony
- I'm going to answer you even though I know you no longer have much regard for my opinion.
- The end of an era or the L end of the cycle....