[Things have gotten so bad that my original posting of this message was turned into a flame and had to be moved to Flame.

The first attempt began with a disclaimer that this was merely my own personal opinion. It is now my official position as moderator of the HabitableZone.]

A little ways down the page Mark Eby made this suggestion for the Current Events board:

Out of respect for all the poor people suffering along the gulf coast can we stop the bickering here for a week and focus primarily on news regarding this disaster?

Let's move discussions about Iraq to flame for the next week as that's pretty much the permanent state on that issue and move minor news items to off-topic.

Regards,
Mark

I agree with Mark's sentiment, though I don't think we can go to the extreme of banishing other content from the board for the duration. But certainly we can try to avoid partisan bickering.

I just participated in an eruption of partisanship around the disaster. I tried to keep my response to a partisan post low-key, but I'm too realistic to expect that keeping the lid on partisanship will be that easy.

All it takes is one partisan post to take us down the path of partisan bickering. It continues inevitably once started for the simple reason that people want to get the last word, and not let the other guy seem to win by being the last to speak. We have to tone down the partisanship at the source, and not let it take hold by not starting it at all.

Let's not lose sight of the fact that this is a horrible disaster that has devastated real people. Let's not forget that one of our own was hit by the hurricane and is now huddled at home in Alabama with his family to wait it out. If you haven't seen the post on Community relating my phone call with FrankC, you might want to take a look. And ask yourself how Frank would feel to read that his online family is squabbling over abstractions of politics while he and his blood family are dealing with a bleak reality.

We can do better.