I don't think it was the OP that caused this thread to become somewhat heated at times.

When someone, for whatever reasons, starts to isolate a specific category of people, whether that category is ethnicity, skincolor, religion, sexual orientation, nationality, gender, or something else, and in whatever wording basically communicates:"these people are lesser beings", you can expect some kind of backlash.
It is from then on just merely a matter of waiting for when it will happen.

I would say that's almost something like a universal principle.

You cannot simply expect people to just sit and take it when being spoken to that way.

It isn't realy a serious infringement of anyone's freedom of expression to categorically dissallow such remarks. Legitimate grievances can in almost any case be worded in ways that don't stigmatise whole groups of people.

I'll try to dance around the subject of politics in 1. Then I'll say something which has bothered me occasionally... a lot, in 2.

1. "Not talking politics" is, rightfully, a common thing on forums now.
Yes, there are people from both political parties who want to divide us.
You can have whatever opinion you like as to who is most guilty of sowing division, that doesn’t matter.
I do have to admit to seeing "my side" do it too and, as Americans, we are pretty easy to divide.

Politics is important, and that's why things get weird. A lot of folks nowadays are wanting to put blinders on, but you do need to remember that these politics distribute billions of dollars worth of resources to millions of people. Politics passes laws (including drug laws) which control our behaviour.
The govt has guns and they have the legal right to shoot us if they decide to. Politics is an important thing, I'd say, in our lives.

But, remember that there are forces, both foreign and domestic, trying to divide us for their nefarious reasons. That’s the best reason to try to not fight.

2. Now, this one is me showing my liberal, left wing, bed wetter sympathizer, self. Bear with me, this is a sore spot for me.

A big thing with a certain politicians, has been to "own the libs". In the case of one certain politician, I think it's the main reason some still support him.

I know everyone has seen it, starting years ago…
"Fuck your feelings"
"Drinking liberal tears in my coffee"
Etc.


I spent one year working for minimum wage before I retired. Was in survival mode. I passed time on Facebook that year fighting bullies who wanted to "own the libs".

It was a free pastime, and it kept me informed preparing for my "debates”. I'm very rarely on Facebook now (as planned). It sucks. Zuckerberg also profits from conflict.

Anyway, It was pretty much one sided then. I saw very clearly who was being shitty at the time. The libs were still clutching their pearls and moaning, "Can't we all just get along".

Once the inevitable counter-hate began, though, I kept hearing about how us mean old liberals are biased against conservatives and pick on them so horribly.

Dudes, flat out, plain and simple, y'all started it, what did you think would happen?

Are we "snowflakes", or "assholes". I can’t get that straight. Think about it.

Here's the actual point of this rant.
I sometimes see a people throw their ultra-conservative views out there online and then, if there's a push back, complain that others are starting a political discussion and bring it all to a close.
Of course, yes, that does leave hard feelings for those who didn't get to rebutt.



This must be a difficult line to walk for the mods. Everything can be political.
As I've mentioned before, it destroyed a tobacco pipes forum I peruse. They are replacing with newer members now but lost quite a few during some heavy political arguing some years ago. People just walked away and did not look back, as people will.

Anyway, I'm gonna hit "post" here. But, I might stop back and delete this ramble.

No, it wasn’t. Although any time the subject of rampant gun violence in American life comes up, the room will be divided. Most will scratch their heads in horror and confusion, and others will double down on preposterous disinformation in order to justify the status quo.



I’ve been at this point for seven years now, and I’ve upset people aplenty. So be it. I do. not. care. I don’t play nice with gaslighting boobs, and I don’t have time for dumb dumbs.



Absolutely. But there are those who will always try and get cute in the name of culture war fun, and turn the tables with false equivalencies - the old racism switcheroo. It’s a very different thing to denigrate people on the basis of ethnicity, skin color, etc., than it is to say for instance that white male republicans are vastly responsible for our culture of gun violence. This isn’t bigotry, it’s a fact - and white male Christian Republicans are not now and have never been an oppressed group in this country. They hold all the cards, control all the resources, and engage in the politics of cruelty. Calling them out for accountability is not bigotry in any way.

There are more guns than people in this country. That is also a fact. And anyone who makes the argument that this is not problematic, and then tries to sell you on solutions which don’t include dramatically altering this statistic - they’re either not sane, or honest brokers, or decent human beings. They may be so dug in to their camp that they’ve lost the ability to reason, or they may just be so in love with the fight that it’s come to define every part of them.

Whatever the case, I owe nothing to anyone who traffics in lies and disinformation. I just don’t. And I don’t care if they’re deluded either and are genuinely convinced of their position. I owe them nothing, and I don’t pretend that their point of view is worthy of anything at all, just to try and maintain social civility; I don’t see the point in that. I don’t care if it’s here or elsewhere. I’m not going to pretend with anyone.

The culture wars have always been a bit of a clownshow. Not that i would want to offend any genuine clown out there, as clowns can be honorable people too.

Btw, your post is very long, brokedownpalace10.

Maybe to long.

Hmm this thread aint so bad, though did not have time to go through it all, theres some interesting perspectives. Feels like on one hand people are pissed, and do want to be angry and let it all out, and in the same time are way too tired to be pissed all the time and need a safe place to go where they don't want to be responsible. Like being angry brings the burden of responsibility with itself.

Pandoras reply was what I've been thinking about mostly. If violence would serve a somewhat evolutionary purpose - not in a sense that we are killing each other for fun, but in a sense that a species need to survive based on something, being really big, agressive, poisonous, hard to detect, fast, etc, could we track back somehow these behaviors to survival?

Is it even somewhat possbile to say that without men being aggressive and causing all kinds of horrible things, we would not have survived? I don't know, I kinda feel like maybe yes but do not have nearly enough knowledge and understanding to know...

It is hard for me to word my thoughts now but I would like to try anyways.

It's somewhere along the lines of, these things do damage in our world that is for sure, but peoples uncontrolled emotions that ignite through these conflicts are also damaging, and just because "men caused it and I am a woman" (and please do not take this personally, i bring it out because its the first excuse i got and im really tired) or "I am also a white male and we are not all responsible for school shootings" or whatnot now. These are excuses and the emotions behind them are still not controlled properly, in my honest opinion we should be using that anger if you will in a different more intellectial form to better the world and not put prejudices on one another.

Reading through this I would also comfort the people, the forum users, expressing these feelings, for they are clearly being damaged throughout their lives by these experiences in such a manner that it is hard for them to even control it - or again they want a safe place to rant/where they feel free to express it uncontrollably. We should really not look down on one another in these threads but try to understand each other and help us go through these troublesome experiences.

Especially in a community that experiences psychedelics this would be my understanding.

Sorry for all the rumbling

A teacher of mine once offered a helpful distinction in the value of anger: he said that anger could be helpful - but he denied that it could be skillful. This rung true for me. I think of anger as my guard dog. It is useful for providing much needed alerts. And that primitive nature’s intuitions might execute more helpful actions that you might conceptualize. But hunches and intuitions are not skill, helpful though they may be in lieu of skill.

This got me thinking, I appreciate that.

I'd like to contest a little about it. Surely there is great skill involved with anger. The skill is to focus anger into a more useful energy. As anger is so powerful it is one of our most useful emotions to refocus into eg; Resolve, physical strength, remorseless victory and so on.

I mean, it's very hard to refocus eg; tiredness or self pity into a useful survival energy. But anger can drive us like rocket engine.

So, last week, in the aftermath of the shooting, Tennessee Republican Congressman Tim Burchett said in various interviews that "we're not going to fix it". He said repeatedly that what is needed in the U.S. is a Christian revival "to change peoples' hearts", and when asked what more could be done to protect Tennessee school children, he said that his family home schools theirs.

https://news.yahoo.com/g...t-admits-170239923.html

A couple of days later, there was a massive walk out by Nashville high school students, and three Democratic lawmakers joined them in a peaceful afternoon march. One of the three (a young black man) has just been expelled from the state house of representatives by a Republican super majority (which, not for nuthin’ are almost all fat old white men who all look like Colonel Sanders) - which was achieved through gerrymandering, made possible by a corrupt and illegitimate Supreme Court. The second (a white woman) was spared from expulsion, despite the fact that she was targeted for doing the exact same thing. They are voting now on the third (also a young black man).

Who wants to bet on which way this vote goes?

Edit: Surprise! Also expelled. Who woulda thunk it???

https://www.nbcnews.com/...-gun-protests-rcna78531

I don't know that I could cite a better example of how we as a country are sliding into Autocracy. The Republican party circa 2023 is an autocratic death cult, and they have no interest whatsoever in participating in a democracy. These were democratically elected representatives (who just happen to be young black males) who have now been driven out of public office for exercising their First Amendment rights - along side high school children, in the aftermath of a mass shooting. I mean, what could be less American? What could possibly be more transparently racist?

Or consider the case of Wisconsin, which just two days ago held an election for the state supreme court. On the ballot was a liberal justice who ran on preserving abortion rights (a woman), and a conservative (an old, white, ruddy faced male) who ran on making abortion illegal. The liberal justice won in a landslide. Such was the will of the people.

However, Wisconsin also has a Republican super majority in their state senate (also achieved through gerrymandering by way of Supreme Court intervention), and yesterday they announced that they plan to impeach the new justice immediately.

https://www.salon.com/20...-newly-elected-liberal/

If all of this doesn't enrage you, I have to ask what would...

While I do not claim this for myself, there are other emotional responses that I consider more skillful, enduring, and politically efficient, and it is profoundly insulting to insinuate that solemn grief in the face of catastrophic delusion is in some way insensitive to these things in a way that anger is not. Shove it, Bill.

Told you I don’t claim it for myself.

Um... I have no idea what you're talking about.

“If all this doesn’t enrage you, I don’t know what will” implies that rage is in some way an indispensable sign of awareness. As I’ve seen said before, “if you’re not angry you’re not paying attention”. This is just not true. The opposite and equal fallacy is that anger is always and necessarily toxic. It isn’t.

Okay. That's the weirdest response I've ever seen, but whatever...

If rage is where you’re at - cool.

If rage is not where someone else is at, and that (to you) implies that they are necessarily less aware than you - not cool.

Honestly, I don't even know what you're on about, but you're coming off like a psycho. I didn't single you out for not showing appropriate anger. I don't know you, and I assure you, I don't EVER think about you in any manner whatsoever. But by all means, be just as apathetic as you like; I promise you that I really don't care a whole lot one way or another.

I'm just calling out some very real threats to democracy as we know it that are unfolding in real time - all of which have real consequences for scores of real human beings. If all of this doesn't faze you at all, by all means go back to your bong.

But back off of me with your unhinged weirdness. I've got no time or energy to indulge it.

There you go again.

To be clear, I do not think you have me, in particular, in mind. I am saying that I do not claim to be beyond anger personally, but that I find your insinuation that alternative emotions to anger are lesser or less aware responses to terrible things than angry responses, conceited.

Whatever, man. Your weirdly defensive ranting only serves to derail the conversation.

So, bug off. Pretty please. You're not adding anything other than nuttiness.

I don’t think I’m derailing, although you’d have to ask Void. I’m just pointing out that, just as he started this thread protesting anger-shaming; that there is an opposite extreme which is shaming people for not being angry. Which I think you are doing. In a pretty intense and demeaning way. Saying I’m apathetic. That I’m a pot head who should go back to his bong. Etc. Which is typical for you.

Clearly you are up in arms over some perceived personal sleight. You haven’t responded at all to any of the specific issues I posted about - stories that are unfolding RIGHT NOW with massive national implications.

I’m talking about an all out assault on democracy - which, again, IS OCCURRING RIGHT NOW - and you are whining in bizarre fashion about petty, imagined bullshit.

Just stop, please. You’re embarrassing yourself.

hey eros, I think that Bill Cipher is just a troll account that squeezes out the most boring and sterile status quo leftwing ideologies onto this forum. I'm not sure of the motivation of the account or why other admins are appeasing and abiding to it. the posts made by Bill Cipher should probably just be read as numbskull satire of what someone who can only achieve orgasm reading marx and engels would type out with their two index fingers onto a forum about psychedelics

just a guess here though

cheers!