Tuesday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday was titled, "Speaker of the House Vote Thread" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. For those who avoid news about politics in the way that I avoid news of the British Royal Family, yesterday Republicans were supposed to elect a new Speaker of the House. California Republican Representative Kevin McCarthy had not only measured the drapes, he had already moved into the Speaker's office. But, to paraphrase ESPN host Chris Berman, that's why they have a vote. Not only did McCarthy fail to get elected speaker, on three consecutive votes Democratic Representative Hakeem Jeffries actually came out ahead in the vote count. But, since no candidate received a majority of those voting, no one was elected. The failure to elect a speaker stalled all other work by the House — Members could not even be sworn in — so the US does not currently have a functional House of Representatives. The DCUM thread documented the play-by-play on the Hill as it happened, intermixed with commentary and opinion. While the intrigue surrounding the voting may have had something in common with "The Game of Thrones", it lacked the drama of a George R. R. Martin novel. A dragon or two would have gone a long way to spice things up.

The second most active thread was posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum. Titled, "I made a huge mistake. Never should have Married DH. Now what?", the original poster is upset that her husband always prioritizes his family siblings and parents over her and always blames her for any problems in their relationship with his family. She says she doesn't know what to do. Of course the standard advice in the DCUM relationship forum is to get a divorce and that is what is suggested in several of the first replies. Some posters asked for more information about the original poster's husband in order to better understand the sitation and other posters accused the original poster of being overly dramatic. While the original poster provided examples of her husband's behavior, not all of those reading found what was described to be very bad. Others, though, did agree with the original poster that the husband should take her side more firmly in disputes with his siblings and parents. Some of those responding didn't think any of the parties came off looking particularly good. I'm not sure that the original poster will be better off as a result of this thread and may, in fact, feel a whole lot worse.

Another thread involving in-laws titled, "Who should help take care of MIL? A very complicated family dynamic." and posted in the "Family Relationships" forum was the third most active thread yesterday. I don't mean to be unsympathetic to this poster, but I took one look at the original post and, uh, no. The post is extremely long, broken in to parts (all with their own titles), and what appears to be detailed descriptions of the original poster's mother-in-law, father-in-law, and at least two sisters-in-law. I simply don't have the wherewithal to work my way through the post. Hats off to those who did and maybe they can tell us what the thread is about. But, I'm sorry, I am going to have to take a pass on this one.

The final thread is one I strongly considered skipping as well. Titled, "Gen Z has been warped by social media and victimhood culture: Jonathan haidt" and posted in the "Off-Topic" forum, the original poster links to an article in the Wall Street Journal discussing social psychologist Jonathan Haidt's argument that, "Warped by social media and a victimhood culture, today’s young people will imperil American culture and capitalism". Where to begin? As readers of this blog will be well aware, I hate generational labels. I can't read the article because it is behind a paywall, but I can read enough to see that Haidt claims, "We have a whole generation that’s doing terribly". Who would bother reading beyond this point even if they could? Why would anyone take this guy seriously? What purpose could a DCUM thread serve other than to lampbast Haidt as the crazy man yelling at clouds that he apparently is? Sadly, many in the thread actually agree with him. But, thankfully, many do take a point of view similar to my own. I'm not going to spend time reading this thread beyond the few posts I skimmed over, but I see much of it is devoted to arguing about social media. I can say with some certainty that minds of all ages have been warped by social media. For every Gen-Z aged person who is obsessed with TikTok, there is a boomer sitting at home learning from Facebook that Bill Gates is implanting 5G microchips via the Covid vaccine. Haidt himself is an active Twitter user. Take one look at who he follows and you will get an idea of how his own thinking has likely been warped.