Monday's Most Active Threads

The most active thread yesterday, by a good measure, was titled, "3 children dead in private Christian elementary school shooting in TN" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The thread is obviously about the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville, TN that left three young students and three adults dead. In addition, the shooter was killed by police. In the few months that I've been writing these blog posts, I've summarized multiple threads about mass shootings. I've noticed increasing cynicism in how posters respond, with this thread going in that direction from the very first post in which the original poster, tongue-in-check, suggested the cause of the shooting was that the Christian school had "had too many doors and too little God". The original poster then went on to offer nothing beyond "Thoughts and prayers". Clearly, the original poster is satirizing pro-gun politicians such as US Senator Ted Cruz who responded to a school shooting in his state of Texas by suggesting that schools should only have one door. I understand the inclination but I also believe that the killing of innocent people, especially children, should be addressed with a more serious tone. When children are laying dead on a classroom floor, humor probably should be avoided. If there is another thing that I wish posters would learn, it is to wait for the details of such events. In this case, posters almost immediately started making jokes about a drag queen or a trans person committing the shooting, as if such a thing were unthinkable. When the shooter subsequently turned out to be a trans man, those jokes lost much of their luster. Mass shootings are always politicized now and this one had immediate political dimensions. Some posters wondered if it was a hate crime targeting Christians. Others, morbidly and inappropriately, were pleased that what they believed to be conservatives had been targeted. When information spread that the shooter was a woman, posters discussed that unusual development given that almost all mass shooters are male. When Nashville's police chief repeatedly used female pronouns to describe the shooter who he also said was transgender, several posters interpreted that to mean that shooter has been assigned male at birth and transitioned to female. That provoked some posters to declare that the shooter really was a man. It turned out that the police chief was actually misgendering the shooter who had been assigned female at birth but identified as male. The reaction among some posters to the news that the shooter was transgender can only be described as just short of orgasmic. What had looked to be another wave of calls for gun control could now be refocused on the current conservative pet issue of anti-trans activity. Very little is known about the shooter's gender identity such as how far down that path the individual had progressed, what, if any, type of care had been provided, or even how long the shooter had identified as trans. I would advise everyone to slow down a bit and try not to get ahead of the facts.

The next most active thread was originally posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum, but when I saw it for the first time just now I moved it to the "Family Relationships" forum. Titled, "For those of you whose parents divorced when you were 20+, if one of your parents started a second", the original poster has engaged in the strange practice of starting a sentence in the title of a thread and continuing in the body of the post. The ending of the sentence is "family, what was that like?" If you piece that together, the original poster wants to know what it was like if your parents divorced after you turned twenty and one of them started a second family. Somehow this thread managed to produce 19 pages of posts which on any other day would be extraordinary. But, given the 43 pages of the shooting thread, it is a distant second today. Even a distant second is too long for me to read and I have read precisely three posts from the thread. That is enough for me to see that a poster who married someone who had divorced with children in their 20s managed to terribly upset other posters who consider her to be an "evil step mother". My experience with DCUM threads is that no supportive thread would ever reach even half this number of pages, so I can only assume that this thread is full of rancor and disputes similar to the evil step mother example.

The third most active thread yesterday was titled, "Is it typical for elementary to group all IEP kids together in the same class" and posted in the "Kids With Special Needs and Disabilities" forum. I saw this thread for the first time just now and I felt a sense of dread because, as I just wrote above, no supportive thread would reach this number of pages. That suggests that this thread is probably not supportive which is not a good thing in the special needs forum. The original poster's child does not have an "Individualized Educational Plan" (IEP) but is scheduled for an evaluation which may lead to one. The original poster has heard that their local elementary school segregates all students with IEPs into a single class. That is a model that the original poster does not think will work with her child. Several posters responded to say that students with IEPs are often put together in the same class, but that students without IEPs are also included. The reason for this is so that a limited number of special education teachers are available for all the students with IEPs. At least one poster said that she prefers this model which works well for her child. I skimmed this thread and it may not have turned as acrimonious as its length suggested, but there do appear to be a number of heated debates going on. There are differences of opinion about the placement of students with special needs, what suits them best, what is best for others, and what satisfies the applicable laws. There are plenty of examples from various schools provided with complaints and praise for them. It seems that the original poster's exact question was not easily understood as I keep seeing it being reiterated and I'm not sure that it was ever answered adequately.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Off-Topic" forum. Titled "Why so much anger towards people on welfare?", the original poster describes being in line at Target when the cashier loudly told another customer that her register did not accept "welfare money". She says that this is not the first time cashiers have tried to embarrass people. Several posters agreed that those of humble means are often encouraged to look down on those of even lesser means. As such, the cashier likely felt better about herself by mistreating someone she saw as beneath her. Alternatively, some posters suggested someone working to earn a living might understandably be frustrated by someone surviving on welfare. There was quite a bit of discussion of exactly who receives welfare with many posters arguing that it is mostly the working poor who simply can't earn enough from their jobs and, therefore, rely on food assistance. Again, I haven't read much of this thread, but I've read enough to see that many posters have a very misinformed understanding of who receives public assistance and why. More than one poster firmly believes that women are having baby after baby simply for the welfare benefits. This leads to at least one poster advocating that an IUD be mandatory for receiving benefits. One poster sarcastically agrees and goes further to argue that IUDs or vasectomies should be required in exchange for tax breaks, juxtaposing the relatively meager welfare benefits with the billions of breaks offered to businesses and the wealthy. The fixation of some on babies and "welfare queens" is ironic given that former President Donald Trump has been promoting a "Baby Bonus" to encourage "a new baby boom". I would like to know the difference between Trump's financial incentives to have babies and welfare benefits that allegedly encourage the poor to have babies. Is there a difference? I suspect the difference is as clear as black and white.