Thursday's Most Active Threads

Yesterday's most active threads had a notable political slant to them. The most active thread of the day was titled, "The Fascist Part of the US strikes again in Tennessee" and posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. The thread focuses on a protest at the Tennessee state Capitol building in which students demanding that something be done about school shootings briefly took over the building. During the protest, three Democratic legislators took to the floor of the chamber to encourage and support the protesters. In response, Republican lawmakers who dominate the assembly proposed bills to expel the three Democrats. Subsequently, two of them — both young Black men — were expelled while the third — an older White woman — was not. This is likely to be a Pyrrhic victory at best for the Republicans because both the members will probably be back soon to fill the seats from which they were just expelled. Liberal posters in this thread see the expulsions as anti-democratic acts to squelch free speech and pointed out that the legislature rarely expelled anyone, not even admitted sex offenders. Conservative posters compared the protest to the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol and supported the expulsions as deserved for such behavior. A similar split occurred over the racial connotations of the expulsions with liberals pointing to the poor optics of expelling two Black legislator while excusing their White colleague. In response, conservatives contorted themselves to contrive differences in the behavior of the three who had acted in unison. A conservative poster insisted that Americans are tired of the race card being played and would be happy that the legislators were being punished for their "bad behavior". Without missing a beat, the same poster suggested that liberals would be gleeful if white men were being expelled. Given the implication that the real victims of racism are white men, I suspect this poster's complaint is not about "race" cards, but the wrong race card. The protests that led to the expulsions were in response to gun violence, specifically the recent school shooting in Nashville. Many posters compared the legislature's failure to take action in regard to school shootings to its determination to remove the legislators, saying that this clearly demonstrated Republican-dominated body's priorities. One poster pointed to a proposal by the Tennessee governor for armed guards in schools. I'm not sure this was as strong an argument as the poster believes as it simply highlights that the Republican response has been nothing more than a proposal that has not been acted upon. But, of course, the response now includes racially-charged expulsions.

The second most active thread yesterday was not explicitly political, but certainly had political connotations. Posted in the "Private/Independent Schools", it is titled, "Do you care if your DC has perspective about their privilege?". The original poster describes the privileged advantages provided to her children, but tells of coming from a humble background herself and encountering spoiled private school kids in college. She doesn't want her children to turn out like those so she asks how parents who care about such things help their children gain perspective. Many of the responses in this thread are such that it is impossible to tell whether they were meant to troll or are simply amazing displays of a lack of self-awareness. Either way, as the last post on the first page succinctly states, "This thread is so embarrassing." To their credit, most of the posters easily admit their privilege and are concerned that their children not turn out to be spoiled jerks. There are significant differences in what steps they are willing to take in this regard, however. One poster claims that travelling to areas with disadvantaged people is sufficient to make her children aware of their privilege and another thinks that simply living in DC is enough. Others describe more significant efforts and show that they have given the topic a lot of thought. One poster says that it is important to her that her children understand and acknowledge their privilege, but also concedes that her own choices don't demonstrate a true commitment to "breakdown barriers and lift up others". Another poster argues that reading books are a good way to understand the lives of others. In response a poster says that she has both read "How The Other Half Banks" and worked at McDonald's and thinks that it is "nonsense" to believe that you can learn more from a book than from interacting with people. This underlying conflict between posters wanting their children to understand their privilege and know about the lives of those less well off, while not actually wanting them to have actual experience with those less well seems to be a theme, if unspoken, of many of these posts. The are several posters who don't really care if their children understand their privilege or not, but do want them to have good value and respect for others. One posters says that he doesn't care whether his children understand their privilege because he worked hard for what he has and wants to provide it to his children so that they don't have to go through what he did. The last post in the thread as I write this goes even further saying, "Embrace your wealth!"

The third most active thread yesterday and the second from the "Political Discussion" forum was titled, "NC Democrat switches party giving GOP supermajority". The thread is about the party switch by a North Carolinian state legislator from the Democratic to the Republican party. The change provides Republicans with a supermajority that will allow them to override the governor's vetos. The move was very strange because the district the legislator represents is very Democratic and voted strongly in favor of President Joe Biden. She is also pro-choice and will now be expected to vote pro-life. The legislator claimed to have been bullied by Democrats recently and says that the Democratic Party has become unrecognizable to her, a justification eagerly embraced by conservative posters. Liberal posters are convinced there is something untoward behind the scenes involved. As one says, "Bribery or Blackmail— dealers choice". Many attribute the party change to criticism by Democrats resulting from a missed vote on a gun control measure. Conservatives argue that this is another indication of how extreme Democrats have become. As an aside, it is notable that when political events favor centrists or Republicans they are usually blamed on Democrats being too extreme or too progressive. For instance, the election of Eric Adams as the Mayor of New York City was largely portrayed as a rebuke of the left. But, when political events favor the left wing of the party, they are not viewed as rebukes to the right or center. For instance, the recent election of Brandon Johnson as Chicago's Mayor in which Johnson handily defeated a centrist candidate is not beng blamed on flaws in centrist policies. Rather, it is often portrayed as more evidence that the left is crazy. So, regardless of what actually happens, progressives are to at fault. At any rate, nobody ever changes parties and explains it by saying that the change was because they are a scheming, self-promoting, opportunist with no real values. It's always because their former party somehow changed and moved away from them. There is no reason to believe such explanations for even a second. Regardless, unless the Republicans engage in unprecedented and truly radical gerrymandering to protect the candidate, this will be her final term anyway. If they do engage in such a maneuver, Democracy in the state will be dead anyway so her party membership won't matter.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Tweens and Teens" forum and titled, "How to help teen who lost all their elem-mid school friends because of rumors and bullying, canceled". The original poster says that she is seeking advice on behalf of her teen who has been "cancelled" by the teen's friends who have apparently abandoned the youth. The original poster indicates that changing schools may be the only option. Several posters ask for details about what the child did that resulted in this reaction, others suggest changing schools, and others still offer advice about how to rectify the situaiton. While the original poster started the thread by asking for advice, in subsequent posts she mostly concentrated on attempting to inform others about the dangers of "cancel culture". In one post, she says her child's problems resulted from "having a Christian value set and experiencing blowback about that". This leads some posters to believe that the blowback may be warranted. Others don't care what provoked things, but sympathize with a teen losing their friends regardless of the specific cause. An exceedingly common argument these days is over whether having views that are widely seen as bigoted is something that should be tolerated. Those on the right often use such examples to show that those on the left down't support freedom of speech while those on the left proclaim that there is no need to be tolerant of intolerance. This debate gets repeated in this thread. The original poster followed up later to explain that her child is "ahead of the others in terms of intelligence and accomplishments" and that none of this will matter once they get to college, but in the meantime she wants to know how to help her child. Posters don't have a lot of advice other than changing schools. Several posters, including the original poster, blame social media for exasperating cancel culture and bullying and suggest limiting access to social media.