Thursday's Most Active Threads

Yesterday the Gaza war thread continued as the most active. But, with a comparatively paltry 464 new posts — almost half of the previous day's — interest may be flagging. The next most active thread was, like the Gaza thread, posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Huge mass shooting incident in Lewiston, ME", the thread was created just after news broke about the mass shooting that took 18 lives in Lewiston, Maine. At first, the thread concentrated on reporting details of what had happened and who might have committed the atrocity. It is a sad reality that in the aftermath of these shootings a significant number of people are poised to spring into action if they can take political advantage from the identity of the shooter. In this case, multiple posters immediately blamed Hamas or Arabs. I removed those posts and I suspect many Arabs and Muslims gave a sigh of relief when the shooter turned out to be a White American with no connection to the Middle East. Once the shooter was identified and details of his background were provided, left-leaning posters began painting him as a MAGA right-winger though the evidence of this was rather thin and based on his meager social media history. Others focused on his clear mental health issues. Gun proponents have latched onto mental health as their primary means of deflection from demands for gun control, but in this case mental health is obviously an issue. Despite the professed interests in mental health always evidenced by gun proponents in the aftermath of mass shootings, they never really seem to do much about it. To the contrary, in 2017 Congressional Republicans passed a resolution, which was subsequently signed into law by former President Donald Trump, to make it easier for those with mental illnesses to purchase guns. As such, it is difficult to assume much sincerity on the gun proponents' part. Predictably, there was considerable discussion of gun control in the thread, but with what has become an equally predictable refrain that after Sandy Hook, posters know gun control is not possible. One poster noted another phenomenon that I've also seen, including in this thread. Whenever gun control is discussed, gun enthusiasts seize the opportunity to flaunt their knowledge of guns and to speak contemptuously of anyone not capable of field striping an AR-15 while blindfolded and correctly naming every component. For instance, if a gun control proponent argues that extended clips should be prohibited, they will likely be met with a response along the lines of "it's a magazine not a clip so your opinion is invalid". One notable development arising from this shooting is that moderate Democrat Jared Golden, who represents Lewiston and who had previously opposed banning assault rifles, changed his position and now supports a ban. Of course, gun proponents will argue that there is really no difference between an AR-15 and a Red Ryder BB gun so it is impossible to draft legislation for an effective ban.

Next was a thread posted in the "Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)" forum and titled, "Dr. Reid replacing school discipline with ‘restorative justice’?". The first thing that should be noted is that Fairfax County Public Schools already has restorative justice and, therefore, the title is misleading. The original poster included an excerpt from an update sent by FCPS superintendent Michelle Reid to FCPS parents. When I first read the original post, I half suspected that it was a troll meant only to rile up DCUM posters and I thought it was a fairly funny one at that. But, it turns out that it is completely legitimate. To be clear, it's not that I oppose anything Reid wrote — I'm actually a fan of the ideas espoused — but I knew what the reaction of forum posters would be. In the update, Reid announced a new program to assist with the administration of FCPS's Restorative Justice program which, among other things, would support "equity". Had Reid only included that CRT would officially become part of the FCPS curriculum and that "Gender Queer" was now assigned reading for all ages, the effect would have been complete. As it was, the responses were more or less as expected. "When can we fire Dr Reid", "Completely insane", and "Restorative justice Does. Not. Work.", came the first responses. I would align myself more with posters that argued that restorative justice can work well but only when there is proper training and understanding of how it works. As such, Reid's effort to provide trained experts to schools would seem to be in the right direction. I noticed that few of those responding seem to have a good understanding of restorative justice, including a poster who took it upon herself to explain it to others. Either intentionally or through ignorance, she left out one of the most important components which is "accountability". I don't know if many of the restorative justice opponents have experienced poor applications of it, or simply misunderstand the concept. But, misinformation is rife in the thread. The few proponents of restorative justice make valiant attempts to explain the concept better, but they are really fighting an uphill battle. Like most issues brought up in the FCPS forum these days, this thread also gets bogged down in posts about the upcoming elections with everyone from self-proclaimed liberal Democrats to obvious right-wing partisans claiming that they will vote for Republican candidates for the school board.

Third was a thread titled, "Help settle a debate about saying grace" and posted in the "Religion" forum. The original poster describes a debate between the poster and the poster's spouse about saying grace when in company of others who don't normally say grace. One of them believes that those who don't say grace should wait politely while the others say grace. The second believes that those who say grace should either avoid it or say it in their heads and not expect the others to delay their eating. The original poster actually posted this thread in the "Off-Topic" forum but I moved it to the "Religion" forum because it dealt with a religious topic. The original poster, who seems to have a good understanding of the dynamics of the religion forum, was not pleased. Her expectations for how things would go in that forum were subsequently proven correct. The religion forum is dominated by a few very religious Christians and a similar number of aggressive atheists. Both groups behave in ways that can stand considerable improvement and on any given day I am as likely to blame one group as the other for problems in the forum. There are, of course, a number of posters who don't fit completely into either of these groups, but they are largely invisible to me because of the high profiles of the others. In this thread, most of the early responses argued that the host sets the rules. So, in a home that says grace, guests should expect to wait while grace is said. But, if the host's family doesn't say grace, guests should not expect to be accommodated. Some argued the opposite, saying that it would be polite to guests to provide for them to say grace. Several posters are more than happy to wait for others to say grace even if they don't themselves, while others describe grace-saying friends who don't expect anyone to wait for them. As could be expected, the thread soon turned argumentative. If I remember correctly, the first punch was thrown by a religious poster. But, I deleted a series of posts when that dispute first started and now I can't remember exactly which post started it. But, the second dispute was clearly provoked by an atheist who feels that politely waiting quietly at a restaurant while a friend prays is a completely unreasonable expectation. After that, the thread spun completely out of control and, frankly, was no longer worth reading.

The final thread at which I'll look today was posted in the "Metropolitan DC Local Politics" forum. Titled, "Antisemitic harassment in DC", the original poster simply posted a link to a video that has gone viral of a confrontation between a woman whose X handle is "DCTrikeMom" and a man in a car who is blocking a bike lane. The original poster's only comment was that "The video is pretty disturbing". I really wish that posters would put a bit more effort into starting threads, especially those of this nature. Nevertheless, the video inspired considerable debate. In the video, DCTrikeMom is stopped in front of a car that is almost completely blocking the bike lane. They are arguing about whether he should move his car and he asks her if she is Jewish. She confirms that she is and he says that "you people are the devil". I would say that this is a clear cut case of anti-Semitism. But, to understand this thread you must understand that there are really two religions involved: Judaism and biking. Just as there are anti-Semites, there are posters who are religiously anti-bike. Both groups are happy to place blame on DCTrikeMom. For the anti-bike crowd, a man referring to Jews as the devil is really not the important aspect of the video. Rather, this is seen as a confrontation provoked by DCTrikeMom to produce content for social media. The guying turning out to be an anti-Semite is secondary and almost not even important. A poster writes, "This ‘trike mom‘ lady spends her days riding around seeking ways to bring attention to herself". Several posters argue that she should have just rode around the car and avoided the confrontation. Many posters fixate on the car driver's race. He is Black and posters argue that if the races were reversed, this would be a major controversy. Others argue that in the absence of the anti-Semitic remark, DCTrikeMom would be castigated as a "Karen" who is using her privilege to harass a Black man. The thread eventually became so dominated by bike posts, to the extent that the anti-Semitism was being completely ignored, that I locked the thread. This provoked someone to start a thread in Website Feedback, which I deleted, titled, "You locked the antisemitic thread because you’re a racist and think Black people are too stupid to be called out". I am not sure what to make of this post and was not interested in engaging. But, to be clear, I locked the thread because I thought the guy wasn't being called out enough and that, instead, posters were too busy attacking DCTrikeMom. The final thing I will say is that many Jews have been complaining that they feel threatened by anti-Semitism and that their concerns are not being taken seriously. Having a thread addressing clearcut anti-Semitism being taken over by anti-bike fanatics is not doing much to prove them wrong.