Tuesday's Most Active Threads

Unlike the past two days, the most active threads yesterday were not all political topics, though half of them still were. The most active thread, however, was not political at all, unless you include family politics. Titled, "Napping on vacation when you have kids?" and posted in the "Relationship Discussion (non-explicit)" forum, the original poster is upset about her husband's nap routine. On days off, weekends, and vacations, the original poster's husband expects to have a two-hour nap each day beginning at 4:00 p.m. The original poster is especially frustrated by this with regard to vacations. This forces the family, which includes their two tween/teen children, to return to the hotel each day for nap time, depriving them of two hours a day that could be spent on other activities. Moreover, since the original poster doesn't feel the children are old enough to explore strange cities on their own and the hotel pool does not allow the children to swim without supervision, the original poster doesn't get to enjoy downtime herself during her husband's nap because she has take care of the kids. The original poster thinks that her husband is being unreasonable and wants to know if she is wrong. There is a surprising amount of interest in this topic which produced 21 pages of responses in less than a day. For her part, it seems that the original poster bowed out after the second page, perhaps not wanting to waste vacation time on DCUM. Also surprising was the amount of support shown for the original poster's husband. DCUM, at least as represented by this thread, is apparently very pro-nap. A fairly common type of response was for a poster to explain that they make a bazillion dollars a year and normally work 25 hour days, but on vacation they like to take a nap. In fact, very few posters seem to take issue with the original poster's husband's nap habit. Rather, they provided ideas for the original poster to accomodate it. Many posters thought that the children were old enough to do activities on their own, despite the original poster's reservations in that regard. Even if the kids weren't able to go to the pool or venture out into the city, they could at least read or have screen time while their father napped. Several posters argued that the issue wasn't the two-hour nap, but rather the inflexibility of its timing. Not all activities lend themselves to being back at the hotel at 4, they suggested and they didn't like the idea of being forced to plan around a daily nap at that time every day. Other posters said that they intentionally plan in such a manner so that they can have their daily naps. A number of posters advised the original poster to simply plan their day and go about their activities, allowing her husband to depart for his nap and catch up with the family later. That way, only his day would be interrupted. A considerable number of posters worried that the nap requirement was caused by a medical condition such as sleep apnea. But this idea was scoffed at by posters who consider daily naps to be completely normal.

The next most active thread was a bit of a strange one. Posted in the "Website Feedback" forum, the thread was mostly political in nature. Titled, "You have lost control of dcum. The magas are taking over." original poster complained that "MAGAs" are posting openly on nearly every thread in the political forum and I have not been deleting the posts or blocking the posters. The original poster wonders if I have given up and says that they don't have time to read "a bunch of maga propaganda". My assumption was that the poster was bothered by the huge number of posts by MAGAs gloating over President Joe Biden's dismal debate performance and the consternation among Democrats that performance had caused. As such, I explained that given the large number of posts and the limited resources we have to moderate, there was not much that we could do about it but that it would likely blow over soon. As for the original poster, he or she has a history of posting threads that represent the perspective of an extreme progressive. The original poster is either the exact stereotype of progressives that haunts MAGA fever dreams, or someone acting that way to make progressives look silly. Either way, the poster has a knack for creating controversy. Later the poster would assert that every MAGA post should be deleted regardless of whether they were factually correct or not. There is a significant number of posters on DCUM who are active on political topics that appear to suffer from serious persecution complexes. These posters must wake up each morning eager to identify some way in which they have been treated unfairly so that they can then devote themselves to complaining about it. Most of these posters appear to be very privileged and wouldn't know true prejudice if it hit them in their heads. Nevertheless, they were attracted to this thread like moths to a flame. It wasn't actual MAGAs who joined the thread to complain that their posts might be arbitrarily removed. The actual hardcore MAGAs that I would like to get rid of have been dealing with that situation for years and have no problem working around it. As I explained in the thread, it is almost impossible to do anything about these posters because they are so experienced at working around any obstacles placed in their paths. Rather, it was the "moderates", whether moderate Republicans or moderate Democrats who came out of the woodwork to proclaim themselves either real or potential victims of "censorship". I was personally lambasted for being a "wealthy White man" who prevented poor women of color from expressing themselves. This accusation was made by a wealthy White woman who was upset that I remove her anti-trans posts (something I am proud to do, by the way). So, somehow a demand that I remove all MAGA posts ended up being about an imaginary desire for poor women of color to post anti-trans messages. Personally, I suspect that poor women of color have bigger fish to fry and probably don't care what we are discussing on DCUM. At any rate, the consensus that developed among many posters was that MAGA posters are not the problem, but rather extreme leftists. It has always appeared that "moderate" Democrats are much more comfortable with the far right than they are with the far left. Certainly that seems to be the case in this thread.

Next was a thread titled, "S/o What the f do you all want from doctors?" and posted in the "Health and Medicine" forum. Frankly, I am not all that comfortable with the title of this thread. I hadn't seen it until this morning and probably would have removed the thread if I had caught it early on. The original posters should have been more cognizant that this is a public forum supported by advertisers who probably don't want to be associated with f-bombs, even when abbreviated. Beyond that, the original poster listed a number of complaints and/or demands that DCUM posters apparently have about doctors. In short, DCUM posters appear to have contradictory demands such as wanting skilled doctors that work cheap, who have knowledge but don't act like they know more than their patients, demand that doctors excel on exams, but then prefer to see providers who don't take those exams. One thing to keep in mind is that DCUM is not an individual, but rather a collection of individuals. As such, it is unlikely that a single DCUM poster has any of those contradictory ideas. Rather, individual posters have preferences that contradict one another. The issues posters appear to be having with doctors don't seem to actually be the fault of the doctors. Rather, insurance companies or what we might more broadly refer to as the "healthcare industry" have created a system that both doctors and patients dislike. Posters describe an overly bureaucratic system that is focused on rules, regulations, and procedures while the patient is ignored. Other posters point out that these things are out of the doctors' hands and part of the reason many doctors have turned toward concierge medicine. Doctors on the thread stress that they don't have time for the type of personal interaction that some posters desire. If they do allocate appropriate amounts of time, they can't see as many patients and there are fewer appointments available. Then patients complain about long waits to see a doctor. One poster went into great detail about the number of patients that primary care physicians have on their rosters, explaining the basic math of allocating sufficient minutes to that number of patients and then adding in telephone calls and emails. Much of the discussion turned to the medical profession and what it is like to work as a doctor. Posters say that doctors prefer to be specialists because they can make considerably more money. This results in a dearth of primary care physicians. There are disagreements about doctors' salaries which appear to be high at first glance, but after the expenses that doctors are expected to cover are explained, seem less generous. The one thing about which everyone seems to agree is that the system is broken, satisfying almost nobody.

The final thread that I will discuss today was posted in the "Political Discussion" forum. Titled, "Trump’s call for military tribunals", the original poster says that former President, current cult leader, and convicted felon Donald Trump has called for a "televised military tribunal to prosecute Liz Cheney" and other political leaders. Trump's actual action was to "ReTruth" Truth Social posts that called for the military tribunals and asked posters to "ReTruth" if they agreed. Trump's "ReTruthing" seemed to indicate his support, though he later deleted the posts. Liberals responding in the thread were, of course, outraged. They argued that with the Supreme Court's decision providing wide immunity to presidents, Trump has no reason not to do this sort of thing. This type of authoritative and dangerous suggestion shows why a Trump re-election would be a disaster for our democracy, these posters argued. This thread shows why this election cycle is so frustrating for Democrats. Trump keeps telling everyone what type of leader he plans to be, but many people simply refuse to believe him. The immediate reaction of conservatives was to deny this happened at all. Despite multiple credible news outlets reporting about the Truth Social posts, multiple posters claimed that they could not find the "truths" and, therefore, did not believe they existed. One poster called liberals "delusional". Posters complaining about the posts were mocked. Then when screenshots of the "truths" were posted, the posters who had been denying their existence began excusing them. This was not Trump calling for tribunals they said, but some random Truth Social poster. One poster wrote that since this was not a New York Times op-ed, but rather a "meme" it shouldn't be taken seriously and went on to joke about it. I truly believe that this sort of nonchalance is incredibly dangerous. Again, Trump is explicitly telling us what type of president he will be. He plans to seek vengeance and the idea of televised military tribunals is not too extreme for him to indicate support. But anyone who takes this threat seriously is laughed at and ignored as if they were a crazy person. Posters assure us that Trump will not be able to do the things he promises. The "system" will work to restrain him, they claim. Our democracy is based on checks and balances. However, the system is broken. The House is currently in Republican hands, the Senate may very well go that way in the coming election. The Supreme Court has completely capitulated to Trump, granting him broad immunity and enabling him at every step. Many states are so gerrymandered that Democrats have no hope in local elections, even when they are able to win state-wide such as in North Carolina and Wisconsin. Who is left to stop Trump? Where are the checks? They don't exist. Moreover, if those behind Project 2025 get their way, things will only get worse. If this nightmare comes to pass, which it has a very good chance of doing, I fully expect those mocking us today will be welcoming our new authoritative overlords tomorrow. They truly think that they have nothing to fear.