I'm sorry that this thread had to be written, but it reflects the reaction that the country had as a whole. The immediate reaction was to blame the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck. And when it became evident that this person was just plain crazy, and not crazy and motivated by the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck, even Nobel Prize-winning economists wrote dishonest articles about it in the New York Times. Even when they were proven wrong about his motives, the reactionary accusers moved to hypothesizing about how the Tea Party, Sarah Palin, and Glenn Beck "could motivate someone like Jared Loughner". Notice that this is the exact same defense as FranchiseBlade has used in this very thread. When you accuse conservative rhetoric of inciting assassinations, you have to understand when conservatives react angrily. There is a long history of rhetorical violence in this country, as in all free societies. We threaten to tar-and-feather representatives that don't vote the way we'd like them to. We say that their policies are tearing us asunder. When one of them does something wrong, we want to "Hang 'em high!" Locking-and-loading, bringing a gun to a knifefight are just updated versions of that. The violence is used a metaphor, and it's no different than a football coach telling his team to prepare for war, or a basketball coach saying that they need to take the first swing and punch their opponent in the mouth. It's not unique to this country, while it may be a little worse now than in the past few years, it's incredibly mild compared to what you see in other countries. The worst thing that Glenn Beck ever says is polite compared to the things that the UK Labour MPs accuse David Cameron of every week during their questions for the Prime Minister. Through all of that rambling, I get to my point. Quit taking it so seriously! Politicians and political people like to think they are good talkers and writers, so they use the rhetorical tools that they have, but it's just politics. I know that we have a lot of people that work in government in this forum, so I understand that you think it's important, but it's really not. You are smart people. If worst came to worst (and it probably won't), you'd succeed in the private sector. And because it's government, it's not going to make that much difference to that many people. If they ran the country the way I would want, it'd make the country better, but not that much. If they ran it the way Deckard would want, it'd make the country worse, but not that much.
If the DD has come to the point where we need an active moderator, then maybe its past time to shut it down. This is a basketball site, not a political site. There are tons of forums in which people can take their ridiculous rhetoric.
I see that the time has come for for a major course correction and I am prepared for the task. I will assemble a crack team of active guest moderators who will firmly, but fairly enforce the peace of the Debate and Discussion forum. For the conservatives I will place Refman as their forum mod representative. For the middle right I will install imadrummer2K. For the middle left I will have MadMax stand in - he is more middle right, but is fair minded and can be trusted. For the hippie left B-Bob will take the reigns. Once selected the member must become a moderator or lose their Clutchfans membership. I will of course oversee the team and ensure their cooperation. The team - within one month - will have this forum running like a well tuned Porsche roaring down the information autobahn. I will now accept questions from civil forum members.*
weslinder, as always, an interesting and thoughtful post. (1) I take issue with "proving" anything that went on in the mind of this disturbed kid. I agree you cannot, in any way, lay the tragic event in front of any single group or pile of rhetoric. And I thought Krugman's column was poorly considered and wish he would stick to economics. But I don't think we can prove or disprove what went on in the kid's head, what may or may not have been a factor in the many days and steps that led him to Safeway on Saturday. if you can prove he lived in a basement and never turned on a television or used the internet, I'll withdraw this comment and agree with you. (2) The libertarian statement that I think can be defended is "We believe less government would, in the end, be a very good thing." The one that doesn't make sense to me is "government doesn't really affect many people anyway." Government decided to put my dad in the Korean conflict. And then, through (a policy called) the GI bill, it paid for his education, so the whole arc of our family changed from (literally) dirt floors to engineers. It also put one of my students in Iraq recently, and he's a major casualty now. So, I'm biased, clearly, but government (sadly?) has an enormous impact on people. Just ask DPRK! Anyway, I totally understand why people get passionate about politics and why they will continue to do so. I think what's good about D&D is that there's a place to come vent, try out arguments, and (in my case at least) gain an understanding about how other people think and approach problems. Depressing sometimes, yes, but in my case at least, an overall good and informative entity.
Well, if you want a real forum nazi...I think it should be clear that he could only come from one country... NSFW language Spoiler
Nice idea about a mod for D&D although hardly an original one. For whatever reason, Clutch keeps this particular forum open despite openly not respecting the discussions that go on in here. I honestly appreciate him for allowing us to do our thing despite him thinking we are "monkeys flinging poo". It's also pretty clear to me that none of the mods want to have anything to do with this place. All you have to do is read Jeff's post or look at guys like Basso who are still around and you'll see the mods don't like this forum and tend to lump us all in to together regardless of whether you're a troll or a quality, intelligent poster. If the owner of the site and the mods hate this place and hate political conversation and do not wish to appoint a capable and willing mod then I say kill this forum once and for all.
I must admit I jumped to conclusions when this first happened and thought it was due to the rhetoric being used. Clearly that wasn't the case and I think Palin and others are getting grief they do not deserve and I hope more people on the left including Obama stand up for Palin and make it clear that metaphors are not the problem with the political dialogue in this country. It's also a lesson in patience and with-holding judgement until all the facts are in. It's a terrible tragedy that has no one to blame except the psychotic person who committed this crime. As soon as I learned the facts and emotions came down I realized my mistake and that indeed, it's not the words or language that are causing the split in this nation but rather the demonization of the other side as the enemy or in some shape or form evil - and it's something liberals are just as guilty of as conservatives. I for one am going to make an effort to stay out of partisan posturing from this point forward and just discuss issues as issues.
this reflects on the posters in this forum (who don't care about said foreign tragedies) and not on Jeff, who is simply responding to the complaints by those posters (who otherwise don't complain much in foreign tragedy threads)
First off, I appreciate a thoughtful a post. I just want to clarify a couple of things. I didn't say nor did I mean to say that conservative rhetoric could inspire people like the shooter. What I've talked about almost exclusively is extremist rhetoric. Conservative rhetoric in itself isn't bad, even if I disagree with the ideas it espouses. So if attacking conservative rhetoric makes conservatives upset, I would understand that. What I targeted was extremist rhetoric that literally suggested using guns to remedy political problems. I have condemned that rhetoric from both sides, and will continue to do so. I also don't think that speaking about changing the tone of much of the rhetoric in politics is a bad thing whether or not it had any influence on the shooter in this case. Congresswoman Giffords was in favor of toning the rhetoric down and wrote an e-mail about it the day before the shooting. You don't seem willing to ostracize and shun extremist rhetoric, but prefer to point out that it can't be proven to have been a factor in this case. I don't understand why people on both sides of the political spectrum would refuse to shun such extremist rhetoric. I have shunned it from the left, and will willingly do it again. I'm not asking anyone on the right to do anything different than I've done. Because I point out that the two most glaring examples I've seen of politicians advocating the use of guns and violence to address elections that went contrary to some people's wishes doesn't mean I only want one side to tone their rhetoric down. I'm all for people on both sides arguing passionately about issues. I would also be in favor of people on both sides shunning those that make extremist statements from both sides. I'm sorry if that rubs you the wrong way, but I stand by my feelings on this.
Bob, respectfully, i think what you're missing here is the assumption by "many" on your side of the aisle that this reprehensible act was motivated, or influenced, by politics. there is no evidence that it was, and any charges to the contrary, no matter how finely calibrated, must, and will be, vigorously rebutted. as a champion of evenhanded debate in your classrooms (one assumes) you should expect no less yourself.
