My True Experience With The Dummycrap Undertow
Recently, a masochistic friend of mine got into a debate at democraticunderground.com. Being a proselytizing type, he asked me along to enjoy the misery with him.
There actually was one poster who seemed intelligent and had a few things to say on Iraqi WMD issues. I wanted to ask him more questions.
Unfortunately, by their odd site rules, one must post “enough” posts before being allowed the “privilege” of starting threads or mailing others. So I replied to a few threads, trying to be innocuous.
Then someone actually posted a question along the lines of “Are there actually Democrats in the military?” which degenerated into a “Clinton was better than Bush” tirade. You can guess where it went—Bush was “Selected, not elected and isn’t really Commander-in-Chief, so everyone in the military should just ignore his orders.” I asked if they really wanted the military to select its own CinC, like the Praetorians, when a vicious post was aimed at a Democratic service member (whiskybuff) who’d had the gall to insist that he had to obey his lawful orders.
It’s the 18 year, two service vet in me. I don’t care about his politics, I’ll stand with a fellow vet against the horde even if our only weapons are toothpicks and harsh language.
Only, before I could respond to the subliterate diatribe mentioned below, I got a message on screen that “Your posting privileges have been revoked.” Apparently, I’d failed to be a good liberal (thank God) by asking if a war in Iraq under Bush was bad, why a war in Bosnia under Clinton had been good?
I burned another email address and sent them the following:
(quoting their site rules)
“CIVILITY AND RESPECT
Do not post personal attacks or engage in name-calling against other members of this discussion board.
Do not post racist, sexist, homophobic, ethnic, or religious slurs.
Do not publicly accuse another member of this message board of being a conservative disruptor or FReeper. If you think someone is a disruptor, click the "Alert" button below their post so the moderators can deal with it.
If another member of this board drives you into fits of uncontrollable rage, put that person on your ignore list.
If you are the type of person who just can't get along with other people, and if you seem to repeatedly cause trouble, eventually we will decide that your presence is a disruption and we will ban you. We don't care if you are liberal or conservative.
Try not to take things personally. A thick skin is usually required to participate on this or any message board.”
And yet we have this post:
“What Freeper unleashed this Whiskeyscruff upon us??? ElementaryPenguin Dec-03-02
Now the Chimp is NOT an AWOL thief - and we HAVE to obey the little ****. YOU
obey 'em all you like, whiskeybluff - you're obviously just posting to irritate. You don't agree
with anything anyone is saying here!! Just **** off and go home to Freeperville!!! I (puke) in your
general direction!!!!!!!!!!”
Name calling, profanity and poor grammar to boot. And this is his 896th post. Of course, he’s never name-called or used profanity before. They will ban him Real Soon Now. Count on it. But not before his 897th post.
Of course, if no one, including a moderator, has complained, then he cannot be banned. But that would never happen, since these people stand for integrity and honesty and fairness, right?
The message here is that if you are in the military but don’t ejaculate the Board’s party line, you will be silenced, so the readers can only get the TRUE message from military members. Or at least from the ones you should listen to. If you question the Movement, you will be barred. If you dare to disagree, you will be exiled.
If, however, you endorse rebellion against the government, call people “freepers” (whatever the hell that means) and tell them to "**** off,” you will be welcomed to the intellectual elite.
Who ultimately is hurt by this? They are. It is obvious to anyone inquiring that they are elitist demagogues. Those of us who were impressed by the comments of some of the posters, who wish true discourse on subjects that these posters are clearly expert in, are denied the opportunity to contact them, until we have responded to “enough” posts. “Enough” being defined in their rules as “some number that isn’t very large that we won’t tell you.” Thus, we cannot learn of what we perceive to be the good in Liberalism unless we first swear to that we despise. No first step down the road less traveled permitted. They don’t really want new converts or debate; they want psychophantic ass kissers.
They claim in their masturbatory posts that they are the “majority” of Americans, trodden down by their opponents, yet they must shield their readers from anyone who might wish to talk to them, until such supplicants have proven their worth by spewing the party line. Why? Are they, like door-to-door evangelists, afraid that the programming might be broken if one of them were to think alone? If not, then why the ban? Do they feel their members are unable to delete unwanted mail and ignore the sender thereof? After all, if there are so many of them, what threat a few inquiries?
Thus it has been across the web, at over a dozen groups I’ve visited the “peaceful, enlightened liberals” who support free speech will ban a person in a second for questioning the True Order of Things. Yet the “Evil rightwing conservative Christian gun nut militia conspiracy” crowd will let you speak your piece then respond. How brutally savage and unfair of them.
How odd that the allegedly “right wing”
www.thefiringline.com and
www.glocktalk.com, run by that tiny group of gun nuts, doesn’t need to resort to such tactics, and in fact welcomes posts from gay, pagan and liberal gun owners, or even defense-rights opponents. Yet they are allegedly racist and bigoted by definition, we are told.
How ironic that they, allegedly standing for everything evil, welcome inquiry and community mindedness. Yes, they have their own share of idiots, any message board does. But they are certainly not “right wing” in the true sense of the term.
Nor are they, like the masquerading hypocrites running DU, Fascists. Who, I’ll bet $5 with myself, either delete this post at once (I already know they’ll ban me for it), or have their lickspittle lackeys call me “right wing gun nut” or “freak” or simply to tell me to "**** off and die,” as they’ve been programmed to do any time thinking might be an option.
Whiskybuff, William X, if you are reading this, I’d really like to talk to you. Drop me a line at (address). If you don’t mind pissing off your masters, that is.
PS: does anyone else find it ironic that a group that allegedly opposes capitalism, is against big business, in favor of the family business and supports the little guy has banner ads from Amazon?
www.michaelzwilliamson.com
Ignore the propaganda. Focus on what you see.
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I received the following replies:
Heddi (1523 posts)
Dec-03-02, 04:59 PM (ET)
Reply to post #4
5. if you have a problem
with a poster or a thread, and you think a poster or a thread is violating any of the DU rules, then
you need to hit the "alert" button (which can be found at the bottom of each post).
The "Alert" will be sent to the Moderators of that forum and they can take whatever action they
deem necessary.
If you have a problem with DU Rules or Regulations, I suggest that you make a post in the
Comments and Suggestion forum which can be found HERE
Thank You
Heddi
DU Moderator
ProfessorGAC (1432 posts)
Dec-03-02, 05:05 PM (ET)
Reply to post #4
6. Next!
Heard it all before. Not only is it wrong, but it is REALLY boring! Reminds me of correcting the
grammar of a poster with which one disagrees. No real points are made. Just nitpicking. Same
thing in this post. No noticeable intellectual content; no point of view aside from the fact that you
disagree with the majority here.
One suggestion: Most americans did vote AGAINST Georgie. As matter of fact, more people voted
for a single different candidate. If you can't deal with those big numbers, i apologize for presuming
too much. So, if you don't want posters claiming to represent the majority, i'd suggest you heed
your advice and not do the same.
The Professor
(Forgot more while i was writing this, than you'll ever know.) (NOTE FROM MIKE: including grammar, spelling, reading for content and an understanding of the Electoral College, apparently. Nor did I mention Bush. He just needed to get that fact in. If he says it enough, I might believe it. After all, he's a "professor.")
Karenina (1611 posts)
Dec-03-02, 05:17 PM (ET)
Reply to post #4
7. Elementary, my dear
Penguin speaks from the heart and may squawk at times, I find the utterances utterly charming.
Are you sure you dialed the right number? (NOTE FROM MIKE: “Charming” is one word for them.)
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There was also some idiot who was outraged that a “Kerry” was married to a Heinz heiress and was worth $600 million. Apparently, since Kerry hasn’t given most of it to charity and kept an arbitrary $10 mil, he’s evil and the poster will not buy any Heinz products.
Unfortunately, I was (as I expected) kicked off before I could ask him if he was using a PC running Windows to post to the board…and then all my posts were deleted. Elapsed time, ten minutes. It seems I called it correctly. And they weren’t even ashamed of their bigotry.
To paraphrase something I heard from Dr Jerry Pournelle, “I’m not sure what they are. I know liberals. These don’t sound like them.”
I guess I’ll never be able to contact that liberal defense analyst with his reams of data and primary source material, which, as you might recall, was my motivation for subjecting myself to all this. I’m sure that somehow this is my fault.
I’ll go hang my head in shame now.
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And now I'll go take another shower to wash the stink of lefty off. When my cat makes a mess like this, I punish him. Someone wap these scum in the nose, please.
