I would prefer that “wrong” people without “proper education” be countered with arguments rather than jeering.

After all, without arguments, who is to say that the person who’s wrong is not the one jeering?

To me it reads more as someone who is jaded, cynical, perhaps a bit wounded by other people’s attacks on them and projecting their insecurity and frustration about that.

IMO very few people are assholes by nature. If we can create an atmosphere, and tools, that encourage civility, then we will get civility.

at least person gets the idea that opinion is in fact unpopular

And why is that important?

Interesting. Of course, “obnoxious” and “in love with their own voice” are highly personal judgements that are pretty vulnerable to motivated reasoning. In other words: if they were making a point that you happened to agree with, perhaps you wouldn’t think those things.

Downvoting is intolerance made cheap. It’s a button to say: “You’re wrong, I don’t care what you have to say, LA LA LA LA SHUT UP”. If you did the equivalent of downvoting in an in-person discussion, you would be an asshole.

But what really annoys me personally (someone else mentions it) is that downvoting reduces the visibility of the downvoted opinion. It’s literally soft censorship.

I regularly leave discussions after receiving cheap downvotes in return for my carefully considered contribution. It’s a statistical certainty that I’m not the only one.

Downvoters should consider the opportunity cost of their actions for the quality of the discussion they are taking part in.

THIS is the reason.

Downvoting is literally a form of censorship. It’s the virtual equivalent of shouting someone down.

It was never popular even in France, for a simple reason: the week became 10 days but the weekly rest day was still only 1.

Vocabulary is loaded. The words “rich” and “poor” conflate munificence with success or happiness. When we see an injured animal and say, “That poor creature!”, we are obviously not talking about its bank account. By the same token, being short of money is a problem but it absolutely does not make you a “failure”.

Same experience. And it’s a shame.

And yet I’ve found that, occasionally, after I brace myself for the blowback, instead there comes a thoughtful reply which assumes good faith. It’s those occasions which keep me coming back.

All the people here saying, “Just block them” - personally I just can’t help suspecting that these are the same people who themselves are insulting and abusing others, who in turn are saying “Just block them”.

The solution is not that everyone blocks everyone else. The solution is that we behave civilly and respectfully to each other.

IIRC a quarter of the Republican ad spending was on that single ad, “The Democrats are for ‘they/them’, Trump is for YOU”. It was that effective.

I don’t care much who is right morally. America’s culture wars are almost an irrelevance to me as a foreigner. I care because it’s skewing American elections. Trump is about to pull out of the climate accord and it will be partly because of this. That is just a crazy situation. You guys need to turn down the temperature. On the Democrat side that means less moralizing and hectoring because it is very visibly driving the other side crazy. It’s not worth it.

In polls and focus groups, the voters themselves say otherwise.

If you tell Americans outside cosmopolitan cities they must declare themselves publicly as “cis het” or else they’re a bigot (I caricature but only slightly), then you should expect to lose elections.

And American elections tend to affect other people in the world. That’s why lots of us wish you would let up a bit on this nonsense.

That’s an interesting take. Declaring one’s pronouns as a way to announce one’s presence (or not) in a dating pool. Okay, but personally I doubt that’s the main driver. After all, in the internet era, finding one’s tribe is as easy as two taps on a screen. Gay guys can now have as much sex as they want without any third party even knowing, as you must be aware. I certainly am, indeed I speak from experience. So this phenomenon of needing to wear jargon and pronouns on one’s sleeve, I think it has other causes, mainly.

You seem like a likeable person who’s trying to the do the right thing.

Personally, I would prefer a world where people did not feel obliged by social pressure to announce such details about the minutiae of their private lives. I would prefer that individuals saw themselves first and foremost as individuals and not as representatives of this or that group of (supposed) oppressor or (supposed) victim. This whole situation looks to me transparently like the result of overreach by an advocacy class that needed to find a problem that it could solve. IMO most people are not, and never have been, bigots. They’re usually nice folks trying to do the right thing, like you. And it feels to me like they are being manipulated.

I’m hearing lots to vituperation and, well, anger but no actual plans about how to solve any of this. If you’re advocating a bloody revolution, then fine, but that will be the end of this conversation. Otherwise you have no choice but to engage in the democratic process. And that will mean a choice between compromising with your fellow citizens or losing elections. There is no alternative. If you keep asking for what they don’t want, and they are in the majority, then you will keep losing. It’s that simple.

Agreed. Much better to introduce new jargon than to insidiously repurpose existing language. This is the point Orwell made.

But it’s jargon nonetheless. It’s exclusionary by definition.

This is called a counsel of despair. Or nihilism. With this attitude you are going to achieve precisely nothing - or, rather, you are going to make things worse by ceding control of your government to your avowed enemies.

In a democracy, there is no way forward except compromise. And the alternative to democracy is even worse. Much worse.

On a screen only, in epub format. 10 books or so per year. Almost entirely non-fiction. In theory a chapter at a time. Often in the hour before eating, when I’m most awake and able to concentrate.

As to how I get hold of the book, first I check the Open Library on the Internet Archive. If it’s not there (often the case) then I pirate it in about 3 clicks from the usual places.

BUT: if the book is recent and the author is still active, then I will also pay for the book on Amazon or wherever it’s cheapest. While reading the epub I pirated earlier. That’s only fair. The last time I did this was literally yesterday.

I’ll try a different tack. Because after all, we seem to want the same result.

In my analysis (which, as someone who follows this pretty closely, I maintain is much better supported by the evidence than yours), I have to suck it up and talk to people I don’t like and maybe even accept policies I don’t like.

In yours, you get to feel great about being in the right, with no need to question any of your prejudices much less make any compromises.

If you were a neutral observer watching this conversation, who would you believe?