I recently took part in an interesting exchange on a bulletin board in cyberspace. The board was a blue-collar type board for people in the heating/AC industry and it had a section where talking about religion and politics was allowed. At first, it appeared as if there was some intelligent discussion going on: What are Neo-Cons really? Where is the Democratic leadership headed with Dean as the DNC Chair? So I responded, eager to take part in this discussion.
A few posts later though, and the attacks began. I received private e-mails of support from two other members, but most of these people must’ve known better than to get in the ring with the people whom I found myself standing up against. I made one slip up and said that Max Cleland jumped on a grenade that he at first thought might have been thrown at his troop, but then he realized it might have fallen off his own belt and that’s how he was injured in Vietnam. The right-wingers on the site quickly looked up Cleland’s own words on his website where he mentions that he just grabbed his own grenade which he realized had fallen off his belt. No jumping, but I was nailed as a liar. My own fault, and I should’ve known better. What proceeded after that was a slide into a pit of hatred and attacks. It was interesting to say the least. One member prompted another to “go after him — I got yer six.” This is the type of people we on the left are dealing with day after day. There is no room for conversation, it’s just attack attack attack. There must be a way to talk with more reasonable conservatives without the distraction of these extremists who have nothing better to do than shoot at people who are stupid enough to put their heads up in a forum? One of these guys has posted over SIXTEEN THOUSAND posts in the forum. That tells you what these folks’ motivation is… The question is, where are the real conservatives? How do we find them to get back to some common ground? You can’t have a conversation when half the people are yelling.