I find it to be a horrendous and corrupt abuse of authority for anyone to banish another person from any group based on their beliefs, political affiliations, or personal opinions about a political issue or candidate.
The Pal thread is the epitomy of that practice. It represents the phenomenon known as 'group think' at its worst. For any who are unfamiliar with that phenomenon, it goes like this:
1) A group of people who enjoy some common interest get together and find they enjoy one another's company. The common goal becomes a continuance of that association at all costs.
2) As new issues come up that might represent a breach in the group, the members of the group (usually in a passive manner) dismiss whatever the threat is.
3) As the group solidifies its ranks, it finds that some issues can't be simply dismissed. So the group agrees to 'go along' with the directives from whatever the leadership proposes. The leadership can be anything from consensus to dictatorial. The main thing is that once an idea is promoted by the authority it must never be challenged because that threatens the homogeneity of the group. Loyalty to group becomes the absolute high value of the community members.
This could be tribal, political, religious, ethnic, gender, age, a common interest, or just about any group identifier that has stickiness. Even bad ideas are allowed to pass (like the N.O.W proclaiming that one molestation per year was an exceptable standard when trying to maintain loyalty to the clinton admin). Eventually if this type of group think continues to recieve support, the whole group becomes corrupted.
The biggest problem of course is bigotry. It is ironic that the Pal thread and others like it proclaim diversity as one of their core values. This is not too different than major world religions that proclaim tolerance as their value but find ways to go to war with anyone who does not believe as they do.
Bar none, the pal thread is the most prejudicial, and close minded thread on SI.
I find a way to challenge the group ID on all SI threads. A few years ago kholt and I agreed that the nicest term we could find for that behavior would be 'puddle splashing'.
The saddest thing about the corruption on SI threads is that those who are in power to behave that way convince themselves they are a friendly and benevolent sort ... thus terminology such as 'Pal' is use to mask the insidiousness of their behavior. |
