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Politics : The Bigot Thread -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (309)	11/21/2004 4:42:58 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 740

Hmm I try very very hard to separate words, and ideas, from posters, and further try to keep in my mind the separation between posters, and whatever their 3d selves may be- my whole idea of having people remove the top of the post was to further that end. I wanted it to be as impersonal as possible, to facilitate talking about rather unpleasant ideas, without personalizing them. I understand what you are saying about responding- but from what I have observed on SI "responses" are rarely rational, and often just become food fights, and I really didn't want that- on top of that I don't want people feeling they have to defend themselves, I don't think that is a good position to put people in. I think we can test words and ideas, but I really don't like to test, question, and attack the people behind them- I've seen it done, and I've even done it back, and I don't like what it does to others, to me, and to the community on the net. (Truth be told I even felt a little bad for complaining about the rudeness of the poster who called this place some rather nasty name- I thought perhaps I was too harsh, and that maybe I should have just ignored it. I'm really trying to sort out a better way to "be" on the net, and I can't say I don't make missteps- but I'm trying. That's all I can do) If people would respond as you have done, it would be WONDERFUL to post the whole post, including where it came from, and who posted it, and we could have a dialog, and talk about real issues- but I don't think that would happen. I can't think of the last time I was as pleasantly surprised by a post as I was by yours- and I've been here since 1996, so my hope, at this point, of really structuring anything meaningful in terms of dialog, is at a low ebb. Do you think it would really be positive to post the whole message? Perhaps the whole idea of taking remarks at all is hopeless. I kind of gave up on it myself- since I saw so much of the same old same old, from the same people, and I just figured...What's the Use? (Please bear in mind, I'm not talking about you, or even the other two folks who stopped by here, who I'm sure I've run across before, but I don't really remember. In other words, the above language about repeat offenders, for bigoted and extreme language, does not pertain to any of you. It's so easy to be misunderstood on SI, I wanted to throw that in.) I'm glad you like the new name. Ionesco is one of my heroes, for many reasons.