Bootstrap wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2024 1:30 pmActually, I think MennoNet is a good place to do that if your enemies and friends line up with the majority here. On MennoNet, I think there are some people who are suspicious of anyone who seriously departs from the Fox News perspective, whether or not that's where they get it from.
Let's be clear about who these people are. temporal1 and Valerie are two people who seem to usually have this worldview, maybe MaxPC does as well although I don't see him delve into political back-and-forths quite as much, but they also have never claimed to be Anabaptists. They just enjoy posting/reading on MennoNet. It seems fruitless to me to endlessly argue with people who aren't Anabaptists about political issues. They both have a "standard" right wing perspective on politics, and are not ashamed to express that view here.
I decided some time ago it is pointless to argue with two women online about finer points of politics when we don't share the same overall Christian worldview (I am Anabaptist, they are not).
I see a lot more denouncements than endorsements. I see people who really seem to get upset if you respond to one of these denouncements and say that the facts do not seem to support it. Some of that comes from conservative Mennonites. Some comes from other Mennonites or people who are not at all Mennonite. And I see a lot of "how dare they investigate this person" while claiming to have no loyalty to that person.
Some conservative Mennonites (such as myself) like to point out inconsistency, like I used to do when people would endless complain about Obama back in the 2014 era. I did it back then, and I continue to do it now.
There are no CMs on this forum stumping for a particular candidate, as far as I know. There are some CMs who do feel free to say "This particular investigation is highly politicised and not focused on gathering the truth." I think it's fine for CMs to say that and have that opinion.
But I also see conservative Mennonites here who either (1) try to avoid championing political things, (2) try to split everything down the middle, making both sides look the same, or (3) try to be studiously fair.
Regardless, I think I see WAY too little discussion of how we, as Christians, live in the world around us. On any topic - abortion, LGBTQ+, drugs, poverty, it's more about what's wrong with them than what we are called to as Christians. Discussions about the Kingdom of God, for instance, get a LOT less traffic than a thread exploring the latest insult that someone made about a politician.
We could actually start those discussions. Simply ask to leave politics and culture war out of it. I think the current Kensington thread is going well; it's not a political discussion there.
Josh wrote: ↑Sat May 04, 2024 12:30 pmIt doesn't matter how many "facts" you present; it's simply not going to be a place for building political allyship. I'm not sure why this concept is hard to understand.
Facts are not about building partisan loyalty. They are the opposite. That's the point. To discuss facts, we first have to stop reframing every fact in partisan terms and telling everyone what we think of all the people involved. We have to stop playing the games associated with the lower levels of the triangle in order to be able to have reasonable discussions of anything.
I think the problem you are facing, Boot, is that we don't have agreement on what constitutes "facts". There isn't a wellspring of trust in MennoNet for certain institutions because some of us believe those institutions are compromised and being used for political ends. The same goes for some journalistic outlets. I might read CNN or the New York Times, but I read them with a note of scepticism. I don't read Fox News, but if I did, I would view it very sceptically.
Have you noticed that people sometimes post opinions and simultaneously tell you what's wrong with anyone who disagrees with them? And how often those opinions are calling for political loyalties? Instead of actually discussing any particular topic, things descend into long lists of grievances thrown at the political side someone particularly hates.
That makes reasonable discussion hard. I think the word reasonable is a helpful guide here. Are we engaging with the facts, using reason and discernment and judgement? Are we thinking things out together with others, open to what they have to say? Do we even know what the topic is, or is each person in a thread discussing whatever comes to mind that is vaguely associated with their side's talking points, making jabs at other people along the line?
Perhaps you could simply frame your discussions that would like you like them to be from an Anabaptist perspective, and respectfully ask non-Anabaptist people to refrain from posting non-Anabaptist viewpoints (such as the standard Fox News viewpoint, the standard mainstream left wing viewpoint, and so on) - which frankly seem to dominate any political discussion around here.