Can we make MN less hostile?

[Bootstrap]

Can you not see how partisan your posts are? You load your post up with all kind of partisan and tribal language, then claim you want to be less hostile and more Christ centered. Very inconsistent and inflammatory.

Can you please give examples of what you see as "all kind of partisan and tribal language" in my posts? Perhaps it would be helpful to give examples from the last month or so?

With links to the posts themselves, please, so it's easy to read in context?

[Grace]

Can you please give examples of what you see as "all kind of partisan and tribal language" in my posts? Perhaps it would be helpful to give examples from the last month or so?

With links to the posts themselves, please, so it's easy to read in context?

For starters on page 29 of this thread:

Labeling threads you disagree with as "Goon Squad" threads. And that the "Goon Squad" threads come from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.

[Bootstrap]

I underlined his post to show the examples.

OK, this is concrete - thanks, I had missed this before. Here's Robert's claim:

Can you not see how partisan your posts are? You load your post up with all kind of partisan and tribal language, then claim you want to be less hostile and more Christ centered. Very inconsistent and inflammatory.

Here's the underlined language he is pointing to:

The vast majority of these threads come in touting the latest Fox controversy, tracking quite well with Fox commentators, from that perspective. Nobody starts a thread advocating CRT or Hegel or whatever. Nobody mentioned the fact that the officer who killed George Floyd was sentenced to 22 years. There have various interesting developments on what happened January 6th, Giuliani, the Trump Corporation, etc. nobody is starting threads to whack Fox conservatives over the head with these things.

I'm not sure I would call Fox conservatism "traditional conservatives". An awful lot of traditional conservatives from the Reagan era have been pretty clear that they don't think this is the same thing at all. These conservatives don't seem to care about a lot of things traditional conservatives cared about, like budget deficits and the rule of law.

Help me understand what the issue is.

If the suggestion is that we should avoid discussing Fox, January 6th, Giuliani, the Trump Corporation, or any hot topic political issues, I would be fine with that. In fact, my point was precisely that I am not starting threads to discuss these things, despite quite a few recent developments, and neither are others.

If the suggestion is that we should avoid using terms like the underlined terms to discuss these things, I am not sure how to do that without ruling those topics out of bounds entirely. And I suspect most of these are terms that many of the people who disagree with me use fairly frequently.

How would you reword this to make the same point in a better way?

[Bootstrap]

For starters page 29:

Labeling threads you disagree with as "Goon Squad" threads. And that the "Goon Squad" threads come from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.

I am not labeling threads "I disagree with" as Goon Squad threads.

Goon Squad tactics have nothing at all to do with whether i agree or disagree with what they are saying. Here's one place I spelled this out:

Yes, in all of this we need to see the other person and not treat people as targets. And I also think it's important to avoid telling other people what they believe or what their motivations are. We should each speak for ourselves.

But regardless of beliefs or motivations, I think the goon squad threads drip in hostility. It's really easy to see who the targets are, how they want us to feel about who, it's often very hard to see what the facts are or whether the victims deserve it. We would have very different conversations if we focused on policy or identifiable facts on the same subjects. The goon squad thread comes straight out of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:

“Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.” Cut off the support network and isolate the target from sympathy. Go after people and not institutions; people hurt faster than institutions.

A Goon Squad thread targets a person or group, encouraging the crowd to denounce them. It fixes a target, polarizes it, freezes it, uses various tactics to pound on the person. What it avoids is really discussing the topic at a reasonable, factual level. Scoring points against the other is the purpose, not working together to discover facts from your perspective and mine. That's what makes it a Goon Squad.

You know that's what's going on when:

1. The OP already points to the target, inviting people to take sides according to their political identities
2. Attempts to steer the thread to a friendly discussion of the facts are pointless
3. The person who disagrees is denounced instead of pointing out errors in the line of reasoning or facts
4. The person is attacked, not the argument itself

Is there a better way to say that without getting lost in the noise that is always there in the middle of a Goon Squad attack?

There are many friendly, cooperative ways to disagree productively. And finding better ways to do that might be one of the better ways to reduce hostility on MN.

[Grace]

Yes, in all of this we need to see the other person and not treat people as targets. And I also think it's important to avoid telling other people what they believe or what their motivations are. We should each speak for ourselves.

But regardless of beliefs or motivations, I think the goon squad threads drip in hostility. It's really easy to see who the targets are, how they want us to feel about who, it's often very hard to see what the facts are or whether the victims deserve it. We would have very different conversations if we focused on policy or identifiable facts on the same subjects. The goon squad thread comes straight out of Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals:



A Goon Squad thread targets a person or group, encouraging the crowd to denounce them. It fixes a target, polarizes it, freezes it, uses various tactics to pound on the person. What it avoids is really discussing the topic at a reasonable, factual level. Scoring points against the other is the purpose, not working together to discover facts from your perspective and mine. That's what makes it a Goon Squad.

You know that's what's going on when:

1. The OP already points to the target, inviting people to take sides according to their political identities
2. Attempts to steer the thread to a friendly discussion of the facts are pointless
3. The person who disagrees is denounced instead of pointing out errors in the line of reasoning or facts
4. The person is attacked, not the argument itself

Is there a better way to say that without getting lost in the noise that is always there in the middle of a Goon Squad attack?

There are many friendly, cooperative ways to disagree productively. And finding better ways to do that might be one of the better ways to reduce hostility on MN.

Four words....Practice what you preach !!

[Bootstrap]

Four words....Practice what you preach !!

Well, I"m trying. I generally do try to focus on the claims that are made that the facts given to support them. I generally provide facts when asked and ask others to do the same. I generally try to incorporate facts others provide.

I doubt very much that you can find examples of me doing this on MN:

A Goon Squad thread targets a person or group, encouraging the crowd to denounce them. It fixes a target, polarizes it, freezes it, uses various tactics to pound on the person. What it avoids is really discussing the topic at a reasonable, factual level. Scoring points against the other is the purpose, not working together to discover facts from your perspective and mine. That's what makes it a Goon Squad.

You know that's what's going on when:

1. The OP already points to the target, inviting people to take sides according to their political identities
2. Attempts to steer the thread to a friendly discussion of the facts are pointless
3. The person who disagrees is denounced instead of pointing out errors in the line of reasoning or facts
4. The person is attacked, not the argument itself

Is there a better way to say that without getting lost in the noise that is always there in the middle of a Goon Squad attack?

There are many friendly, cooperative ways to disagree productively. And finding better ways to do that might be one of the better ways to reduce hostility on MN.

[Sudsy]

I really don’t see Boot as horribly hostile, nor terribly partisan. Mostly I see him as asking for proof. Yes, he may be comparatively partial to certain leftward political issues, but in my opinion he isn’t horribly so, nor blindly so. In my opinion some of the right wing enthusiasts on here are more unfair and more blindly so than he. Yes he can be bulldogish on certain things.
Just my two bits. I suppose that makes me a liberal hack in the eyes of some, even though I probably am objectively more conservative than most here.

I just went through a large family reunion with an extended historically-Menno family in which the religious and political views probably span at least as wide of a spectrum as found here on MennoNet. Actually probably wider as we have some non-Menno arch libertarian types as well who spend all their time talking about things like bitcoin, the deep state, and returning to the gold standard.

But I didn’t observe any sort of thoughtful exchanging of views and listening to each other at all. Zero. Mostly just passive aggressive muttering about others and talking about them behind their backs. Sure everyone was friendly to each other on this surface as it was family. But behind people’s backs there was a lot of hostility and gossip. But I didn’t see one actual thoughtful discussion or exchanging of views directly between people with disparate political or religious beliefs.

I think there are very few places, if any, where any of us can have these sorts of conversations in real life with people from such disparate points of view. It certainly doesn’t happen in my life. I have learned 100x more from discussions I have had here than any I have ever had in real life.

My view is that if one simply wants to hear one’s own views and nothing more, buy a diary and put your thoughts down on paper like people have been doing for all of history. Or start your own public blog without comments as many have done. But if you want to be opinionated on an open forum, expect to encounter views different from your own. That is kind of the point of an open forum rather than one person’s blog.

I wasn’t following this thread before, but I see I was called out by name upstream. There is a search feature on the top of this forum where you can search and display in chronological order all of the posts by any author on this forum. I would be interested in seeing examples where I or Boot or anyone else was being unacceptably hostile. I will admit to poking Josh from time to time. But he is quick to do the same and I don’t take any of it personally. Of all the folks here, he is probably the one I would find it most interesting to have dinner with. Sitting around with people you only agree with gets boring and you rarely learn anything new.

May I suggest we not dig up the past and analyze past posts but rather run the race we are in, looking forward and aiming to share differences of understandings in a way that reflects the fruit of the Spirit. When it comes to forum sharing characteristics of the Spirit that may be most challenging in the war with our old nature / flesh, that I experience, are long-suffering, gentleness and self-control. I think sometimes gentleness might be confused with weakness. Actually a gentle way of offering our thoughts is quite against the old nature of some of us. Perhaps more so for us men but not always. However the Spirit gives all of us the ability to share in a God honoring way where self is not ruling.

I think this is my last post on this specific thread and hope others will come join in some other threads where we are sharing our thoughts on how best to honor and serve the Lord.

[Robert]

Can you not see how partisan your posts are? You load your post up with all kind of partisan and tribal language, then claim you want to be less hostile and more Christ centered. Very inconsistent and inflammatory.

Can you please give examples of what you see as "all kind of partisan and tribal language" in my posts? Perhaps it would be helpful to give examples from the last month or so?

With links to the posts themselves, please, so it's easy to read in context?

I did in that exact post. Go pack and look. I underlined the comments.

[steve-in-kville]

Not following this thread super close, but....

Robert- when the Politics forum was shut down at the end of last year, did the traffic on MN slow down or speed up? Just reading over this thread it appears the bulk of contention revolves around that sub-forum. Just sayin'.

[MaxPC]

Can you please give examples of what you see as "all kind of partisan and tribal language" in my posts? Perhaps it would be helpful to give examples from the last month or so?

With links to the posts themselves, please, so it's easy to read in context?

For starters on page 29 of this thread:

Labeling threads you disagree with as "Goon Squad" threads. And that the "Goon Squad" threads come from Saul Alinsky's Rules for Radicals.

Oh my; rather than apologising to those who have been offended, the person who is disruptive is now attacking with name calling, using terms such as "Good Squad". That is not a very good sign for repentance.