We Were Wrong
Whenever there was a horrific post on DU about women or LGBT, Starry Messenger and I would say to one another: "God, at least they can't say that about Black people, they'd be banned."
We were wrong.
= new reply since forum marked as read
And judging by the number of folks who feel like they need to haunt my every step, apparently they're equally as afraid of me. 
I would be afraid of you, too, if we disagreed about much. But I am also smart enough not to punch above my weight. Others seem to lack that common sense 
I do wish there was a function so I could see when those on my ignore list were permanently banned. Because that seems to be a trend these days.
back in the day either, but other posters could shut it down pretty quickly because the moderation system worked. People could make ignorant comments, but then they had to feel the consequences of that, too. Now they just alert on anything they don't like and let the jury do their dirty. The "community standard" seems to be that white people must never feel uncomfortable. If they do, it is considered "racially divisive" 
I distinctly remember arguing with some dumbass for DAYS about whether a black kid who called her kid a cracker was the moral equivalent of a white kid calling a black kid the n-word. I ended up posting lynching photos as evidence of the historical context of that word. I know I got a few ToS alerts, but I never got a hide or a comment from the mods. The photos were historical, and we were discussing the history of the word so they allowed them to stay.
Can you IMAGINE the shit storm that would rain down now if anyone did that under the current system?
I learned a lot from this site back then. I spent hours debating what was then an obscure voter ID law in GA. I remember the first time I trapped a self-professed lawyer into a fallacy on that topic and then shut his argument down completely.
And god help you if you didn't have some sort of legit back up when the dreaded "link please" came. Now people just use a bunch of logical fallacies and overblown rhetoric to derail any legitimate debate. I went to the trouble to do actual research on some dumb butthurt that was going on in GDP yesterday, and when I posted the results of the research, was told I needed to "get a life" or something of that nature. For going out and finding an actual FACT on the topic I guess the fact was inconvenient and interfered too much with the whinefest.
It is so bad now that I sometimes read posts to my 15 year old and have her ID the fallacies as practice for debate club and general critical thinking drills. My young teen can see the stupid, and without even trying hard. Sad.
And then when they can't derail with BS, they call in the partisan juries. The stalking of members of this group make me about as mad as anything. The main reason I come back most of the time is to support them, since it seems like a few still want to be here. That and the fact that this is still such a sharp, intellectually stimulating group. Despite all the GDP mayhem and stalking, there are still really excellent discussions of other topics going on here.
